> If people don't like the concept, they don't really understand it. I think plenty of people understand it, they just don't agree with it. Why wouldn't humans use every advantage available to them to succeed? It's a tough world out there and people want to thrive and survive, they'd also like to pass along the fruits of their labor to their offspring. That's how nature works. There will always be a will to be the be…
Generally, people don't say you should refuse to take advantage of them, but that you recognize them. That is, right now, you're misunderstanding privilege.
Recognize them then do what? Humans are complex and I see no value in using a one dimensional, subjective metric to make any sort of decision or guide a personal philosophy.
If you want to know just how hard programming is, try teaching it to someone. Programmers have to remember a vast amount of domain knowledge. Consider the basic task of choosing where you are going to store some data, well first you need to know which options exist and there's dozens of them (do you want Postgres, SQLite, Redis, LevelDB, ..?). Then you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. And I hope you…
> There are "law schools" and "med schools" to teach you all the knowledge required to become a lawyer or a doctor. Programmer now, gained a law degree in a previous life. Know lots of folks who studied medicine. The idea that med school or law school teach you "all the knowledge required to become a lawyer or a doctor" is laughable and a truly absurd statement. The sheer size of the problem domains these subjects co…
I don't think that is what he/she meant. I don't know what your professional software experience has been like, but software is applied and required to some extent in all industries nowadays, and therefore there is a broader scope required. It is also more of a moving target. I'm a contractor providing software engineering services. One contract I might be doing Subsea control systems, the next OpenGL graphics hardware programming sprinkled with Java and Eclipse, the next contract may be embedded assembly language for turbine control systems etc. Law/Medicine maybe moving, but I am fairly certain a doctor or lawyer does not "move as fast". They tend to stay specialised in maybe an area or two. In fact, for a serious medical condition, from a patients point of view, I would be quite alarmed to be seen by a doctor that has not "specialised" in my condition. Ideally, one that does nothing but my condition. I think it is easier for a doctor/lawyer to fall into the trap of becoming specialised in one or two areas alone than a software engineer, simply for the fact that if I did not constantly have to become specialised in a new area, usually for every contract), then I would not be able to pay the bills. So I imagine that is what he/she meant.
As an "offshore developer", I have worked on multiple US projects with low quality code written by US developers. Should I assume that American code is usually low quality?
Not at all denying the existence of low quality programmers in the US, but generally it seems like there is a focus on quality that does not exist for the majority of offshore developers, just about churning out code as fast as possible.
this is not true. perhaps just bad luck. i've worked with developers in other countries that are at least as good as any american developers i've worked with.
Being contractor in Germany one still pays the social contributions the same as a person on employment contract, it's hardly the lightweight variant. Contractor in large business in Germany is at the complete end of the development chain (hourly rates 30-80 EUR/h). Have some super old system in obscure technology/stack? Outsource it to PL/CZ/RO/UK. The super high earning rockstar contractors are some unicorns I'm yet…
Independent IT contractors in Germany don't have to put any money in a retirement fund, but hopefully they do, plus they pay 100% of their own health insurance, IT equipment (sometimes), insurance for their business (occasionally required)... A contractor making 10,000 a month is not comparable to an employee making 120,000 a year, probably closer to 90,000? I didn't mean to imply that it's a lightweight model, it ju…
> Thankfully 80 EUR/h is not the upper limit if you can cut out the middleman.
Yup, I know some guys contracting in Germany at 100 EUR/h. I myself received an offer (not in Germany, but in neighbouring country) at 120 EUR/h. The EU contracting market looks pretty healthy to me.
I feel like I miss a part the meaning of "offshore" here, and I suspect it's more cultural than a linguistic problem. I mean, technically, German or Japanese developers working for US companies are "offshore" too, but I don't believe you're accusing them of "churning code without regard to code quality"? Oh, and also, both the previous paragraph and your comments in the thread are (edited:)nationalist[1]. Not that it…
It is not, shockingly, racism does need to involve race. Nor do I think my nation is the greatest, and all the others suck. So I don't think it counts as nationalism.
