Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software • Hacker News Board

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#311

Post by probably_wrong » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:50 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #256

ravenstine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a level or two down from the abstraction of company size, crafting hobbies are also a reprieve from the tyranny of linters. So many programmers today believe that code is always better when it all looks identical. Consistency is a good thing, but not when it's expected to be absolute. Programming should actually allow for creativity, and where you decide to add spaces and newlines can actually add subtle but impor…

How you choose to add whitespace to your code is not a meaningful outlet for creativity. Linters are a great tool for eliminating bike shedding. I don't think wood working per se gives you more flexibility than building software. It's wood working as an individual, not part of a team, so you can make your own decisions and not answer to anyone. If you were a one man software consultant you would have the same amount…

> How you choose to add whitespace to your code is not a meaningful outlet for creativity.

I'd like to mildly disagree. Using whitespace to group functionality together in "paragraphs" and aligning the horizontal indentation in the clearest possible way is not too far away from editing a short story to make it flow better.

Earlier today my linter rearranged multiple "key: value" one-liners into two-liners and the end result is both objectively and subjectively worse.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#312

Post by aulin » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:56 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #159

ravenstine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a level or two down from the abstraction of company size, crafting hobbies are also a reprieve from the tyranny of linters. So many programmers today believe that code is always better when it all looks identical. Consistency is a good thing, but not when it's expected to be absolute. Programming should actually allow for creativity, and where you decide to add spaces and newlines can actually add subtle but impor…

I curse the inferior linter formatting and at the same time would not have it any other way because why? Some diva would come in and put up a MR reformatting half the code base to their preferred way, mixed in with the actual change they are making and I would have to hunt for the actual changes in the reformatting noise. And then we would spend half a day arguing about it like in the good old days. Fast forward six…

I've worked in a place where reviews were obsessed with coding style. No one noticed serious bugs, but forget a space in the right place and you'd be doomed. And yet people still managed to rewrite stuff to their preferred style while managing to not violate any rule. No prescription about function and variable names? they'd change every single one their way. No prescription about argument alignment, they'd change it. Everything not esplicitly forbidden was an outlet to express their creativity or maybe tame their frustration.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#313

Post by dfc » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:56 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #300

9dev wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re romanticising woodworking a bit here. A large saw is specifically built to allow doing a single, precise cut, in exactly the same way, over and over again. The tools are absolutely made to prevent you from messing up the various ways, it’s just that you don’t use the professionals tools at home. And indeed that’s something I’d apply to software: both hobbyists and small companies are tempted to use pro…

Highly compensated people doing manual labor for fun are romanticizing woodworking. Full stop. Trying to de-romanticize it means you have absolutely no idea what motivates most of us. Signed, someone with restored antique Stanley wood planes, Japanese saws and who drools over Lee Valley product reviews.

Most of the stuff in the lee valley catalog is the same garbage you can get at rockler or any other tool outlet. The only thing possibly drool worthy are the Veritas tools. For the longest time I felt the same as you, I had assumed everything from LV was the same quality or at least close to the Veritas line. The truth is most of the LV stuff is garbage. On the other hand everything from Lie Nielsen is phenomenal, it's just not always in stock.

I spent a lot of time searching for and restoring old tools. I finally realized I was spending way more time on the tools than actually using them.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#314

Post by cityofdelusion » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:58 PM UTC

Woodworking (or any interesting manual labor) as a hobby is fun. Doing it as a job though is brutal, repetitive, boring, and dangerous. The client relationship is even worse —- at least most devs have insulation through the agile system from the direct force of clients. Selling in the trades is rough, rough work, and probably more than half the job.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#315

Post by Teever » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:59 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #311

jimbokun wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you choose to add whitespace to your code is not a meaningful outlet for creativity. Linters are a great tool for eliminating bike shedding. I don't think wood working per se gives you more flexibility than building software. It's wood working as an individual, not part of a team, so you can make your own decisions and not answer to anyone. If you were a one man software consultant you would have the same amount…

> How you choose to add whitespace to your code is not a meaningful outlet for creativity. I'd like to mildly disagree. Using whitespace to group functionality together in "paragraphs" and aligning the horizontal indentation in the clearest possible way is not too far away from editing a short story to make it flow better. Earlier today my linter rearranged multiple "key: value" one-liners into two-liners and the end…

Yeah, it's proto-editing, but with such limited degrees of freedom in the activity your creative options are pretty limited and as time goes on and on the endeavor starts to look like this: https://xkcd.com/915/

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#316

Post by Izkata » Fri, May 03, 2024, 4:03 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #288

InitialLastName wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, well-written code often doesn't need comments to explain itself; my point was that "there's an extra space here so you know this bit is important" is pretty much the opposite of that.

