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Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#431

Post by Nevermark »

__dave__ wrote: post #315
908B64B197 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great outsourcing panic of the late 90's and early 00's was pretty great at weeding out those who didn't care one bit about code. Anecdotally, but a new grad was telling me a number of his peers in college had the explicit goal of not coding two years out of a CS degree. Most of them were eying PM positions or "Tech Evangelist" roles.

I saw this exact same thing when studying CS in the early 2000s. A bunch of people said they only wanted to write code for a couple of years then get an MBA and become managers. Sounded crazy to me!

I remember in a third year OS class overhearing a huddle where the consensus was that computer science was a great major, but programming sucked.

I was too traumatized to really process that for years ... lol.

It is very helpful to my recovery to hear of other somewhat similar(?) experiences!

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#433

Post by birdyrooster »

matsemann wrote: post #160
torben-friis wrote: post #25

I am the exact opposite. I mean, I don’t like processes and meetings, but I do like the planning and architecture part much more than I like actually writing code. Usually, if your mind is decently organized, I find that the problem is solved before writing a single line of code. If that happens, then the actual part of writing becomes dull and mechanical - the problem has already been solved. I’ve never understood p…

Hmm, I often feel lots of important details or edge cases are only discovered when you start programming. It's a reason waterfall was abandoned. Planning, prototyping and then making a more informed decision is my goto approach, instead of planning forever. Actually, I often feel the architects that think they've "fully solved the problem" are full of themselves, and just not smart enough to realize all the things th…

I dont know about you but virtually every team still uses waterfall at some scale

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#434

Post by lo_zamoyski »

massinstall wrote: post #58
kraig911 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000x times this. It's a weird thing our profession. There's a horrible but apt (misogynistic even) saying. Happily married men are happy husbands - Unhappily married men are great philosophers. I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that…

Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why is it horrible? It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way. It would be curious to examine in a psychological study…

It is currently culturally fashionable to construe things in this manner, so unsurprising. It is humorless and lacks common sense. Reasonably intelligent people understand context. They do not flatten all of reality and reduce everything to their favorite pet paradigm, projecting uncharitably all sorts of weird baggage onto the most innocuous of statements.

So now you can't make a quip about wives unless you also make a quip about husbands (or else generalize it to "persons") though even these are now too restrictive for some. Heaven help you if you dare observe that there are differences between men and women, complementary differences no less, that lead to humorous tensions between them and peculiarities particular to each that surface within their shared lives.

Shall we raise a toast to ourselves, savaged men (and women!)? Humor is dead. And we have killed it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#435

Post by notnaut »

mulmen wrote: post #363
davidw wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real "unicorns" are * Small/medium size companies where you recognize most everyone even if you don't work with them. There are enough people so you don't have to do things you're not qualified for like in the very early days of a startup. * Steady growth, but not crazy, venture fueled moonshots. * Selling something that earns enough money to grow the business in a fairly organic way. I worked in a place…

I worked in a place like that and it was awesome. Unfortunately we were so good at what we did across the board that we got bought by another company to integrate into their larger offering. It made a lot of sense from a business perspective but the tech team in our office was made redundant and so my time there came to an end. I think this is the inevitable conclusion to good, small companies. Since it actually work…

Did you at least reap some of the buyout benefits?

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#436

Post by cat_plus_plus »

The purpose of commercial employment is to do something useful for others, not personal enjoyment and self fulfillment. Obviously, enjoyment and self fulfillment can be coincidentally found at work, and there is nothing wrong with considering that as a factor in addition to compensation. But if you really want to 100% enjoy hacking, set time aside for a hobby. Retro programming like MS-DOS is one example where you will never be tempted to compromise fun for other considerations, since there is no practical or even charity market for end results. Plus, inherent platform limitations severely restrict bigger picture software engineering.

Put it another way, say you found a hacking-only job. Would you enjoy commute, having to show up on time when tired, layoff worries, reprimands from manager, inevitable coworkers with personality issues? The only way is to code without commitments to others.

Ironically, once you got your hacking fix in, you might reach a point where you run into limitations of coding without plan and structure and start appreciating early design reviews to avoid wasted work / code reviews to avoid get bogged down by a week of debugging that could have been an hour of hardening.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#438

Post by fijiaarone »

ajmurmann wrote: post #392
madeofpalk wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productive teams understand that any "way of working" is just a means to an end, and that good teams find a way to work that suits them (and their situation).

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" as the Agile Manifesto would call it. Quite different from having a certified scrum master

Certified Scrum Masters are individuals who need jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#439

Post by emadabdulrahim »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #434
massinstall wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why is it horrible? It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way. It would be curious to examine in a psychological study…

It is currently culturally fashionable to construe things in this manner, so unsurprising. It is humorless and lacks common sense. Reasonably intelligent people understand context. They do not flatten all of reality and reduce everything to their favorite pet paradigm, projecting uncharitably all sorts of weird baggage onto the most innocuous of statements. So now you can't make a quip about wives unless you also mak…

Common sense is dead. Certain groups of people lack self and/or social awareness to notice that they've replaced religion with ideology. For example, we criticize religion for shaming many parts of our sexuality "Welcome to church, you're a sexual being and you should be ashamed". Now that's been replaced with "You're a man, you should feel guilty because you're from the oppressor group." etc.

Welcome to Western society, you're privileged and you should be guilty and ashamed.

How did we get here?

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#440

Post by fijiaarone »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #242
mpweiher wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> agile has killed the happiness...meetings...rituals...meta-work...not actual productivity. All of that isn't actual agile. It's Fauxgile and has nothing to do with what agile is about, which is about removing impediments to productivity, removing meetings (why were there standups? Because they shouldn't exist in the first place, and if you absolutely positively can't avoid them then at least make them as short as p…

I've read the original manifesto and principles, and quite frankly I'm not that impressed with them either. Some of the principles are actively harmful, like welcoming changing requirements late in the process.

Better to death march irrelevant requirements to bankruptcy than adapt to reality?
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