Yeah, sorry, I'm not actually well versed in these matters (of discrimination, never needed to be), I couldn't find the correct word.
Anyway, you do attribute certain characteristics to members of whole nations without any kind of proof (beyond what "everybody [in the field] knows"). I believe you shouldn't, and that it doesn't matter if the characteristics are positive or negative.
In reality, there are both good and bad programmers everywhere. That you ended up working with the bad - or maybe ill-incentivized due to some circumstances - programmers from here or there does not mean that there are no good programmers there or businesses that care for quality. It just means you didn't meet them.
If you want to know just how hard programming is, try teaching it to someone. Programmers have to remember a vast amount of domain knowledge. Consider the basic task of choosing where you are going to store some data, well first you need to know which options exist and there's dozens of them (do you want Postgres, SQLite, Redis, LevelDB, ..?). Then you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. And I hope you…
Programmers have to remember a vast amount of domain knowledge. It's even more elementary than that, I think. I've encountered lots of intelligent people who lack any sort of diagnostics skills - absolutely essential for being a programmer. Things like.. the landline is broken. Well, then, get another phone, plug it in and see if it works. If it does, then it's the phone we need to look at, if it doesn't, we need to…
This is so true. In my job, it's the problem solving ability that is valued. Not the innate knowledge of tools etc that we use to solve the problems, however that is, off course, required also.
Being poor and white is still an advantage over poor and Latino/Black. Look at conviction rates at criminal trials for example. Now, it's not the kind of advantage that feels meaningful, but it really adds up over a lifetime. Even +/- 1% sales can make or break a small business for example.
> Being poor and white is still an advantage over poor and Latino/Black. Look at conviction rates at criminal trials for example. Are there stats for convictions of poor white people vs poor black latino/black, or just all white vs all latino/black? I don't think the latter stats would be particularly helpful here.
> Programmers have to remember a vast amount of domain knowledge. Consider the basic task of choosing where you are going to store some data, well first you need to know which options exist and there's dozens of them (do you want Postgres, SQLite, Redis, LevelDB, ..?). Then you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. And I hope you have been keeping your knowledge up-to-date because the answer in 2018 is v…
> Compare to mechanical engineering, where if you use the wrong steel your bridge will fall down; or to medicine, where if you prescribe the wrong drug someone might just die. Dereference the wrong pointer and the rocket blows up. Forget a memory barrier and the robot brain gets corrupted memory and sees human life as an impediment to paper clip maximization. Forget to zero out some memory in a goto: cleanup section…
For software developers (and in fact, for the general public), the smart play is to rely on real engineers to provide mechanical, electric, or electronic failsafes in their designs.
Perhaps he means in relation to other careers? As someone who is both a software developer and a farmer, software isn't exactly easy, but in comparison to the knowledge and skill required to farm successfully, it is a breeze.
This is quite interesting - I'm actually quite curious about what makes farming more intellectually challenging and difficult than programming, especially from somebody who does both. (Honest curiosity!)
I would imagine it's the constant problem-solving with real-world, "dirty" problems. You can't take the fact that your crops are failing through a debugger and reason about it line-by-line. You can't quickly run another simulation. You can't insert a single solution at one point and know that it won't affect the rest of the application.
Your answers are always based on fuzzy data, experience, and intuition. Your solutions will always affect the local ecosystem of the crops, and cause hard-to-predict chain reactions.
Being poor and white is still an advantage over poor and Latino/Black. Look at conviction rates at criminal trials for example. Now, it's not the kind of advantage that feels meaningful, but it really adds up over a lifetime. Even +/- 1% sales can make or break a small business for example.
> Being poor and white is still an advantage over poor and Latino/Black. Look at conviction rates at criminal trials for example. No argument, but is that really justification for wealthy urban whites to go around shouting about "white privilege" to poor rural whites? I mean, if you feel that way, continue, but I can guarantee you it won't be a net positive for our country, black or white.
A poor white man is less likely to be convicted than a rich black man. So, the racial devise is larger than the economic one.
I don't think the term white privilege is great, but it is a massive injustice that's IMO worth talking about.