I do use whitespace (empty lines) to "group" parts of a function the way paragraphs group thoughts in prose. For a function it might be as simple as param-check, setup, loop, tear-down. But it makes it a little clearer that some lines of tightly-grouped code represent an "activity" (sub-activity?).

As an example, your own comment three above is split into three parts (quote and two sections of your own). Plus my comment here, split into two.

Code has its own flow and natural groupings just like human language, and adding spacing to match makes it easier to understand even though it is subtle.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#317

Post by hackernewds » Fri, May 03, 2024, 4:03 PM UTC

hn72774 wrote: post #309

Having interests outside of work is important for me. When I get too focused on any one thing, work or whatever, I start to lose the forest from the trees. It also helps me keep my identity separate from my job. There is no company loyalty to employees anymore. A hobby gives me enough distance from work problems to come back to them with a fresh perspective and more energy.

That is a great perspective. I've learned the importance of diversification of my identity.

Often when people are asked who they are, they respond with their job titles.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#318

Post by hinkley » Fri, May 03, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #313

hinkley wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly compensated people doing manual labor for fun are romanticizing woodworking. Full stop. Trying to de-romanticize it means you have absolutely no idea what motivates most of us. Signed, someone with restored antique Stanley wood planes, Japanese saws and who drools over Lee Valley product reviews.

Most of the stuff in the lee valley catalog is the same garbage you can get at rockler or any other tool outlet. The only thing possibly drool worthy are the Veritas tools. For the longest time I felt the same as you, I had assumed everything from LV was the same quality or at least close to the Veritas line. The truth is most of the LV stuff is garbage. On the other hand everything from Lie Nielsen is phenomenal, it…

That’s not the arrangement of the words “Rockler” and “garbage” that will get you upvotes in r/woodworking.

If you had a Woodcraft in town you’d only go to Rockler for things you can’t find at Woodcraft. Which is largely cabinet-making and air handling equipment.

Lee valley and veritas are mostly making reproductions of golden age Stanley tools before the race to the bottom (what the kids call enshittification) started, with a few omissions or improvements. They aren’t garbage, they’re low volume. That makes them less appropriate for people being paid by the hour or piece.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#319

Post by chasd00 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

eddd-ddde wrote: post #286

ravenstine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a level or two down from the abstraction of company size, crafting hobbies are also a reprieve from the tyranny of linters. So many programmers today believe that code is always better when it all looks identical. Consistency is a good thing, but not when it's expected to be absolute. Programming should actually allow for creativity, and where you decide to add spaces and newlines can actually add subtle but impor…

> the tyranny of linters This is a take I don't think I've seen before. Is someone actually mad prettier is changing their single quotes to double quotes? Are they mad some line is breaking at some word? Certainly I've never been. I use linters / formatters even when I'm working solo because the mere concept of having to think where to break lines is meaningless disruption from the actual goals I have. If you _really…

for some people talking about whether it's best to put a curly brace on its own line or on the same line as an if condition is like talking about which religion is the one true path to paradise...

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#320

Post by whb101 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 4:10 PM UTC

sukruh wrote: post #35

Most of the people I know who pursue creative/crafting hobbies alongside a software development job have chosen to work for well-known big companies, for prestige and safety, and ended up unfulfilled in their jobs. Most big companies are not good if you want to solve problems and build stuff. Especially "the enterprise", where software is seen as a cost center so the less of it the better. The effort of managing up e…

This comment hits the crux of what OP was really getting at. It's not that software itself is an inherently bad trade; it's what's been happening to it and why.

> very happy at a fast-growing small tech company where one can have honest conversations about the customer and the product

Right. Why is this getting harder to find? Engineers are feeling like their labor is increasingly becoming unimpactful vaporware; their work life is increasingly subject to the whims of nontechnical people; product complexity is going beyond the amount that's just natural in software and getting disproportionately bad.

It's because the market is driving people to the software world like tourists to a national park that's gone viral on social media. The mass of people trying to make a buck off software are unknowingly degrading it. The park's land is still good - just a little too good for its own good.

As long as software makes it easier to reach many eyeballs and wallets at once (which is "always") people will flock to it. What's less inevitable is what makes fluff and snake oil rampant in other industries, like health: a deadly combo of unbridled capitalism and masses of uneducated people.

This makes people, including many software engineers themselves, view software engineers as natural resources you can just endlessly extract from, instead of people with biological limits and dreams of making cool things with their hands.

The remedy to this - people democratically owning the means of production, and providing each other with reliably good schooling - might seem like a pie-in-the-sky idea but will be common sense in 100 years if we're still around.