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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

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Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#541

Post by pekk »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #509
smikhanov wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, in a decade, if you'll still be in this profession, you'll remember J2EE and XML and Node and npm and pip and git and Golang and JavaScript and code polish and functions-vs-methods debate as tiny specks on what actually constitutes you career. The author of the linked article tries analyzing his entire life from a standpoint of being a programmer, and your comment analyzes last few years of your life staring…

I agree completely with you. I think the answer is you can't help some people. It's just sort of a myopic view. Could you imagine in 50 years someone asks you what regret you had about your career and you said "that I ever used node that one week in 2015"? I mean, wow.

If you spent a couple years building everything you could on top of Node and then realized you completely disagreed with some of its basic design then that would be a memorable experience.

This may be hard to understand if you are still in love with Javascript.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#542

Post by gear54rus »

bottled_poe wrote: post #540
gear54rus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of cute phrases will change the fact that it is being spread by people who actually understand its flexibility instead of focusing on something that rubs them the wrong way (which, most of the time is the result of working with other, often shiver enterprisey language(s) and thinking that that's how it's done) quite effectively and there's no sign of stopping for its growth. And that is good. With things li…

JS is popular for one reason - browser support.

There is another - unique async nature from the start. That's why it made its way into node.

It is not popular the same way PHP is popular in any capacity. It really is a unique useful efficient language.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#543

Post by driverdan »

tcfunk wrote: post #415
JimboOmega wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, isn't $80k around the point where happiness from income levels off? The advantage of big money isn't just charities and companies - it's having your time back, since you're not tied to getting an income from it.

I feel like $80k must be an outdated number. My wife and I pull in just under $100k together, and we can't even (comfortably) afford a home. Between rent, student loan payments, health insurance, bills, and car loans, and food, I think we maybe have $500 left to throw around each month. If we were paying against a mortgage, that would basically be zero.

Where do you live? If you are coming so close to what you make why do you have car loans?

Two people can easily live on $40-50k in most areas. Eliminate all the unnecessary expenses like $150+/m in phone payments, $50+/m for cable, etc.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#544

Post by ImTalking »

For me, software has been nothing more than a tool to get myself the lifestyle I want. I enjoy the creativity associated with writing solid software of course but it's not a hobby, it's certainly not a religion for me, it's a tool, nothing more. I enjoy the creativity associated with developing a solution that people use and pay me for, but at the end of the day, I am a business-guy who uses software to get what I want, unlike a lot of programmers who are techies who happen to be in business. The difference in these two attitudes are night/day.

I feel the writer is looking at his past as though he was somehow entitled to succeed since he could develop software when the industry was young, and many fortunes were made by the industry pioneers. This is a dangerous attitude as the world really doesn't care about anyone. Anyone is replaceable.

Around 1990, I started a business selling a Clipper-based (anyone remember that?) real estate program where I sold it to about 300 firms at $299 a pop. I couldn't believe the leverage and excitement of selling a product of my own mind to others. Sold yearly upgrades for $199 which worked out to around $60K annually sitting in my bedroom. Had to pinch myself. Got into telephony when the deregulation happened, created switching software for dumb switches (Dialogic, Redcom) for long distance resellers and at one time had 120 exchanges using my software to switch calls. Sold the IP for around $0.5M. 10 years later, created software for the mortgage industry and sold that company for 7 digits in 2010. Must say that I failed more times than I succeeded but that doesn't matter (for example, developing Call-Me functionality for web-sites when the industry was just too young - should have stuck with it). Last/this year, I'm working on software for the another industry which I feel is unserviced wrt software.

My reason for writing all this is that I never thought of software as a career. I saw the businesses that I could create using software as the career. I think the article writer labelled himself as a programmer early-on and never really understood what that role meant to him.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#545

Post by ribs »

bottled_poe wrote: post #540
gear54rus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of cute phrases will change the fact that it is being spread by people who actually understand its flexibility instead of focusing on something that rubs them the wrong way (which, most of the time is the result of working with other, often shiver enterprisey language(s) and thinking that that's how it's done) quite effectively and there's no sign of stopping for its growth. And that is good. With things li…

JS is popular for one reason - browser support.

Indeed. It's the best (shittiest) way to deploy code on as many people's desktops as possible.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#546

Post by programmer_man »

pier25 wrote: post #258
raducu wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the authors frustration, and it's not really about money as some here believe. In my 6 jobs as a programmer I've also seen so many incompetent managers, so much time wasted, so much bullshit, so much backstabbing and narcissists galore. But the problem is not really about THEM managers, but about ME and my maladaptive cognitive schemas (commonly known to everybody as lack of social skills, subjugation to…

Spot on. The problem is being able to influence things in a creative way. https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc I'd rather be the captain of my small pirate ship than a cog in giant battleship. But I'm in my mid 30s now, maybe that will change when I get to 40.

