[HN Gopher] Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for A...
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Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
Author : chmaynard
Score : 737 points
Date : 2023-05-22 02:11 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engineersneedart.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engineersneedart.com)
| diligence_ wrote:
| [dead]
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I would recommend everyone who retires from programming to get
| into the maker world. 3D printed, embedded programming - it's
| great fun and just feels different from the day to day
| programming grind.
| DanielHB wrote:
| don't do it as a profession, embedded programming grind is
| worse than conventional cloud/web programming grind
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Would you say the same thing considering oncall
| responsibilities in conventional cloud/web programming?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Can't concur. As an embedded dev turned to web, the grind of
| the web dev was way stressier than the tasks as an embedded
| dev.
| hugatest wrote:
| I do embedded and it's fantastic. I could never do the
| cloud/web grind.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| This is by John Calhoun, whose most well-known creation may be
| the game _Glider_, originally written in his pre-Apple period he
| mentions in OP.
|
| http://macscene.net/home/features/news-archives/item/intervi...
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Thank you for your 26 years of service. Career programmers like
| you who still love programming at the end of it are a treasure.
| Programming is wonderful. It is an art in itself. Even though
| Slack and Leetcode and all the rest ruin it, there is nothing
| else which sparks joy and a sense of wonder like it does for some
| of us. I wish in our industry we had more wider appreciation and
| events where we could share stories like you and felicitate you.
| raz32dust wrote:
| Wait what did Slack do?
| hackernewds wrote:
| Assuming they also included Leetcode, I think they're venting
| about the general "tech culture" which surrounds most
| programming jobs now
| qup wrote:
| Mandated black hole for attention.
| esafak wrote:
| Cause distraction.
| hugatest wrote:
| In the olden days it was IRC. Already then it was about
| controlling yourself. Whether you would get distracted or
| not. If you want to get into the zone, it's up to you how
| to do that. If you have an IRC or Slack window on the side
| to let you get distracted is your call.
| esafak wrote:
| Were you using IRC as your corporate messaging solution,
| because that's what slack is? If people send you a
| message they expect a timely if not instant response.
| Their work depends on you.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| > The respite from programming though lasted maybe about four
| months after retiring. I started a small project , in part to
| learn Python, in part to play with e-ink displays. I was back
| programming (back abusing git) but of course the pressure was
| off. It both was and wasn't like the day job I had left behind.
|
| This is one reasons I got disillusioned with FIRE and the concept
| of early retirement. Programming was my first love. There might
| be phases where I just get sick of technology, but most of them
| have proven to be temporary. It's the best, the most versatile
| medium of my creative energy. I don't plan to stop doing it ever.
| What I actually dislike is the corporatisation of programming--
| JIRA Tasks, PRD, Stand-up meetings, Stakeholder meetings.
|
| I don't want early retirement. I want to work in a small team
| with a good product vision and a strong shipping culture. But it
| has proven to rare in my professional experience. For me,
| alternative is to keep taking breaks. Few months, once in a
| while, to work and experiment on my own ideas. This allows me to
| keep my creative spirit alive and (possibly) to make money that
| gives me the freedom to explore them more.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| " I want to work in a small team with a good product vision and
| a . strong shipping culture."
|
| That's really hard to find. Especially if you still want to
| work regular hours
| pinewurst wrote:
| Speaking as someone planning to "retire" very soon, I don't
| like that word at all. I'm hardly planning to move to Florida
| for wife swapping and pickleball with the other oldsters. I'll
| be doing whatever suits my fancy, including software, albeit
| sans Jira and keeping GoogSoft suits happy with the proper
| newspeak.
| jjxw wrote:
| 100% agree. Does anyone know of a word that means
| "retirement" without the "not working" connotation? I'm in
| the same camp as someone who is aspiring to "retire early",
| but it will be more of a "work on whatever I want to" kind of
| retirement and not "move to Florida" type of retirement.
| sowbug wrote:
| Don't use the term "retirement." Instead, you're doing a
| solo startup. Add that it's in stealth mode if you don't
| feel like talking about your current focus of attention. If
| I'm reading your comment correctly, it's not even a lie; it
| sounds like you'd be happy turning a hobby into a business
| if that's where fate took you.
