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We will never have enough software developers (2020)

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461–470 of 553 posts

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#461

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

> the poor students think about languages and libraries as key skills

well so do the recruiters, they’ll be fine

in fact, the better students are the ones wasting their time unless they prefer to be in academia, like you

so what metric are you really gauging for?

the “poor students” are pivoting for money and the name of the university to boost their employment prospects, maybe this shows in their academic performance and ability to understand, I saw the same in undergrad

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#462
An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either.

The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite unlikely to work on something truly creative or thrilling, so it's mostly a boring grind.

Then, as the article mentions, it turns out the grind was for nothing and the rug is pulled every few years and you have to start over again. The job is cognitively taxing so you'll turn into an absent person that lives in their heads, it drains your life energy.

If I would be young now, I'd say fuck it and go install solar panels or heat pumps. It's outside, physical but not too physical, thus healthy. You get to meet lots of people and you see the direct result of your work. There's no office politics and you're contributing to a tangible good thing for the world. Skill requirements don't change much.

You might come home somewhat physically tired (but over time it normalizes), with a clear head and not a care in the world. There's no overflow between work and personal life.

Chose wisely, young ones.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#463
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People always believed in crazy anti-Jewish propaganda since, at least, the first crusade. Absolutely they did. However, even at that time, it seems (if wikipedia is to be trusted) that the Jew's roles as bankers was part of the reason for the massacres: "Many crusaders had to go into debt in order to purchase weaponry and equipment for the expedition; as Western Catholicism strictly forbade usury, many crusaders i…

I am going to say that you sound a bit confused. > But as we consider the inflation we are seeing today, try to imagine how it would be if the inflation is not 5-10% but 29500% Hitler took power 10 years after the hyperinflation. People didn’t vote for the NSDAP because of hyperinflation, nor they started hating the Jews more than before because of it. > You are absolutely right that antisemmitism didn't suddenly pop…

> Hitler took power 10 years after the hyperinflation.

Hitler started planning a coup in late 1922, during the hyperinflation. It was attempted in late 1923, around the time the hyperinflation was stopped. It failed, and he ended up in prison. In 1924, during his time in prison, he wrote Mein Kampf, which lays out the plan he followed (or tried to) thereafter.

Before 1922, NSDAP (aka Nazi party) was very tiny. During the hyperinflation, it grew to 20000, mostly in Munich. Still small on a national basis, but enough to give it a solid basis as an organization.

Between 1925 and 1929, it grew slowly, but exploded after 1929, as the Great Depression hit Germany hard.

As for the role of hyperinflation in this, it is relatively well documented. Here is one quote from wikipedia:

"The Nazis' strongest appeal was to the lower middle-classes—farmers, public servants, teachers and small businessmen—who had suffered most from the inflation of the 1920s, so who feared Bolshevism more than anything else."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party

> Antisemitism was rampant everywhere in the West

At least very widespread. Still, the situation of jews in the West, including in Germany was much better at the time than it was for Blacks in the USA.

In Germany, there were many highly respected German leaders and intellectuals, such as Einstein, Freud and (less known today) Rudolf Hilferding. Hilferding is, quoting wikipedia again "almost universally recognized as the SPD's foremost theoretician of this (20th) century."

> the Germans only took it to its inevitable consequences and only after 1933.

I don't agree that it was inevitable. The Nazis were a marginal force up until 1929. By 1929, most Germans may have gotten over the terrors of 1922-23, but in 1929 the wounds were torn open, and the messages of the "little man with the funny mustache" didn't seem so crazy, after all.

It didn't help that Hilferding was Minister of Finance at the time the Depression started.

"Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that nazis were criminals, but the Shoah has much deeper roots that the hyperinflation or some temporary unemployment."

I'm not claiming that the hyperinflation was the root. I'm claiming it was one of the main sources of energy, and a great inspiration for Hitler himself, direcly before writing Mein Kampf. (Even though he was already an antisemite before 1922, I'm sure the things he saw during those two years reinforced his convitions. Hitler was known to tailor his speechest according to what ressonated with the audience.).

> You can find similar stories about all cities that had a large Jewish community.

Yes, I know. Being a minority comes with a lot of risks and problems. I fully understand why some jews prefer to have at least one state where they can be the majority. (Though it might have been better for world peace had they been given Köningsberg/East Preussia in 1945 instead of being supported in becoming the majority in Israel/Palestine).

