51–60 of 82 posts
Truly raising the standard of the development profession doesn't mean keeping out people who are less skilled, passionate or competent. There's a lot of room at all levels. What's most critical is that the people who form teams of developers, coordinate their work, judge their value and reward them are good at what they do.
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> I need to be always learning, even on my spare time! You should always be learning even in your spare time. Maybe not always about programming but about something. If you don't then you've relegated yourself to walking around like a robot repeating the same things you do every day not ever thinking about your actions. Right now I have a huge facination with machining/metal working. I can't own any gear for doing su…
I meant coming home from your job and continuing to work on your job in some form or something that directly relates to your job. Because that strikes me as indicative of deeper issues. Does your job not give you enough time to finish projects? Does your job not give you enough time to stay up to date in your field? Do you constantly feel like an impostor? I have no quarrels with someone having side projects. But tho…
You are confusing 3 completely different issues and not accounting the enjoyment of learning new things.
Articles like this seem to be promoting the Cognitive dissonance that most developers hold. Namely: 1. I need to be always learning about programming, even on my spare time! 2. Work/life balance is important. "Imagine a doctor who doesn’t actually like helping people with their health problems. Or an automotive engineer who actually thinks cars are stupid and boring." Lots of doctors and automotive engineers just do…
And perhaps they chose the wrong profession. Perhaps they come home and think to themselves "gee, I wonder how my life would have been if I chose art school like I wished instead of engineering like my parents encouraged me.". Ideally people should work on jobs they (at least tangentially) enjoy.
> But what even is passion?
Enjoying what you do. A constant eagerness to experiment, learn, and build something. Passionate people will always be ahead of their peers. Because learning or practicing that activity makes them happy they are more inclined to spend their time honing their skills. And they spend their time practicing that activity not because of some "existential dread related to one's job or position", but precisely the opposite: they enjoy doing it.
I believe encouraging people to pursue carriers in domains they enjoy is a general good advice. The article touches on programming specifically because there is a current trend / hype to push people toward programming.
I drifted to a career in programming because I loved it. I used to do a lot of hacks and side-projects, but once in working life, I came to realize just how much legacy code bases I'm going to deal with. Nobody in general likes rewriting or fixing legacy code, but unlike others, I felt unable to enjoy the feeling of getting the legacy work done. As I worked more with legacy code, paying off the technical debt of othe…
If you don't mind me asking, what did you do after you had your realization? Become a project manager or something?
Would I go back to be employed, I'd go after a product role.
The discourse on "passion" in the context of CS has gradually been poisoned by commercial interests. It started as a way of describing great programmers. Those who are at the top of the field probably are very passionate about it. Once "the best programmers are passionate" became established as a common meme, it was co-opted as a hiring signal since everyone only wants to hire the best. In response, all job-seekers a…
I agree with you. My point was mostly that people should pursue fields that better fit with their own interests and enthusiasms, and that programming as a career is not a bed of roses and if you're going to go into it without passion you're gonna have a bad time.
Very few people are lucky enough to have their passions overlap with a career that's marketable.
What if your passion is woodworking? Making beautiful, detailed cabinets that sell for $16,000+ may sound profitable, but I took a class from a woodworker who did exactly that, and he said that the net pay after materials costs (which were less than $1000) came to about $7/hour. Passionate? Insanely so. Probably one of the best woodworkers on the planet; certainly top 100. Only reason he could afford to be a woodworker is that he was on disability and owned his home outright.
I know some passionate knitters. They would probably make about $3/hour, if they're lucky, selling their wares.
Renovating old cars? Maybe $8/hour.
Cooking? Opening a restaurant is a huge capital outlay, and 90% fail in the first year. Working at a restaurant can maybe get you $16/hour. At least we've gotten past starvation wages here.
Singing or other musical interests? Only the very top make a solid career out of it.
Many, many domains that people tend to be passionate about have a power-law distribution of money making. A few knitters make decent money by selling knitting books or videos; the rest do it just because they like it. The top musical stars make tons of money, and second tier stars can make a living, but you need the talent and luck to make it to the top.
A rather mediocre programmer with a couple of resume items courtesy FreeCodeCamp can make $25-40/hour, and then pursue their passion in their spare time. Top programmers make more, but for many people $40/hour is outside of their earning potential in any other field they're qualified for. For some people $25/hour is a serious pay raise at this point. So I totally wouldn't discourage them.
Of course, this is very different than companies trying to get more people into programming so they can have a cheaper workforce.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant coming home from your job and continuing to work on your job in some form or something that directly relates to your job. Because that strikes me as indicative of deeper issues. Does your job not give you enough time to finish projects? Does your job not give you enough time to stay up to date in your field? Do you constantly feel like an impostor? I have no quarrels with someone having side projects. But tho…
> ...indicative of deeper issues. Does your job not give you enough time to finish projects? Does your job not give you enough time to stay up to date in your field? Do you constantly feel like an impostor? You are confusing 3 completely different issues and not accounting the enjoyment of learning new things.
This is exactly what I believe passion is. Passion isn't something that's 'vague' or that you have to search for. It's the simple joy of doing some activity or learning something related to that activity. No joy, no passion.
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/programming-is-the-new-blue-co... A lot of coding is just a boring job that has to be done. I never met anyone who is passionate about writing tests etc. but everyone knows that it has to be done
I think the author greatly underestimates software complexity and future development in complexity. IT is not a narrowing field, where any task soon can be solved by slinging some javascript. I agree, that some tasks are simpler than others and don't require a full computer science degree, however software development still does require that you know wth you are doing. I do not want my bank software written by a guy who just finished a 6-month javascript course.
Everyone who works on Scrivener, Reaper, the countless VSTs I use, Firefox, Windows, Android, Linux, all the backend and frontend technologies of the web, and all the hardware and software that makes it all work together are my heroes. They do the stuff that makes my eyes gloss over so I can crack jokes on Twitter, make music, and write.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the alternative is that you narrow your knowladge to a small problem domain which sounds horrible for 1) your own mind, 2) your ability to talk to people who work outside of your problem domain, and 3) your ability to think outside of the "box" that is held by your field.
How is the alternative to always learning narrowing your knowledge to a small problem domain? It's not. The alternative is... taking a rest every once in a while.
Also there is no reason why you can't rest. We dedicate ~8hr/day of our lives to resting. We also get full days on weekends. We also get about 7-12hr/day for doing whatever we want while awake.
In those 7-12hr you can sit and stare into the idiot box and laugh when the talking heads tell you to laugh or you can read a book, go out side, think about "how would I make X", prototype some code for doing something, talk to some people who are professionals in a craft and ask "how do you build X".
I think one is way more fun then the other.
Now don't get me wrong, I watch a lot of TV but most of the TV I watch is "What If". I like science fiction stuff and a lot of it is some social commentary put into a setting that makes it ok to talk about or even asking moral questions that are different all together. Thinking about those dilemas falls under the classification of "learning". This isn't technical knowladge but instead social.