|
| I "retired" about a year ago after almost 25 years in the
| industry. My story since then is a lot like that of the
| author of the article. I've written more code this year for
| love than I bet I did in 10 years for pay. It's been
| exactly the retirement I wanted: one of the most productive
| times of my life.
| dfex wrote:
| Self-Employed
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| "Independently wealthy"?
| djbusby wrote:
| Living my best life
| qup wrote:
| Maybe a really easy solution is to incorporate yourself and
| then just say you started a software company.
|
| That's if you're like me, and you find this question really
| annoying to explain, and it gets asked constantly.
|
| "Self-employed" sets off a lot of bullshit detectors,
| because...well, lots of bullshitters use that one.
|
| Or maybe just keep saying programmer, if that's what you're
| doing. No need to explain in detail how the compensation
| works (or doesn't exist).
|
| "I retired from corporate, doing my own thing."?
| zenlikethat wrote:
| Indeed. There's plenty of wife swapping up for grabs in the
| Bay Area.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| The lack of symmetry bugs me - if a couple swaps wives, why
| isn't it ever called "husband swapping", and wouldn't the
| (technically, and politically) correct term be "partner
| swapping"?
|
| Or maybe it can all be subsumed under "swinging" or
| whatever the modern term is?
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The point of retirement is that you're free to do whatever you
| want. I still love programming but having to do it every
| weekday saps my creativity and muddles it with corporate bs. I
| have easily a 100 projects I would work on if I had the time
| and energy that could be freed by my day job
| echelon wrote:
| > I don't want early retirement. I want to work in a small team
| with a good product vision and a strong shipping culture.
|
| s/work in a small team/lead a company
|
| That's the ideal for me.
| YZF wrote:
| I've been really fortunate to have spent most of my career in
| places with good culture and people (and yes, usually small,
| but not always). Politics and other corporate bs is hard for
| people that care because they're just run over by those that
| don't (which tends to be the default).
|
| It's really easy for companies to just look at programmers as
| people working on a car assembly line (no disrespect meant).
| I.e. you just sit at your station and put the wheels on as the
| next car body comes by. Skill and passion are not in sync with
| that reality. The number of projects where success depends on
| skill and passion, and this is actually understood/realized by
| anyone, isn't large. Starting your own company/business is hard
| for people that are more of the maker type and less of the
| business type (not to mention the other risks).
|
| Going to work for a startup isn't necessarily a fix. Lots of
| startups where you are still a product line worker. That's
| partly because it's also risky for a startup to rely on being
| able to find skilled and passionate people.
|
| EDIT: Also happy to read the author has re-kindled his love of
| programming. I tend to worry that my industry "PTSD" is going
| to make it such that I can't have fun programming again. As a
| kid I used to spend endless nights coding with nobody paying
| me. Somehow money makes it a lot less fun.
| [deleted]
| ResearchCode wrote:
| In my experience they don't get run over, but they can get
| outnumbered. If you're in a workplace with more than 10% of
| people that are dishonest or malicious you should look for an
| exit.
|
| Those companies create worse software and not more reliably
| or quickly. You can't micromanage into good software.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm glad I found programming. I'm not sure I would have been
| very successful at anything else as a career. But the day I
| retire will be the last line of code I write. I'm planning to
| have as little involvement with computers as I can after that.
| inconceivable wrote:
| that's what i thought too (i had a decent exit and planned a
| career change) but it only lasted about a year.
| deepzn wrote:
| There are many interpretations and meanings of this Japanese
| phrase called Ikigai but in a basic sense it means "life
| purpose". Doing something you love, and getting better each day
| at it is one interpretation I really like. Many people in
| professions involving workmanship can attest to this.
|
| This coming age of AI is really going to displace a lot of
| jobs, and make a lot of people unhappy- those who found meaning
| in their work. But, I feel we need to keep our joy of doing our
| work, and have that be the driving force, even if a computer
| can do something better. And this is what they say will be the
| "artisanal" things that will exist, and be popular to buy.
|
| In the end, I think we just need to enjoy what we do. That's
| all this life is about.
| draw_down wrote:
| Sure, to each their own. I quit two years ago and have probably
| spent a few weeks of that programming.
