It seems like nowadays you just can't make money building interesting things anymore. Most of the available programming work is really just writing glue code to make big software systems work as intended, to the point where it can feel more like writing configuration files than actual programming. Put simply, 98% of programming these days is scripting. On the other hand, you have lots of fun things one can do with co…
> It seems like nowadays you just can't make money building interesting things anymore.
Sounds like you haven't tried or you haven't stumbled on an actual issue. There are lifetimes of problems out there, and many existing solutions are poor or non-solutions.
I run into them all the time and cannot possibly dedicate my one lifetime to all of the problems I see viable commercial solutions to.
Not to mention that those CRUD apps have been done, exactly the same, 10000s of times before and 10000s of people are doing the same work you are doing now at this moment. Everyone thinks they are productive but value is being burned all day, every day in most companies all over the world. The level of reuse is depressing and people, especially here, firmly believe we need to use the latest frontend and backend crap…
> Not to mention that those CRUD apps have been done, exactly the same, 10000s of times before and 10000s of people are doing the same work you are doing now at this moment. I recently worked for an org that had quite a large software suite (internal system) that was 99% CRUD. For every single CRUD operation, there was a front-end call, to a back-end service, that called a specific stored procedure. So pretty much 4…
The recent (modern startup, hip and happening and VC invested company) I built a CRUD frontend for has a lovely system: mysql but the db is not relational: 1000s of tables matching the Objects in their OO code. I have so many scripts and generators and, especially for mysql, introspection tools it was not that much work but what a horror show.
So we've mostly solved trivial non-problems if/not regressions? People lived in 1990 and didn't feel that bad to have to call a travel agency to get a ticket, or, god forbid, to actually meet friends and not in VR space... I'll give you "self driving cars" -- well, I would if they could work today, which they don't...
Anyone remember spending hours at AAA getting TripTiks and a highlighted route on a vague map for a (now) simple road trip? And the ensuing argument about the passenger's navigation obligations when you inevitably miss an exit halfway into the trip? And spending significant time preparing the (unreliable 80s domestic) car for a road trip? I recently did a ~1000 mile trip that I used to do as a kid in the 90s. Back th…
I remember doing pretty good with a decent map book. I'm not sure traveling these days is really that much simpler. I did some pretty big trips before the age of always on and it worked just fine. Also me and my wife still argue navigation in the Tesla with its futuristic built-in navigation (that's not always perfect). My "reliable" not-80's Subaru Outback broke down on me in my last big road trip (which indirectly led to getting the Tesla, so far so good).
Not to knock down all the real progress, but things were fine 20+ years ago as well...
Agreed but that is not what is happening though ; people do both; they use legos and reinvent the wheel. Making everything, imho, worse. The authentication thingy you got as lego block did not quite fit and now you are using more code than the module has in it to add what you need for it to do, making the original module probably impossible to upgrade without a lot of work and creating a problem for maintenance. Now…
I have different experiences. My "lego blocks" are AWS services. Each service is a black box that maintains its API backwards compatible forever. My custom stuff is built around the API and keeps working forever. ( * ) In my view AWS has been very successful in maintaining this backwards compatible model even when they often add new features to services. There are sometimes edge cases that are not possible to impleme…
What are you paying though? The most common reason I get pulled in is because of exorbitant aws bills which eclipse dev bills... This sound expensive.
Reading this litany of technologically-enabled consumer achievements, I thought of David Graeber who visited the disappointment we sometimes feel for how things actually went from mid-century to now. "[...]Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any c…
>Might the cultural sensibility that came to be referred to as postmodernism best be seen as a prolonged meditation on all the technological changes that never happened? The question struck me as I watched one of the recent Star Wars movies. The movie was terrible, but I couldn’t help but feel impressed by the quality of the special effects. Recalling the clumsy special effects typical of fifties sci-fi films, I kept…
I think a lot of HN in general is made up of programmers at big tech companies working on what seem like small problems, but from the perspective of someone working in the biotech sector, let me assure you there's a lot going on outside of silicon valley's open offices. I mean first, lets appreciate that tech companies have actually majorly impacted the world in ways sci-fi authors couldn't have imagined, and for all the negatives, there's a reason the tech sector was (prior to recent times) so widely loved - the fact that I can reconnect through facebook with a friend I haven't seen in a decade that I may never have meet again otherwise is straight up magic and that matters. And google search and smartphones - don't underestimate them! But yeah, the valley seems to have this "hardware is hard" mentality (even though it's built off of the semiconductor industry...), but just look around. We've got for the first time ever a potentially sustainable spaceflight industry blossoming, biotech is making strides like you wouldn't believe in tackling some of the most complex diseases, your inkjet printer is a marvel of microfluidics, green energy sources are becoming cost competitive to the fuels that have fueled our entire development as a species from an agrarian to an industrialized civilization, we've got vaccines that might be ready to defeat a global pandemic within a couple years of the first case recorded. I do work in the printing and inks space. There, just recently, there's been a transition away from using UV cured or dried inks that release volatile organic compounds into new inks that are cured with electron beams - i mean, the amount of technological complexity and innovation that goes into making the packaged product you pick off the shelf have the color that it does! And these have real impacts - eliminating huge sources of pollutants and improving health and the planet. There could and should be more, especially more investment into R&D, but don't underestimate what's happening outside the Silicon Valley bubble, and don't underestimate what's happening inside the bubble either.
