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How to be a sane programmer

nicholascloud.com

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Re: How to be a sane programmer

#51

Post by humanrebar »

yangez wrote: post #43

> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools. Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment. Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets. And show me a music prodigy who ha…

I agree.

However, most guitarists get paid to provide pleasant background music at weddings. Making money writing and playing Purple Haze is a (boom-and-bust, drug-induced) outlier. Master artists aren't employees of Paint-o-Corp who get paid salary in exchange for the rights to their creative output (even if it's side-projects).

If we want a sustainable population of healthy, balanced engineers, we need to adjust our expectations for the typical coder.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#52

Post by pandler »

yangez wrote: post #43

> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools. Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment. Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets. And show me a music prodigy who ha…

Roald Dahl is a great example of a prolific author who would write perhaps 4 hours a day and would spend the rest of his time drinking, relaxing, and tending to his farm. As far as I know, a casual pace like that is pretty common among writers - though maybe not to that extreme.

Slogging through 15 years of practice every day is a technical endeavor. If you need to learn how to do something or to master a technical skill, then yes, volume of work will get you there. Code is a tool that is used to create, and I think the quote you selected just serves to underline the difference between learning how to be an effective engineer vs learning how to become an effective technician.

Edit: constant practice is definitely important, but relentlessly working is not.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#53

Post by edgarallenbro »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #8
Duhck wrote: post #2

Heres the problem I have with this entire discussion -- and this post does address it a bit -- but programming IS a creative role and needs to be treated as such. Many organizations hire programmers as technical roles, but they are generally creatives. A lot of them are night owls, who ebb and flow between long productive stints and proverbial 'writers block'. Many of the best developers I know have a creative desire…

This will never, ever, ever happen. There is too much money, for both sides, in pretending this isn't true. The business side has been entrusted with a lot of money, its own or someone else's. Success has already been achieved . As such, it approaches things from a mindset of risk reduction. And the absolute worst thing possible, from a risk-reduction standpoint, is creative work. It's unpredictable, you don't know w…

As a dev who also sings for a cover band, this post so completely describes my life its scary.

But, I have a bit of a different philosophy.

I think that if you really love something, you'll not only do it for free, but pay to be able to do it.

There are some people who love coding so much that you can't get them to stop. I am not one of those people. I love it enough that I can stand being at my job for 40 hours a week, and I enjoy the time I spend there.

What I really love is Rock & Roll. When I was in high school, I footed the bill for all the tickets my band couldn't sell just for the chance to play on the same stage in Hollywood that a bunch of my idols had played on.

Now I play in a band that plays 90's prog metal covers, something that someone from an 80s/90s pop cover band said no one would ever care about and that we could never get paid for.

He was wrong. People actually love us because instead of just settling for doing what paid, we did what we love, and it just so happens that there was a need for what we love. We're doing our first paid gig in a few weeks.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#54

Post by noname123 »

yangez wrote: post #43

> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools. Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment. Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets. And show me a music prodigy who ha…

Consistency my friend. Murakami's routine which involves him running for the first half to the day, then write and then chill with sexy-time Jazz music at time at night and turning in,

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/2007/07/haru...

I could give you more examples of writers, Joyce Carol Oates , Michael Crichton but same thing basically. Also note that Murakami didn't start writing until 29 and loafed around at the public library chill in' and reading' and at Japanese jazz cafes. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a prodigy and workaholic at 27 for starting so early.

Also in regards to music, others can comment as I'm not an expert. But I've wasted 2 years of my life doodling around scales, ear training and music theory focusing on speed, dexterity and memorization, attempting to learn how to improvise like the greats. That I never taken the time to listen to the groove of the great pieces, sounds wonky but I decided that if I never can become a good musician, at least I could slow down and learn to enjoy the music as opposed to the idea. And I enjoy listening and playing much more now and don't give two-shits about how my solo's sound and just keep playing. And in the small moments of self-delusion inspired by bluesy turns, my own playing gives my deluded mind a self-congratulatory chill to the spine.

And in regards to programming, let's be real. CRUD or iOS apps are not going to change the world. We are like the capitalist work-bees, shoveling digital snow around like escorts shoveling sensual snow. If we are really secure enough to want to dive into our craft, then learn Linux kernel, compilers, advanced algorithms and contribute to the bottom of the stack for a change instead of fluffing snow at the top.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#55

Post by zemvpferreira »

yangez wrote: post #43

> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools. Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment. Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets. And show me a music prodigy who ha…

I don't think programming is that much like painting (more than any other craft), but I do think deliberate practice is at the heart of mastering any craft.

More than putting in a huge volume of work, you have to work hard and deliberately at improving every day. That doesn't take (and can't be sustained) for more than a few hours a day, and all other activity is nowhere near as important for development.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#56

Post by marcosdumay »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #8
Duhck wrote: post #2

Heres the problem I have with this entire discussion -- and this post does address it a bit -- but programming IS a creative role and needs to be treated as such. Many organizations hire programmers as technical roles, but they are generally creatives. A lot of them are night owls, who ebb and flow between long productive stints and proverbial 'writers block'. Many of the best developers I know have a creative desire…

This will never, ever, ever happen. There is too much money, for both sides, in pretending this isn't true. The business side has been entrusted with a lot of money, its own or someone else's. Success has already been achieved . As such, it approaches things from a mindset of risk reduction. And the absolute worst thing possible, from a risk-reduction standpoint, is creative work. It's unpredictable, you don't know w…

Well, what you are stating does reflect reality, and that sucks. Pretending otherwise does not make software development predictable, does not make developers' ego disappear, and does not make management capable of understanding what's going on.

But pretend we do. And when everything goes contrary to the expected we make sure that blame is equally distributed so that no party has a right to complain.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#57

Post by Duhck »

netfire wrote: post #25
buckbova wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of programming is analyzing a problem domain and applying the right design pattern. It is not creative. The longer I am at it, well over a decade now, the more this applies.

What do you define as creativity then? You could say that the majority of writing is composing sentences with nouns and verbs if you look at it from such a low level. (or that artists are just applying specialized techniques to add to or subtract from a medium). I suppose that you could leave the creativity in engineering to other people (designers, product managers, etc), but my experience has been that you end up a…

So this is what I was getting at precisely. As buckbova said, programming is problem solving, and solving problems is a creative process.

If you treat developers as creatives (like you do design, etc) you get a superior product and work environment, and you involve more people in the product brain trust.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#58

Post by auvrw »

yangez wrote: post #43

> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools. Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment. Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets. And show me a music prodigy who ha…

you omitted a pretty key clause with those ellipses. in its entirety, the quote from the article is clearly targeted at api churn and similar things thrashing everyone's personal caches, not practicing programming in general.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#59

Post by auvrw »

AznHisoka wrote: post #14
tedkalaw wrote: post #5

I still find the pressure to work on side projects in your free time difficult to come to terms with. There's often discussion about how if you don't like what you're doing, then you should find a new job - and easily, if you're in the bay area. I know a lot of really talented devs that don't work on side projects because they are completely consumed by, and love, their work and can't imagine doing anything else. Wha…

Personally I find it insane to go home and work on a side project after work, if it's not something you hope to make money from.

most of my side projects are for personal use with the goal of reducing the total amount of my life i spend sedentary at a screen. if time is money, then i guess that's something i hope to make money from, but... well, i guess there are just lots of different perspectives on at least a few different topics here.

Re: How to be a sane programmer

#60

Post by pekk »

badman_ting wrote: post #42
AznHisoka wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I find it insane to go home and work on a side project after work, if it's not something you hope to make money from.

Thank you for saying that, seriously.

It's not insane to do something you want to do.
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