Programming is a Terrible Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#31

Post by henrik_w » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:31 AM UTC

There are many reason why programming is a great career:

1. You get to create things

2. You make things that are useful to other people

3. It is fascinating to see the program you wrote execute as intended

4. There is always more to learn – you are never done

5. Short distance between idea and running program

6. Code is very expressive

There are also lots of jobs to chose from, and they pay relatively well, so if you don't like where you are: switch. There is no reason to stay in a boring job when there are many interesting ones to switch to. More on why programming is great: "Why I Love Coding" http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-coding/

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#32

Post by nicpottier » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:32 AM UTC

There's a reason it is called work and not play. If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it.

I think the author is delusional if he thinks any programming anywhere doesn't have large swaths of time that are a bit mind numbing. And my experience has been the programmers who think themselves 'above that' are the ones that provide the least value.

Our job is not to program, our job is to create value. You should be getting your jollies off of making cool shit happen, solving real problems, not necessarily that you just invented some sophisticated new algorithm.

I spent three years rebuilding video games I grew up on a really limited cell phone platform, it was a blast from a technical point of view. I've spent the last three years building fairly rote software that is used in developing countries, it is satisfying more because of the end result that software will hopefully have.

Go get a job someplace where you care about the end result of your work, or go work someplace where your technical side is challenged, but programming is not terrible, your attitude is.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#33

Post by informatimago » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:34 AM UTC

taeric wrote: post #6

xinn wrote: post #3

I felt the same way. I quit. I'm still unemployed. I will admit the job I had wasn't nearly as dreary, but I was still plagued by the fact that what I was doing was utterly pointless and had zero value. In retrospect, I wish I had just grown the fuck up and accepted the simple fact that the chances of any person on this earth making his or her life meaningful outside of his or her own family are astronomically slim.…

I'm not quite as cynical as your last line, but I fully agree with the outlook growing up. And honestly, does any of this sound unique to programming? Do you think carpenters are all happy just making what people will buy from them? Do you think musicians all just want to make music people will buy? Mathematicians of old just being glad they could reliably hit ships with a cannon? Electricians constantly just pluggin…

Or do you think Benvenuto Cellini was happy doing salt and pepper for François 1er? (He wasn't, according to his biopic) http://www.jamesgreer.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/cellini... But that's what the kind was paying him for.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#34

Post by icebraining » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:37 AM UTC

Well, IE is a world in and of itself, but I rather enjoy battling shitty APIs and badly document web services. It's a great feeling when you can get a reasonably elegant fix to a braindead decision implemented in the system you're interfacing with.

Even as a hobby, I've always preferred writing a script that parses badly broken websites and sends commands over SSH to an ncurses program that does something fun and useful, than calculating some number that has been known since the 30s.

Brokenness is fun, a challenge. It's straightforward CRUD that I dread.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#35

Post by garethadams » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:38 AM UTC

nicpottier wrote: post #32

There's a reason it is called work and not play. If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it. I think the author is delusional if he thinks any programming anywhere doesn't have large swaths of time that are a bit mind numbing. And my experience has been the programmers who think themselves 'above that' are the ones that provide the least value. Our job is not to program, our job is to c…

> If work was always enjoyable, then they wouldn't need to pay you to do it.

I can't pay my bills with enjoyable.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#36

Post by Wintamute » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:39 AM UTC

There are an incredible amount of hard problems and interesting challenges in frontend web dev. The field is changing at a fantastic pace, and there are all sorts of exciting projects to get involved with. Its wide open. If you think its all just JS hacks you're doing it wrong.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#37

Post by informatimago » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:39 AM UTC

bromagosa wrote: post #30

al2o3cr wrote: post #11

TL;DR for the article: "OMG, work is BOOOOORING!" See also: the disillusioned former law student who went in to change the world but ended up pushing paper, the disillusioned architect went in to design monuments but ended up designing Wal-Marts, the disillusioned English major who went in dreaming of the Great American Novel but ended up spell-checking ad copy. There is a difference, though: if "wiring together unbe…

By the number of people that are pissed off about webdev and still don't success at changing it, and by the amount of "Oh Brand New Automagic Solution for Everything (TM)" coming up every month and still failing at fixing the mess that webdev is... I'd say it's not so easy to "fucking change that".

I don't know if it's easy or hard. I'd bet it's rather on the easy side. What I know is that it's not with having dealines to produce the next product that anybody will have the time to take some step back and come with a better (more automatic) way of doing things.

What's painful, it's not doing something repeatitive. It's being presured to repeat it, without being let automatizing it, which is what we should do as programmers.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#38

Post by harel » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:40 AM UTC

You really should man up and either find a programming job you like, or go do something else that makes you happy. Sounds like you're in the wrong profession. I enjoy programming as a hobby and I enjoy write code for employers. Both present different challenges but in essence in both cases I'm programming and solving problems. The benefit of doing it for employers is that they give you problems you wouldn't necessarily have in a hobby project. This is life. And life landed you a crappy job. That's not the point though - the point is how you handle this and so far it looks like you're not handling this very well.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#39

Post by ricardobeat » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:40 AM UTC

That's a very pessimistic view of software development. The thrilling part of the work is building things and seeing people use them. That's what it's all about.

There is always grunt work, but instead of "battling" javascript and CSS you could use the opportunity to learn more about browsers, interface design, etc. Channel the frustration into building new, better frameworks, or helping improve the existing ones. There are plenty of opportunities to exercise your CS education in fast-growing or large-scale businesses. And for all I know, solving problems in the kernel or coding OpenGL could be even worse.

Re: Programming is a Terrible Job

#40

Post by 16s » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 11:44 AM UTC

Reality kills a lot of interest. Rules, deadlines, no one cares about good design... just get it out. Only you and a few like-minded co-workers realize how neat some of the solutions are. No one else cares.

Make it a hobby. The stuff you care about at least. Apply things you discover there in your professional life and you'll stand-out and be noticed.

Most programmers don't love the job. They don't go home and think about how something can be made more efficient or scale better or fit into smaller spaces. Hell, most don't know the meaning of time and space and why those things matter. Those who do (so much so that they make a hobby out of it) are the kinds of people you want working for/with you.

Hang in there. It's not all bad.