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#464
post #462

An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either. The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite…

The jobs you mention are even more repetitive. Just like most jobs. I think this is a the grass is greener mind of thing

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#465

There is no shortage of swe. What I see and what I have experienced first hand is that companies, especially the more hyped/small ones, pretend to be FAANG and gets very picky when interviewing. They often employ FAANG style interview. Now, if I really have to spend that much time prepping to interview at your unprofitable company (that most likely will go under) don’t you think that I would try my best to work at fa…

I definitely think "we do not do leetcode interviews" and maybe "we only have three interviews total" would be selling points on a job posting. People who are experienced in the field don't want to go through the same hoops that newbies do just to prove they know how to write basic algorithms.

Three interviews is now an "only"? Man this industry is fucked.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable. I do understand the issue. Humans are prone to complain about any slight whether real or imagined. Millionaires will complain about not having enough money, A-list celebrities will complain about not having enough visibility, sports stars will complain about every foul play. Money ju…

Compensation does not reduce the type of suffering software developers typically endure (or complain about).

Office politics, skills evaporating, high work pressure, ageism, boredom, physical inactivity, an indoor life, over-consumption of information...all of these factors have their effect on one's mental state as well as body.

Pay does not fix that.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#467
post #462

An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either. The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite…

The jobs you mention are even more repetitive. Just like most jobs. I think this is a the grass is greener mind of thing

No, they're not.

You go to different places and different people, every single day. That's 100% less repetitive compared to sitting at home or going to the office to see the same people.

As for the tasks themselves, it was merely an example, but even for this example I disagree. My brother-in-law basically does all of these things, both for private citizens and industry and comes across a wide array of different situations.

I'm not saying it's absolute perfection, no job is. But I stand by my point that it has a series of very meaningful advantages: far healthier, more social, direct impact of your work, no cognitive overload, no politics.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#468

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

The article is also hitting on the fact that your skill premium as an engineer has a cap, and so does your willingness to burn the midnight oil on a project. This means that as time goes on, as an engineer you'll face the following

- A younger engineer will have the same value to your employer as you do.

- A younger engineer will work harder than you are willing to.

These two items are inevitable given the current rate of change in the industry. While some engineers will find next level differentiated work to engage in such as leading a core piece of infrastructure which defines the changing field... Many will not. If the rug gets pulled on this core piece of infrastructure.. then it's often the case that the engineers are not particularly more skilled than others on brand new projects.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#469
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you care if an applicant understand how a hash map works; and what's particular about a hash map? Because a hash map is: 1) a pretty basic concept in data structures 2) Variations on hash maps are used all the time in the real world. If you use objects in javascript, dictionaries in python, or maps in C++, then you are using things that essentially implement hash maps. Point number 1 is like if I went to an…

>Variations on hash maps are used all the time Yes, you use them. You don't build them. To torture your analogy it's like asking the surgeon to explain how their bone saw works. Why should they know? All they care is that it cuts bone.

Knowing how to build a bone saw is a completely different skill set than surgery. Building a hash table is a job for a software engineer even if not every engineer does it frequently. Still my analogy wasn’t great.

Analogies aside, hashmaps (in one implementation or another), arrays, vectors/lists, strings and arguably sets are very very common data structures in most modern languages. I don’t expect someone to be able to build a hashmap from scratch but I do expect an experienced engineer to have some basic idea of the pieces that go into building it as well as it’s properties (not necessarily ordered, O(1)ish sets/gets, collisions, etc). Knowing this kind of thing helps you understand when to use an object in JavaScript vs a map. Or how dictionaries differ between python 2 and 3. If you understand the underlying data structure, then you know what questions to ask.

* in python 2, a dictionary’s keys are not guaranteed to have consistent order. In more recent versions of python 3, they ARE guaranteed to have consistent ordering. This has ramifications for the code you write, and it’s especially confusing if you don’t understand hashmaps because 99% of the time, the order will be maintained in python 2 even though it isn’t guaranteed. But relying on things that are true most of the time is a very bad way to write production code :)

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#470
post #462

An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either. The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite…

> If I would be young now, I'd say fuck it and go install solar panels or heat pumps

Amen. For me the advice I give the young—-go for a trade. HVAC (especially if you live where it’s hot) and plumbing to me are the most future and recession proof jobs there are. Literally by the time other folks are graduating with CS degrees and massive college debt, you have been making 70k a year for 3 years and are about to clip 6 figures for the rest of the time you want to work.

One day a computer will be able to write its own code (and that’s not that far off now), but no robot or computer in this world will be able to come to your house and fix a clogged toilet, or replace a blown capacitor in your heat pump and people will always be willing to pay nearly anything to get those two problems replaced.

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