"I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands." Okay.... I assume you're not going to talk about this because then you'll have so much competition you won't be able to pay the bills anymore, but do you have any generalized background information about this?
Usually this means dropshipping, but it could be something different.
Add me to the woodworking ex-developers. I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands. I am finishing my first piece of furniture today. It's pretty scary to work without an undo button. The physical world isn't just instructions, but movements. A little twitch can ruin a cut. A clumsy movement can dent a piece of wood you spent an hour sanding. You truly experience the meaning of "…
> I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands.
It's also pretty impossible to build a website that pays the bills indefinitely without maintainence or upgrades. If your website becomes popular enough to pay your bills you WILL eventually have competitors, as well as new mediums of technology, and you'll have to constantly keep up to date.
> Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. Is this not a contradiction to you?
I feel the same way. The plumbing required has become so complex these last few years (if you use new technology). 10 years ago we uploaded the server/backend binary to a VM, installed postgres/mysql and configured nginx/haproxy as a reverse proxy/ssl termination. Now, if you want to deploy a modern SPA while using some buzzwords like k8s and devops you need: * complex frontend build process with things like webpack…
If you are doing that and do not want to do it then you are probably at the wrong company or not speaking up about it.
Modern software development is incredible if you are able to avoid the buzzword bullshit and focus on delivering cool solutions that solve real problems.
I've never worked a development job where I get any say in avoiding buzzwords or delivering solutions I would call cool. I typically get caught up in clients bikeshedding irrelevant details and managers enabling and promoting it. I hear so much on HN and on reddit about jobs that give programmers some level of autonomy but I just don't see it. My entire experience is very much the opposite, and I absolutely loathe th…
I would recommend finding for smaller companies to work for, or better yet, doing your own consulting. Being able to fire customers is the only reason I still enjoy what I do.
I believe the main thing that changed is that 10 years ago, "building software" meant you would work with (presumably reasonable) engineers. Nowadays, it means you do web busywork for some newly rich kid chasing a startup lifestyle, who may or may not have any idea about what's easy/difficult possible/impossible. Also, the whole industry has been strongly commercialized. Before, people would share source code on the…
Your overall tone is negative and elitist. Thee $300 supermarket bike (I have one and put over 40 miles on it weekly and it's help up fine for four years) provides access to folks who otherwise can't afford the fancy $1,500 aluminium/carbon machines. Fancy bikes are still getting made and even getting better. Newly rich kid or VC funded startups distributes money from wealthy people to an every growing software indus…
I'm not sure I deserve the "elitist" label, but yes, I find this development very negative.
While I agree with your point that hobby startups distribute money and enlarge the market, I was trying to point out that people working under management with no experience will probably not learn their craft well. In my opinion, the old apprentice system used for jobs like becoming a carpenter would be quite appropriate for software engineers. But it only works if there are enough master level programmers around to teach everyone else.
As for the pie analogy, I don't share your opinion. When the market moves towards lower quality, that usually makes high quality more expensive or even outright impossible to acquire. Case in point, I'm not aware of any bicycle that is rated for 200kg+ for driver and luggage. Not only are there no cheap bikes at that stability level, but also nothing in the $2000+ premium range. So something that used to be easy to buy for everyday folks 20 years ago is now too expensive even for rich people. And all that only to drive the price of the cheapest bikes down from $500 to $300, which I presume won't make much difference to anyone because a good bike will last you 10 years, so it's <$1 monthly in either case.