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Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

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Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#511

Post by psunavy03 »

netbioserror wrote: post #490
sukruh wrote: post #35

Most 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 very lucky. I work on a very small software team, with a very flat structure, where my boss, with a very high level of trust, tasked me with replacing several very old parts of the product stack using my best judgment and choice of languages/tools. He also appreciated that during the interview, I mentioned that my work must be oriented towards customer value; that is the ultimate goal of any of our work. I am oft…

> However, I am also protected by a hard communications firewall from direct contact with those customers, as well as the much larger field tech and sales side of the company.

One of the worst faceplants I've seen in my current role was when my team was developing a solution to integrate some third-party data. Our PO reported to a Product Manager who was tapped as the "I talk to the end users" person and he completely fucked it up. The team was siloed off to do this for multiple quarters, and at the rollout we literally got laughed at and told "we can't use this." But God forbid my team actually, you know, TALK and DEMO to the end users once an iteration like you're supposed to in Scrum, as opposed to plugging in some drone from corporate who it turns out doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#512

Post by psunavy03 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #491
netbioserror wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very lucky. I work on a very small software team, with a very flat structure, where my boss, with a very high level of trust, tasked me with replacing several very old parts of the product stack using my best judgment and choice of languages/tools. He also appreciated that during the interview, I mentioned that my work must be oriented towards customer value; that is the ultimate goal of any of our work. I am oft…

> Software is so thoroughly corrupted by the low-trust managerial paradigm They were certainly very good at coopting the agile „movement“ in this manner.

It didn't help having Jeff Sutherland blathering on about "twice the work in half the time."

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#513

Post by psunavy03 »

gknoy wrote: post #366
probably_wrong wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How you choose to add whitespace to your code is not a meaningful outlet for creativity. I'd like to mildly disagree. Using whitespace to group functionality together in "paragraphs" and aligning the horizontal indentation in the clearest possible way is not too far away from editing a short story to make it flow better. Earlier today my linter rearranged multiple "key: value" one-liners into two-liners and the end…

I normally just auto-apply `black` to my code, but occasionally I feel the need to have things arranged in a way that is easier to read -- e.g. a list of several dictionaries. In that case, I just put a comment telling it to stop reformatting at the start of the block, and another at the end.

Aside from edge cases, Black is life. Saves brain cells for the important stuff.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#514

Post by kagakuninja »

psunavy03 wrote: post #374
eddd-ddde wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the tyranny of linters This is a take I don't think I've seen before. Is someone actually mad prettier is changing their single quotes to double quotes? Are they mad some line is breaking at some word? Certainly I've never been. I use linters / formatters even when I'm working solo because the mere concept of having to think where to break lines is meaningless disruption from the actual goals I have. If you _really…

Seriously. Python Black is a godsend. I don't have to waste brain cells on formatting minutiae, just right-click and go "format my code, please." It's consistent, it works, and IDGAF about the details. The only formatting that drives me up the wall is people using K&R braces in C# or Java. It's not 1970 anymore, and we're not all typing on green-screen terminals. It's like people fetishizing vim or emacs over modern…

You know what annoyed me as a C/C++ programmer? People using Microsoft style braces... But OK, if you are using Microsoft-Java, then Microsoft rules apply.

AFAIK there is no rule in K&R requiring no braces for single-line blocks. In that situation, braces are optional.

The K&R style was hugely influential on Java and many other languages, it has nothing to do with green-screen terminals (I used those, as well as white and amber), it is just a style. I also moved on from vi, and use IntelliJ and Sublime most of the time.

The only difference between K&R braces and Java braces is that they combine lines on if-else. The Java guys did it because it enabled them to fit more code on to overhead slides. Overhead slide projectors predate green-screen terminals BTW...

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#516

Post by netbioserror »

psunavy03 wrote: post #511
netbioserror wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very lucky. I work on a very small software team, with a very flat structure, where my boss, with a very high level of trust, tasked me with replacing several very old parts of the product stack using my best judgment and choice of languages/tools. He also appreciated that during the interview, I mentioned that my work must be oriented towards customer value; that is the ultimate goal of any of our work. I am oft…

> However, I am also protected by a hard communications firewall from direct contact with those customers, as well as the much larger field tech and sales side of the company. One of the worst faceplants I've seen in my current role was when my team was developing a solution to integrate some third-party data. Our PO reported to a Product Manager who was tapped as the "I talk to the end users" person and he completel…

We have a liaison in a similar manner, but she manages a Jira ticketing system by which we require our sales people and field techs to fully communicate issues and feature demands. The company used to give out programmer phone numbers and emails. Projects used to get completely side-tracked by programmers chasing trivial features or even entire alternative tools and getting sidetracked long-term from the primary projects. It cost the company their leadership position and a significant amount of programmer turnover. It's still an ongoing issue that our field techs and sales folks simply do not understand the field well enough to know what they're asking for.

The ticketing firewall has been a net boon and we've been able to overhaul a number of ailing backend systems, while adding features that were in demand for going on two decades. Turns out, most of the features being requested were easy to implement given the right choice of languages and architecture. We went from constant fires to downright quiet in our office. Most of the ongoing project work is aspirational and would vault us back to industry leadership, instead of the constant remedial work that was bogging us down.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#517

Post by bitwize »

jq-r wrote: post #392
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to seize on one phrase: people, including many software engineers themselves, view software engineers as natural resources I’ve said this a million times on this forum.. the little trick whereby people who were once employees became merely _human resources_ has done more to damage work-life in this world than anything else I can think of. Its natural to exploit resources to their fullest. Labeling humans as…

I've lost my cool one time when a very young "manager" asked: "Do we have a backend resource on this call?" It really got my blood boiling and I've said something very similar to: "No we don't have a resource on the call, we have engineers, colleagues, employees, humans and friends on this call. Resources are air, water, memory, cpu and time, please don't call people like that". This followed by silence, and a lot of…

I had the unfortunate privilege of meeting two of the first "techbros". They were marketers more than tech people, but they were tech-adjacent and that was enough to make them cutting edge.

The thing they kept saying was "We'll run it through the machine." Meaning "We'll hand that off to our software team and have them complete it." Of course today, the one who stayed in tech might be salivating about running software requirements through an actual machine to produce code.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#518

Post by xvilka »

bdw5204 wrote: post #158
vincnetas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know, at the end there should be someone who is cleaning the toilets and taking out garbage. You eating the cake and having it is a bit selfish.

Why can't we just automate the terrible jobs out of existence? There's no good reason why we can't have a machine that cleans the toilet or takes your trash out to the street. Plus a self-driving machine that picks up your trash.

Because it's immensely hard. Moreso to do it cost-efficiently. Check the Moravec paradox[1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#519

Post by Der_Einzige »

jimbokun wrote: post #256
ravenstine wrote: post #52

Earlier 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…

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…

The entire field of ASCII art indicates that your first sentence is dead wrong.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#520

Post by irrational »

htrp wrote: post #412
irrational wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the big companies because I can be paid a hefty six figure salary while working 4 hour days and spending the rest of the hours doing woodworking, gardening, home remodeling, baking, exercising, reading, etc.

Do you count the meetings as work?

Yes. I have one 10-15 minute standup a day and one 15 minute one on one with my boss a week. Other than those I almost never have any meetings.
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