Another option: caption of your own pirate ship, inside a giant battleship.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#547

Post by orangecat »

okyup wrote: post #140

I agree that programming is a dead end job. It's popular and relatively easy. It doesn't require any special skills. Anyone with an average IQ can learn it. There's low cost and barrier of entry to getting started. It's fun and addicting when you're a kid. Then you get trapped and it becomes monotonous. There's only so good you can get at programming. Beyond that, most of your time is spent on debugging trivial issue…

It's popular and relatively easy. It doesn't require any special skills. Anyone with an average IQ can learn it. There's low cost and barrier of entry to getting started.

If all of those things were true, then the field would be saturated and it wouldn't pay nearly as well as it does. I would claim that while you don't need an exceptionally high IQ, you do need a systematic way of thinking that is relatively uncommon.

You will be worthless if Western civilization ever fails and drops out of the Technological Age.

Sure, as would most white-collar workers.

As we advance and become more organized and cohesive, the need for programmers will be reduced.

The need for all types of workers will be reduced. The demand for programmers will remain higher than for many other professions; somebody actually has to implement the automation.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#548

Post by nostrademons »

sirclueless wrote: post #535
nostrademons wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, the fact that you need the console to even understand the meaning of a code fragment is a perfect example of language failure. Isn't that the case for every language with polymorphism? Even C, once you add function pointers to the mix. I've certainly heard polymorphism and OOP criticized on these grounds, but unless you're a hardcore kernel or embedded developer, that ship sailed about 25 years ago. Everyb…

> Expecting to be able to look at a code sample in isolation and know what it does is unrealistic for any large-scale system. My number one favorite thing about Go: you can look at a code sample in isolation in a large-scale system and know what it does. Why? Every identifier is either lexically scoped or lives in a module. There are about 6 control structures and they all do what they look like they do. Operators ar…

You still have interfaces. When you invoke a method on an interface, you don't know exactly which code will be called. It could do anything from crash to format your hard drive. In theory, the semantics of the interface should be well-specified and any implementation that doesn't conform to them is a bug, and Go culture holds pretty strictly to this, but there's nothing in the compiler that imposes solid restrictions on what the implementation of an interface can do.

If you're disciplined, you can write solid, easy-to-understand code in any language, Javascript included. I've worked on million+ line Javascript codebases and been productive (as a developer new to the codebase) within 3 days. But this imposes trade-offs in verbosity and flexibility that are often not worth it for most (non-Google-scale) JS codebases.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#549

Post by orangecat »

Grishnakh wrote: post #249
RodericDay wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty ridiculous. Lawyers, Bankers, and Doctors get to play in intellectual sandboxes, and they get paid really handsomely for it, even if they are completely anti-social people. The reason we get paid less is that we don't have any of their safeguards: - Lawyers aim to become partner. It's very socialist-y this way. The goal working in a firm is to become an owner of the firm and share in its successes. - D…

Yep, this leads me to my biggest regret as a programmer: going into engineering instead of medicine. I really should have become a doctor or some other kind of hospital worker instead: the money would have been at least as good, and I would have gotten to work in a place with lots of women.

You would also have had to go to school for several more years, incur massive debt in the process, and work insane hours for virtually no pay as a resident.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#550

Post by was8309 »

Bluestrike2 wrote: post #340
exelius wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just have to say this: So typically american. The attitude presented in the article is indeed typically American -- but not for the reason I think you intended. The quintessential American quality is the belief that every person has the right to control their own destiny. Fuck, it's right there in the first sentence of the first document declaring this country's independence. Americans are often seen as greedy re…

It's a very interesting dynamic. Humanistic psychology focuses extensively on ideas of locus of control (Rotter) and self-actualization (Maslow). The perspective has its shortcomings, but I think it manages to hit on a point that many of the others either miss or place little emphasis on. People in general tend to underestimate just how significant that can be. For example, I've always found the argument that certain…

sorry for late response, but thanks for this. locus of control is always a false story we tell ourselves, right? let's ask the archetypal solitary mountain man about his ability to control his environment. You've identified for me two of the basic hustles of the usa's right wing :

- providing the illusion of locus of control

- disassociating people/society from nature

   - homesteader mauled by a bear = heroics!

   - getting mugged in the city = decadence
thank you
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