|
| The place I left gave ICs a high degree of agency, and you run
| projects yourself, get the resources you need yourself. So the
| issue was never too much red tape or process. So now doing all
| that stuff just feels like work again. The programming is ok
| (just ok) but seriously building something involves all that
| project stuff. Coordination, setting timelines and milestones,
| design, testing and on and on.
|
| I think it's ok to acknowledge that there are other things in
| life besides programming and software projects, and to
| therefore move on. I love lots of things!
|
| Sometimes the gum loses flavor. But there's lots of flavors to
| try.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > This is one reasons I got disillusioned with FIRE and the
| concept of early retirement.
|
| I think it's totally reasonable to be disillusioned with the
| "retire early" part of FIRE, but the "financial independence"?
| That part is golden for everyone.
|
| Being financially independent means you're not scared of being
| laid off. It means you can walk away from bad bosses or bad
| companies. It means you can try out a startup if your heart
| tells you it's the one, but the money they're offering is too
| far below market.
|
| Of course, getting there through austerity isn't for everyone.
| I get that. But quite a lot of people think the juice _is_
| worth the squeeze.
| catdog wrote:
| Agree but you can get there with much less sacrifices if you
| leave out the "retire early" part. Then, it boils mostly down
| avoiding lifestyle inflation.
| duxup wrote:
| > a small team with a good product vision and a strong shipping
| culture
|
| I suspect one issue is that this kind of thing is more common
| in smaller organizations that haven't evolved a bureaucracy.
|
| The catch is that they also aren't paying high salaries and
| just finding their way...
| linguae wrote:
| I feel the exact same way, but from the perspective of a
| researcher. During my high school and undergraduate years I was
| inspired by stories of researchers at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC
| who invented so many fundamental technologies and had a
| profound impact on computing. I was also inspired by the great
| computers of the past (especially NeXT) and was excited about
| each and every release of Mac OS X.
|
| Now that I'm more than a decade removed from my undergraduate
| years, I find myself disillusioned with the state of computing
| and research these days. Neither Apple nor Microsoft seem to
| care about pushing personal computing further anymore; it's
| about maintaining and strengthening their cash cows. Google,
| Meta, and Amazon don't impress me like they did a decade ago,
| when I used to joyfully study the research papers describing
| the interesting infrastructure they built. The days of places
| like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC where researchers generally had
| free reign to pursue their ideas are long gone; industrial
| research today is very business-focused, where researchers are
| required to put the interests of the company ahead of their
| personal research interests. Academia is no better; the
| competition is high (especially at research universities), the
| pay is low (especially at teaching universities), and there are
| pressures not only to publish regularly, but to raise grant
| money, which naturally curbs research freedom. This is the
| world I find myself navigating; I found myself training and
| striving for a career that no longer exists.
|
| I'm still thinking about long-term plans for me to pursue the
| type of career that I want despite today's environment.
| America's high cost of living makes FIRE difficult for me
| unless I decide to "grind Leetcode" and join a FAANG to
| optimize my compensation, and even that strategy may be
| obsolete in 2023 due to layoffs and hiring freezes.
| Alternatively, I'm thinking about one day starting a
| bootstrapped business, one that is profitable enough to be able
| to fund my living expenses and to provide healthy wages and
| benefits for my staff. One day I'll make enough money to where
| I can enough savings to be able to pursue my own research
| projects without having to worry about publish-or-perish
| pressures or about business matters. I'd like to also teach on
| the side, though due to low adjunct wages I don't want to
| pursue that as my main job.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > I got disillusioned with FIRE
|
| Maybe the RE part, but definitely not the FI part. In fact if I
| achieve the FI part I may not even have to go through the RE
| part and I can keep working for as long as I want at my own
| pace, conditions, and comfort.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've been working with Apple since 1986. I very much have enjoyed
| their ecosystem, and probably like them, for many of the same
| reasons that a lot of geeks hate them.
|
| It's worked out OK, for me.
|
| My first exposure to Apple personnel, were the MacHack
| conferences, of the late 1980s. Back then, Apple was still pretty
| "scruffy." Some of the T-shirts that showed up at MacHack are now
| silk-shirts at Apple.
