How to be a sane programmer
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How to be a sane programmer
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Re: How to be a sane programmer
#2Heres the problem I have with this entire discussion -- and this post does address it a bit -- but programming IS a creative role and needs to be treated as such.
Many organizations hire programmers as technical roles, but they are generally creatives. A lot of them are night owls, who ebb and flow between long productive stints and proverbial 'writers block'.
Many of the best developers I know have a creative desire and just writing code for 10 hours a day doesn't satiate it.
I think we need to start treating developers as creatives and giving them the processes they need to be successful and not be stressed, overworked, stretched thin, etc.
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#3How very true. Abstract reasoning and pattern recognition from other areas help programming hugely.
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#4Heres the problem I have with this entire discussion -- and this post does address it a bit -- but programming IS a creative role and needs to be treated as such. Many organizations hire programmers as technical roles, but they are generally creatives. A lot of them are night owls, who ebb and flow between long productive stints and proverbial 'writers block'. Many of the best developers I know have a creative desire…
Roles and titles cause people to associate with and get put into boxes, and deny latent talents and dismiss insight that could very well be valid. Mgmt consultants make tons of cash repackaging internal feedback into neat, glossy deliverables by basically listening across organizational, preconceptual boundaries.
Also: T shaped people: http://zurb.com/article/11/the-t-in-team
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#5I still find the pressure to work on side projects in your free time difficult to come to terms with. There's often discussion about how if you don't like what you're doing, then you should find a new job - and easily, if you're in the bay area. I know a lot of really talented devs that don't work on side projects because they are completely consumed by, and love, their work and can't imagine doing anything else. What if your passion is your day job?
Having a github full of side projects is helpful when pursuing a job, but I find it difficult to go hard at work and put 100% in and then come home and work on side projects. Usually, I'd rather spend time with friends and family.
This seems to disqualify me from a lot of job postings.
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#6I still find the pressure to work on side projects in your free time difficult to come to terms with. There's often discussion about how if you don't like what you're doing, then you should find a new job - and easily, if you're in the bay area. I know a lot of really talented devs that don't work on side projects because they are completely consumed by, and love, their work and can't imagine doing anything else. Wha…
Yeah, if it's not a voluntary act, then demanding volunteer work would be a "voluntold" situation. That's not cool.
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#7Impostor syndrome is an artifact of dimensionality. There are hundreds of answers for "What does it mean to be a good programmer?" We have back-end and front-end, "devops" and "DBA" and "data science". We've let the colonizers (business guys) divide us for their purposes (not ours) and we're muddled. It's hard to know if we're good at our jobs because our jobs are constantly changing (and, sometimes, in ways that leave capability and success negatively correlated). The colonizing gendarmes who are supposed to be able to evaluate our work are even more clueless.
What we do would be highly dimensional (i.e. specialized) if we weren't a colonized people. But we'd be able to come to peace with it. We wouldn't fret others knowing more than us (which happens to everyone) if we weren't constantly watching our backs. We are constantly meeting people who know more about certain topics than we do (and, reciprocally, so are they). It wouldn't be an issue if we had more career and income security.
It's not something about programming that makes people sick. It's not an intrinsically stressful activity. It's far less demanding (speaking of the work itself, not context and social dynamics) than over 75% of paid labor. What's hurting us is that we're a lost, conquered, and scatterd tribe. We think we're elite specialists, but we've done such an obnoxiously bad job of fighting for ourselves and our own value as to let ourselves be typecast to business subordinates, and it's horrible.
It would actually be a win for the more progressive business people (as well as us) if we could get ourselves out of this. Would you want to be operated on by a doctor with the pay and social status of an average programmer? Of course not. Well, similarly, we'd make better products if we got ourselves out of the "business subordinate" trap, and pretty much everyone would win.
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#8Heres the problem I have with this entire discussion -- and this post does address it a bit -- but programming IS a creative role and needs to be treated as such. Many organizations hire programmers as technical roles, but they are generally creatives. A lot of them are night owls, who ebb and flow between long productive stints and proverbial 'writers block'. Many of the best developers I know have a creative desire…
This will never, ever, ever happen. There is too much money, for both sides, in pretending this isn't true.
The business side has been entrusted with a lot of money, its own or someone else's. Success has already been achieved. As such, it approaches things from a mindset of risk reduction. And the absolute worst thing possible, from a risk-reduction standpoint, is creative work. It's unpredictable, you don't know when you've got an end product, and it involves dealing with workers who have egos, who often work on things you don't understand. It is unmanageable, which obviously troubles those whose job it is to manage.
The most common approach, so far, has been to ignore this scary possibility: Keep projects as low-level as possible, spread responsibility far and wide (to reduce risk, not for optimal efficiency), and keep everyone wearing business casual.
Developers are (often) in the weird position of Ozzy Osbourne and other rock stars: potheads whose potheadery became valuable. What the developers know, however, is that businesses don't really want what they have to offer. They don't want to see the full effect of a bad trip. For every Bieber who turns crappy branding to gold in the teen girl demographic, there's Joe Concept Artist who's experimenting with some new grooves, but will never catch on. For every Zuckerberg who can bang out a social network in PHP, there's some dedicated open-source hacker whose dream is to make Lisp accessible to the common man.
And yet: the money guys are offering money. Just swallow your pride, play "Stairway to Heaven"[1] at the wedding, and pretend you've never had crazy eyes when talking about homoiconicity, and the rent will be paid.
[1]Nothing against the song.
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#9[deleted]
Re: How to be a sane programmer
#10I still find the pressure to work on side projects in your free time difficult to come to terms with. There's often discussion about how if you don't like what you're doing, then you should find a new job - and easily, if you're in the bay area. I know a lot of really talented devs that don't work on side projects because they are completely consumed by, and love, their work and can't imagine doing anything else. Wha…
I justify work on side-projects when they can both serve my personal goals and the lessons (not necessarily the actual code) can be used to make work easier. So I guess in some ways it feels like doing work at home, but I guess I count it as offsetting stress/tedium at work.