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You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

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Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#71

Post by zerkten »

muglug wrote: post #17

I think this article constructs a strawman argument – pretty much all developers are solving some sort of problem. The big question is who you're solving problems for – when I was a single person doing freelance web work (like this article seems to assume), I was always solving problems for customers and their clients. Once I started working with other developers, I became interested in solving their problems too – s…

> The big question is who you're solving problems for > Once I started working with other developers,

I think the problem is about drift. Moving from working on your own problems as a freelancer, to bigger teams and organizations, tends to shift problem solving to a more nebulous state. As the freelancer you fixed problems that perhaps you saw directly, and could fix end-to-end. These could be business or technical problems. The cost of certain actions was evident.

As you progress up to larger and larger organizations you lose that connection. The organizations are supposed to have processes that make up for this lack of connection, but, at best, only do a very average job of it.

Further, you have new sets of problems to deal with, that are not limited to: your colleagues' code, a worse understanding of requirements, PMs having less of an understanding of the requirements than you because management has perverted their work, not being allowed to work on small fixes because everything has to be A/B tested, sales teams perverting the priorities of management, the support team being sidelined by management even though they know the real problems etc.

These articles about solving problems versus writing code never capture this progression for me because the authors generally don't have that experience. That's fine because we are all different and it still leads to valuable discussions.

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#72

Post by closeparen »

jl6 wrote: post #34

Junior devs solve computer problems using computers. Senior devs solve business problems using computers.

Interestingly, for us it's the opposite. Senior dev responsibilities are to:

a) Get ahead of the computer problems that junior devs would otherwise create in their frenzy to solve business problems (frameworks, infrastructure services, design reviews, etc).

b) Clean up the ones they missed (architecture initiatives).

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#73

Post by crimsonalucard »

quonn wrote: post #31
crimsonalucard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a real lack of humility among our industry, especially in the AI space. Literally you can google "AI solves world peace" or "AI solves COVID-19" and you'll hit an article. We also call ourselves ninjas when most of us are just building hugely complex infrastructure behind what is ultimately just a CRUD website.

This classification of applications as CRUD or not CRUD is not helpful. It‘s like thinking about software as just IO or as just some sort of transformation or even as just some sort of function. It says nothing about the complexity and very little about the structure of the problem at hand.

Maybe a better way to put it is: that the end result is just a website where data is moved around and/or some calculations are done. The whole infrastructure/architecture thing are just strategies on where to place data, how to move data, when to do calculation in the name of mitigating load or making future changes easier.

Ultimately, the end result is we're just building interactive documents. "Interactive document maker" or "Dynamic form writer" is a more humble term than "Problem solver" or "Coding Ninja" because that's literally all we're doing.

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#74

Post by crimsonalucard »

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #29
crimsonalucard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a real lack of humility among our industry, especially in the AI space. Literally you can google "AI solves world peace" or "AI solves COVID-19" and you'll hit an article. We also call ourselves ninjas when most of us are just building hugely complex infrastructure behind what is ultimately just a CRUD website.

That lack of humility also exists in other industries. You can Google "healthcare saves lives" and hit many articles

Plumbers and custodians also save lives through sanitation. But when you google "Plumbers save lives" you get nothing.

I myself have had my cancer personally cured by AI and machine learning, but does the electrician who provided power to the computer get any credit? No, and that is a huge discrimination problem.

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#75

Post by zemo »

a question I like to ask to my reports is "are you solving a problem or are you solving a puzzle?"

puzzles are neat! They're a lot of fun! But we shouldn't mistake puzzles for problems. Just because something isn't right or doesn't fit together doesn't mean that it matters. You can do great engineering work coming up with beautiful solutions, making order and beauty out of something that doesn't work quite right but provide no value whatsoever if the thing you were working on solving wasn't actually a problem for anybody.

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#76

Post by mettamage »

urioro9 wrote: post #69
mettamage wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't a lot of jobs about solving problems? A therapist solves psychological problems. A lawyer solves problems between people and organizational entities. A surgeon solves medical problems. The reason I'm asking this question is because a few groups proudly say that they are problem solvers. The most notable groups that I've seen are programmers and the consulting industry. But who isn't solving problems? Why this…

Other than medical problems the rest aren’t necessarily real and could be seen as learned habits. We “make up” problems and invent solutions at scale for people to abide social norms of needing a job. Feeding oneself and learning about the world is work enough. We don’t need all these “jobs”. It’s social control at scale. Necessary evil, but we can do it differently now.

Hypothetical problems are still problems, and they still can be solved. I think the best case of that is the tower of Hanoi. Most abstract problems are made up, here is one:

If you add something to itself, what do you get?

I just made that up. The solution is: you get twice of that something.

With that said, I disagree that these problems are made up. I can see that it is the case in some cases or the majority cases of an industry (the software industry being one of them) but it's unfair to say that all of them are made up.

psychology problems: I've seen some terrible stuff from psychologically damaged people. If a psychiatrist would've helped them, then a few calamities could've been prevented.

Also, I've seen useful things that laywers do. One time a family member had an issue with a big company. Without a laywer he wouldn't be able to right the wrong that they did to him.

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#77

Post by mettamage »

zemo wrote: post #75

a question I like to ask to my reports is "are you solving a problem or are you solving a puzzle?" puzzles are neat! They're a lot of fun! But we shouldn't mistake puzzles for problems. Just because something isn't right or doesn't fit together doesn't mean that it matters. You can do great engineering work coming up with beautiful solutions, making order and beauty out of something that doesn't work quite right but…

Aren't puzzles a subclass of problems? Isn't a problem simply a question that has a solution?

It made me think about the definition of the word problem. Here is one list: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/problem

Re: You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems

#79

Post by ativzzz »

k__ wrote: post #78

Funny thing is, coding today is mostly understanding how other devs solved a problem. We're using frameworks and libraries that all come with very specific solutions.

Well it's more like using the tools other developed to help you solve your problems faster. If you're spending more time understanding the tools you're using, reconsider your tools.
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