Not possible on H1B - moving right along...
Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
471–480 of 545 posts
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would say 99.999% of all modern work is "surrogate activity" (an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward.) That's one of the most absurd hyperboles (or the most detached-from-realiy statements) I have ever seen. That would mean only one out of 100,000 people is doing "real" work. Or if you spread it evenly, less than on…
You're probably right, it was a made up number to make a point. The point being that if you are not growing your own food (or hunting it) you're probably engaged in "surrogate activity" for a living and not directly satisfying your physical needs. Would you say more than 1/100,000 people in today's world grow and or hunt for their food daily?
That's an absurd definition. It also fits the kind typical HN/high-tech mold of underappreciating most people and professions.
What makes you think think that your definition of "surrogate activity" is an interesting distinction? That only "growing your own food" is going to make people fulfilled, biologically? Is there any evidence of this? That hunter gatherers, or that farmers in history, were somehow happier?
As far as I can tell, most people throughout history worked really hard, but tried as much as they can to do anything but what they had to do to survive. Every single human culture has music, art, science, etc.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#473Most 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…
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…
> a reprieve from the tyranny of linters
Consistency is dramatically overrated. We all read through comment threads on HN where each is written in it's own style and nobody has a problem understanding it. I read through open source repos all the time, which all have their own styles and which are often not self-consistent; my comprehension is not impaired. I have worked with teams that enforce linting with a religious fervor and teams where anything goes. The anything goes team is probably more productive and with a comparable rate of bugs (but I don't have the metrics to prove it). Personally, I don't feel like my comprehension is better or worse in one setting or the other.
The difference I do notice is that when there are no linters, nobody wastes time trying to figure out how to work around it for a few lines. A great example is Eigen matrix initialization through the stream operator overload [1]. You really want to manually format that so each row is on it's own line. If you use clang-format in such code, it will be littered with
MatrixXf mat(2, 2);
// clang-format off
mat [1] https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/group__TutorialAdvancedIniti...
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#474Earlier 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…
Yep. Imagine being a woodworker on a massive project like a large sailing vessel or Japanese castle. Suddenly coordination and collaboration requirements go right back up. Now you can't just wing your project. You've got to make sure the part your building matches the agreed upon spec and hope the teams you're "integrating" with have also followed the spec. When one of those teams gets "creative" suddenly things aren…
This happens literally every single day in residential construction. Aside from the building code, there isn't typically a "spec" for construction. The plan doesn't specify "this wall shall be plumb to within +/- 0.001 radians". Somehow, cabinets still get hung even though the framer framed a crooked wall on top of a crooked stem wall all because foundation guy was hungover that day.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#475Earlier 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 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…
Note really. A table saw is incredibly versatile tool. Yes, it has a bog standard purpose of ripping stock to width, but there are scores of uses beyond that. E.g., removing the fence and freehanding a 20 foot piece of baseboard through it to cut a scribe. There are plenty of professionals who do that. Source: I used to be one.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#476Earlier 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…
This has never been a problem for me. Coding guidelines, clang-format and precommit scripts can do this automatically. Also a senior should reject or revert the work of the diva. You shouldn't accept this at all.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#477Most 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…
> Most big companies are not good if you want to solve problems and build stuff
My experience is the opposite: you can usually chill at big companies, while startups need money fast and attracts the worst managers. I know it's not the same experience for everyone, but I'll never work for a startup ever again.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an odd thing - at all the big companies I've worked for, you can usually get all your work for the day done in 4 hours. Between meetings and status waste, that's all anybody expects from you.
What you personally do is only part of your job. Communicating with others is probably at least the other 50%. Even if your an individual consultant your clients will expect you to communicate with them.
Do meetings typically involve communication? I'm not familiar with practices in various companies.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#479I did this, and thought I was alone. Around this time last year, picked up woodworking and jumped in the deep end. Metabo saws and nailes, building mini A-frames for my pet rabbit, shelves, shoecase, you name it. It's gratifying and provides a sense of control and completion - which sometimes doesn't happen in the real world.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#480Most 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…
I'm one of those creative types. I have woodworking shop, I'm a musician, my wife and I are part-time performing magicians. I've only ever worked for small start-ups. Including my own which paid the bills for 15 years. Working for start-ups does not solve the problem for me. The problem for me is that I need to give a shit about WHAT I'm creating. And I find that after 25 years of working in the tech industry profess…
Amen. On the same bandwidth here. No social media. I don’t read the news. We don’t have a TV. I yearn for old tech. New tech has no character or charm. AI is the worst thing to happen to the industry. Literally just makes our working conditions worse