|
| Over the years, because of the companies that I've worked at, we
| have had pretty close relationships with Apple, and I have
| enjoyed interacting with many of their staff. I actually had a
| fairly decent window into their culture.
|
| A few years ago, I finally left my last company (after almost 27
| years), and started looking for work. During that time, I was
| contacted by Apple, and did a couple of interviews. They were
| probably the only company that I would have relocated for, in my
| fifties.
|
| It didn't work out. As it turned out, and, quite surprisingly, I
| didn't mind that it fell through. The interviews made me aware
| that the culture was nothing like what I expected, and, I
| suspect, taking the job would have probably been a very bad move
| for me. I'm sure that the money would have been great, but I
| don't think I would have found the environment to my liking.
|
| I'm one of those folks that isn't particularly interested in
| bucketloads of money. I really enjoy writing software as a craft.
| I'm quite aware that many folks, hereabouts, despise people like
| me, and that's sad. I feel as if a bit of the "soul" of software
| has been leached out.
|
| But, at the same time, some very cool stuff has been accomplished
| (often, motivated by all that money), and I look forward to the
| future.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Sounds like you have had an fascinating career. I dunno, but
| maybe the world need two types of engineers; ones motivated by
| good code and ones motivated by money.
|
| I wonder though if you can develop a superb product and company
| with just money alone. In a way you probably need evangelists
| rather than just hired guns.
|
| In my experience as a product manager, the evangelists are much
| more creative than the hired guns. You can throw lots of money
| toward the development of a product but that doesn't mean
| you'll get innovative solutions from your team.
|
| You need a mix of believers as well as hired guns.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >They were probably the only company that I would have
| relocated for, in my fifties.
|
| I'm always curious about people's willingness to uproot their
| lives, and move away from family and friends for a job.
| Especially at older ages where one has 'made it' and money is
| no longer the top priority.
|
| There's only one organization that's on that list for me, and
| that's JPL, especially if I got a chance to work on their sat /
| rover stuff.
| ylee wrote:
| I am self-taught with computers in the sense that I read every
| computer book I could find before my first computer at the age of
| 10, a Commodore VIC-20; everything else came from that.
| Elementary-school classes on Logo, AP Computer Science in high
| school, and one one-credit Java class in college are the extent
| of my formal education in computer science. I've never worked as
| and have never wanted to be a professional programmer.
|
| I worked through Columbia doing user support for the university's
| Unix systems group. I got a job on Wall Street like many
| classmates, but for which the hiring person (an equity analyst
| covering software companies) was specifically looking for a CS
| major; I was able to demonstrate that I had the equivalent
| background thereof.
|
| I have been successful with computers because I enjoy working
| with them. I enjoy computers because it's a hobby, albeit one
| that has affected my entire working life. I suspect that I would
| not enjoy computers as much were it actually my job. Since it
| isn't, I have the freedom of being able to (for example) write
| Elisp[1] to improve VM, the Emacs-based email client I've used
| for almost three decades. While I may contribute my code back to
| the VM project someday, meanwhile I report to no one and have no
| deadlines other than my own. That's freedom.
|
| [1] I well remember the epiphany the day in Logo class I realized
| what recursion is. I still feel like giggling when I find an
| Elisp task for which recursion is an effective solution.
| lastangryman wrote:
| I find it surprising (in a good way) the author could be a
| programmer for 26 years at Apple.
|
| A lot of corporate places I've worked at are always pushing you
| to progress in to leadership positions; if you aren't moving
| upwards then you are "managed out" which I always find really
| sad, the idea that simply being good at your job is now no longer
| enough. Good on Apple if they don't follow this type of thinking.
| morning-coffee wrote:
| Programmer at Microsoft (still) for 27 years here. The pressure
| to "grow your career" (usually by moving into management) was
| and is ever-present. I've never been managed out, but have had
| numerous conversations with managers over the years along the
| lines of "look, I just love to write code and work with other
| people who love to write code too." I consider success to be
| defined by me in the feelings I derive from the work I do, the
| simplicity of the code I write, and the knowledge that its
| valuable in solving problems that my employer wants to see
| solved. Yet, the culture seems to still be fixated on measuring
| success by steady progression of increasing levels or changing
| titles. Whatever... it's for each of us, corporate ladder
| climbers included, to define what success means for ourselves
| and how to go about achieving it, I suppose.
