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I love programming but I hate the programming industry

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Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#61

Post by chongli »

_nalply wrote: post #33
OJFord wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or simpler than that, surprise, work is less fun than hobby. Even if you work for yourself doing what you love, even say it's making furniture or whatever, there's always going to be things like customers want the 'wrong' things, or won't pay extra for the nicer exotic material, etc. doing purely what you love as a hobby with no work aspect is always going to be better.

Because in a hobby you are your own master and in a job someone else is your superior and orders you to do things. If you are lucky many of these things are what you would like to do anyway.

Yeah. It's extremely rare to be able to do exactly and only what you want to do and be able to make money from it. Even the big YouTube celebrities face pressure to make the videos their audience wants to watch. When they go off the rails the views take a nosedive.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#62

Post by fuzzy2 »

bdw5204 wrote: post #52
fuzzy2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “industry” strongly implies “corporate world”. However > The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. Guess I’m the corporate world then! Listen here, dear colleagues: Before attempting any finesse, abstraction, wit or beauty, maybe first try to make it work to spec. Because otherwise it is entirely worthless . If you are reasonably good at making it work, you…

In my experience, most of the corporate world seems to care more about their aesthetic notions of the Platonic ideal of what code should look like than whether or not it works or whether or not it is efficient. Certainly that's my experience from interviews. Maybe the people who care about business value should be the engineering managers not the people who equate their personal aesthetic preferences with the only ri…

I’ve had the opportunity to work with lots of mechanical engineering corps to date, and I can confidently tell you: Even if they had some platonic ideal, they would never be able to follow through. The mediocrity of their software development practices is… profound. On all levels of the hierarchy. Sure they care about the ideal of sustainable software development, but they just can’t do it.

On the other hand, my employer advertises clean code as a service, and this attracts the kind of developers you describe.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#63

Post by vegetablepotpie »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #41
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

I think “industry” strongly implies “corporate world”. However > The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. Guess I’m the corporate world then! Listen here, dear colleagues: Before attempting any finesse, abstraction, wit or beauty, maybe first try to make it work to spec. Because otherwise it is entirely worthless . If you are reasonably good at making it work, you…

> first try to make it work to spec

In my professional experience, the only spec you get is a wishlist, never quantified, always vague. Half the work is figuring out what the customer wants.

The only metric that anyone cares about is speed. You need to go fast, but to where? There is no consensus.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#64

Post by pydry »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

It's not just the corporate world, it's capitalism in general.

I could point out a million people who have made rhyming criticisms of this type before programming even existed. Until those criticisms are met with widespread solid agreement instead of outright hostility or even a resigned "well, it's better than all the alternatives" then nothing will change.

Ive lost count of the number of times Ive seen programmers complain bitterly about e.g. alienation, forever oblivious to the fact that they are rehashing Marx. This post is no exception. When push comes to shove though, 0 of these people would actually dare to call themselves a Marxist.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#65

Post by marginalia_nu »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

I feel this sort of mentality is exactly how you turn into Boeing.

Wings staying attached to the plane in air isn't pumping up the KPIs, fire everyone who wastes time on such irrelevant concerns!

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#66

Post by oarla »

This tug of war between individual satisfaction and monetization exists in all industries and not just SW engineering. There are very few areas where there is an overlap between solving problems benefits all of humanity while being able to monetize it for a sustainable business(finding a cure for cancer for ex). It's not the fault of any industry or economy etc, it's just a mismatch of expectations vs reality.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#67

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

From what they wrote, "small startups" are part of that "corporate world."

From my experience, the cultural differences between large corporations, and smaller startups, is night and day.

Often, neither one is functional; but they are dysfunctional, in different ways.

For myself, I was never happy until I was able to helm my own ship. A lot of folks think that this means "hobby programmer," but I don't actually fit that template.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#68

Post by Barrin92 »

"remember that historically the most groundbreaking achievements in early computing have happened in the service of the greater good. This is what I really want to do: I want every how - from the programming language and paradigm, architecture, down to every line of code and piece of syntax - to be informed by the why of the system that is being built. And I want that why to be a reflection of a genuine existing need, not some bullshit business metric which pretty much exists for its own sake."

That's a pretty achievable goal, work in the defense industry and the public sector. Programmers are in high demand, the economic incentives align with building things correctly and don't consist of shipping AI powered coffee machines in the next four weeks and the technical work is usually complex and interesting.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#69

Post by rrr_oh_man »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #63
fuzzy2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “industry” strongly implies “corporate world”. However > The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. Guess I’m the corporate world then! Listen here, dear colleagues: Before attempting any finesse, abstraction, wit or beauty, maybe first try to make it work to spec. Because otherwise it is entirely worthless . If you are reasonably good at making it work, you…

> first try to make it work to spec In my professional experience, the only spec you get is a wishlist, never quantified, always vague. Half the work is figuring out what the customer wants. The only metric that anyone cares about is speed. You need to go fast, but to where? There is no consensus.

If quick and dirty gets you 10 shots, while slow and beautiful gets you 1, I’d choose quick & dirty any day.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#70

Post by badpun »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

I don't think it's "corporate world", but just capitalism. Non-corporate companies often have thinner margins than corporations and thus skimp on "extras" such as quality, craftsmanship etc. even more.
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