| jebarker wrote:
| What does "managed out" mean?
| lastangryman wrote:
| It is the practice of very subtly persuading employees to
| seek employment elsewhere when their "growth" has stagnated.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263.
| ..
|
| You will see it mentioned in context of poorly performing
| staff, but it can also be used when you have someone who is
| perfectly capable at their role but has no desire to climb
| the ladder. In many corporate environments that is viewed
| very negatively.
| jebarker wrote:
| Thanks for explaining. That's awful.
|
| I wonder how common this is in tech companies where IC is a
| valid career path and terminal levels exist?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It is alive and well at FAANG.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I was forced to manage someone out years ago. It was
| awful. My bosses didn't like this one guy, and honestly,
| he wasn't the best employee, but just they told me to
| stop giving work to him. Nothing. No work at all. He
| would come to me and ask what he was supposed to be
| working on. I had to just say that I'd get him something
| soon. I had to tell others not to give him any work or go
| to him for anything. He sat there at his desk for months,
| doing absolutely nothing. Finally, he asked about his
| upcoming review, and I had to tell him that he was
| getting PIP'ed because he hadn't accomplished anything.
| He finally got the message and resigned.
|
| That whole situation made me feel like shit. It still
| does. I never wanted to be a part of management after
| that.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Damn, he should have stayed and at least gotten a
| severance package.
| asveikau wrote:
| The key phrase is they didn't like him. A lot of times
| it's personal rather than work related.
|
| Folks, this is the purpose of performance reviews. It
| doesn't have much to do with your work or ability to do
| work. It's a bunch of paperwork to justify how management
| feels about everybody on a personal, not professional
| level.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Exactly ^^^ Here's how it went down in my case; it's so
| bad. ... The dude played in a rock band in his free time.
| He had a show up in LA (we're in San Diego) on a "school
| night". The next day, Wednesday morning, he showed up to
| an 8am meeting looking like shit. He said that he got
| zero sleep the previous night. He played the show up in
| LA, packed up his gear (he was a drummer), then drove
| back to San Diego, got home around 6am, unpacked and
| drove straight to the office.
|
| No big deal, the meeting was boring, as usual, until a
| director from another group jokingly commented to our
| director, my boss, something like, _" Gosh, your staff
| looks like hell. You must be working them to death."_ It
| was just a light-hearted, lame joke; got a chuckle in the
| room. After the meeting, I was pulled into my boss'
| office where he told me he was sooo embarrassed by the
| other director's comment. He was really mad. My boss was
| new to being a director and he felt as the other director
| was throwing shade on him, implying he doesn't know how
| to manage a staff, therefore he doesn't deserve to be a
| director. And everyone in the meeting was laughing, so
| they all must've agreed. So my boss told me to get rid of
| the rock-band guy. I rebutted, saying the fact that rock-
| band guy stayed up all night, and drove straight to work,
| showed that he was dedicated, and that he (my boss) was
| such a great director, cultivating a culture of hard work
| and dedication. My boss wasn't buying, and told me
| exactly how to manage him out: stop giving him work.
|
| So yeah, it had absolutely nothing to do with his work.
| It was all because some dude got butt-hurt by a lame
| comment in a meeting.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I think the takeaways here are that: A lighthearted joke
| from a director is often power-talk that implies more,
| and that looking like shit in the office is a big no-no
| (some phrases that come to mind are "perception is
| reality" and "the nail that sticks up gets hammered
| down").
| lastangryman wrote:
| That really sucks you were put in that position.
| oefrha wrote:
| In (one) theory, pressuring everyone to always move up results
| in everyone eventually stuck in a role they are not good at.
| lastangryman wrote:
| Yes, "everyone is eventually promoted to their highest level
| of incompetence" is how I've heard it and there's a
| definitely some truth in there I think...
| amelius wrote:
| Peter principle.
| brabel wrote:
| An experienced programmer may not be able to write a lot of
| code faster than an intermediate programmer, but will know to
| NOT write code or waste time on things they know (from
| experience) are not required, or desirable... and focus on
| those things that really matter. This is worth so much for a
| company. Developers in the middle of their careers are
| dangerous: they can achieve a lot, but they can easily veer off
| on a tangent and spend months on some interesting challenge
| instead of on what the business needs.
|
| If every developer moved "up" to management after a few years,
| only mediocre programmers would be actually writing code (which
| is partly true). I've become chief engineer recently, but I had
| already been leading other developers for a while... but I keep
| writing lots of code, despite frequent interruptions to assist
| others... I can see how others often go in undesired directions
| if not guided back to focus on what is important. I am very
| glad my company has recognized that I can do that but knows me
| well enough to understand my strong point is coding, not
| managing. I am sure Apple and many other companies are also
| aware that a very experienced developer still writing code with
| others is worth a lot more than in some miserable (for them)
| management position.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > I can see how others often go in undesired directions if
| not guided back to focus on what is important.
|
| This is the role of the senior engineer in a nutshell:
| herding the cats, but from the technical side.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| One of my mantras that I picked up as I moved into a more
| senior level is "the fastest and easiest to maintain code is
| the code you don't have to write at all". Knowing when and
| what to write is as much a skill as writing the code in the
| first place.
|
| Also, Apple, presumably being a very siloed organization,
| probably benefits more from tribal knowledge of the elders
| more than your typical organization.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| There's also the pragmatic flip side to this coin. 'Bad'
| code that does something is infinitely faster than the
| perfect implementation that was never written.
| pradn wrote:
| Execs can waste years by investing in the wrong projects,
| tech leads can waste quarters of time by picking the wrong
| architecture/ecosystem, junior engineers can waste days by
| picking the wrong approach to a ticket. And benefit goes the
| same way.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| I've also been somewhat scarred by having a previous boss who
| was on the older side. He only became a manager because of an
| ego thing where he "didn't want to report to someone half his
| age". He ended up being a terrible manager and basically ended
| up driving me to leave for another team. I don't want to become
| that guy.
|
| That experience was very eye opening to me. As a result,
| despite being offered lead positions several times, I've always
| declined. I know where my talents and interests are, and they
| most certainly aren't in "people problems" or managing someone
| else's career. Thankfully my employer still has a very robust
| career track for people like me.
| xupybd wrote:
| I hope I get to retire with enough energy to have hobbies.
|
| Many family members didn't make it to an age that they could
| enjoy retirement. The certainly didn't have the financial sense
| to make much of it.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > I'm not sure if that is a good thing. I am back to coding late
| into the night, and back at it after coffee and an English muffin
| the following morning (thankfully though I quit the cigarettes
| decades ago).
|
| *sigh* It's 5AM and I'm out of coffee and cigarettes. At least I
| found a stupid bug tonight.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I think the author of this blog would have told you to go to
| bed 5 hours ago and look with fresh eyes in the morning. You'd
| probably spot the bug instantly.
| funOtter wrote:
| This guy seems interesting .. I go to subscribe via RSS - no
| feed? :(
| ofrzeta wrote:
| He's a hackernews member, too. You can be pretty sure if he
| posts something it will show up here, for instance some time
| ago https://www.engineersneedart.com/systemsix/systemsix.html
| haunter wrote:
| There is https://www.engineersneedart.com/rss.xml
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I started programming as a hobby around 1983, on my Commodore 64,
| in 6th grade. All through high school, I never even considered
| programming as a career. I didn't think anyone could actually get
| paid for programming. We were all just hobbyists back then. No
| one talked about money.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Not a very useful comment, but this guy talks almost like me. We
| must be twin somewhere. I got the same programming addiction, got
| the same look at it... Strange and comforting...
| thesquib wrote:
| Glypha! I used to play that as a kid, I'm excited to check it out
| again.
| dolmen wrote:
| 25 years of professional programming, but not at Apple. Far away
| from being able to retire (4 kids, latest fresh from last year)
| :(
| binkHN wrote:
| You found something you enjoyed and turned it into a career.
| There is no reason why you wouldn't continue to enjoy it,
| especially with deadlines and all the other stuff that comes with
| work removed.
| toadi wrote:
| I started coding because I loved games. Thing was there was no
| unreal or other frameworks to help out. I was no Carmack writing
| my own 3d engine. I'm just not good enough in math for all that.
|
| But once I retire I will go back at writing games.
| Diesel555 wrote:
| > I kept also-busy with woodworking projects
|
| Why do programmers tend to enjoy woodworking? They have
| interesting parallels.
| MetallicCloud wrote:
| I don't know why, but after being a professional programmer for
| around 20 years, I have replaced all my hobby programming with
| woodworking. I love it. There's something about having a
| tangible object you can touch when you're done that makes it
| satisfying for me.
| badcarbine wrote:
| How do we know this whole story isn't AI generated?
| drakonka wrote:
| I don't think I'll ever stop coding, even after I retire. I
| originally learned programming in order to bring the random
| ideas, worlds, etc in my head to life. Even though I've now been
| doing it professionally for over a decade, the ideas never seem
| to run out.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| As for myself, I already know I won't be programming in
| retirement. Not because I don't love programming. I do! But
| because life is a journey and I know the next phase is teaching
| and mentoring. I don't know what it will look like exactly, but I
| know I won't be in the driver's seat.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I've been thinking along these lines, do you have a path in
| mind for how to get into teaching? What kind of teaching?
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Probably a community college class.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I like that it seems like he optimized the game for the Steam
| Deck.
| keyle wrote:
| A fantastic read, that gives me hope for the next 20 years.
|
| Also congrats for releasing a game in C/SDL in the days of
| _insert engine here_. A game that appears to have sold some
| copies.
|
| Once you become good at talking to the computer (coding), it's a
| very hard habit to lose I feel. I too have never stopped
| tinkering _outside the office clock_. I have plenty of little
| projects that tickle my fancy, but above all keep me interested.
|
| Computers are fascinating and always at the ready for a play:
| Player 1, $~: _
| ArcMex wrote:
| >Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom
| programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine
| doing in their spare time?
|
| Yes, absolutely!
| Hunpeter wrote:
| I'm 26 (so, born around the time author started at Apple) and
| took up programming as an on-and-off hobby in my early
| twenties. I've never worked in IT in any capacity and don't
| consider myself skilled or talented. But I love the thrill of
| figuring things out, of building (usually useless) things, of
| solving problems. I suspect there could be many like me, who
| perhaps never get into (or even try to get into) the industry,
| yet are enthusiastic about the field itself.
| mhh__ wrote:
| To even ask is ridiculous.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Older people are always scared of being made irrelevant by
| later generations.
|
| It's important not to internalize the fear response of having
| to shoot down everything that makes you feel threatened.
| potatoboiler wrote:
| As a current undergraduate, programming for fun is ubiquitous
| in my peers. Surprises me also that the author has to ask.
| tombert wrote:
| In a bit of fairness, I know a _lot_ of very competent
| engineers who do not code for fun at all. Programming is
| purely a job for them, and then they go home and hack on
| nothing.
|
| There's honestly nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly
| valid to do something purely for the pay (so long as what
| you're doing is ethical, obviously). I suspect there are
| plenty of young people who see the bloated salaries that
| software engineers get and decide to learn programming for
| purely economic reasons.
|
| This probably contrasts somewhat to the 80's and 90's,
| where it was substantially more difficult to "get into"
| computers, and as a result there was a strong selection
| bias towards really passionate people.
| digging wrote:
| I struggle a lot with my hobbies because I do almost no
| coding or learning about code in my free time, at least
| not directly. I think I could be a great(ish) programmer
| if I did programming as a hobby, but there's just so many
| other interesting and worthwhile things to do. I get a
| lot of FOMO from people who code as a hobby, and I think
| it doesn't help that they _don 't_ seem to get FOMO about
| my hobbies. But I know I will always feel something is
| missing if I don't spend time marveling at the natural
| world and creating art, so I guess I'm stuck.
| dolmen wrote:
| As someone who studied programming in the 90's, I can
| tell you that I was surprised about how many students
| were not passionated like myself. And this was already
| before the wave of scientist coming from other fields
| (physics, chemistry, biology) to computing in early
| 2000s.
| hugatest wrote:
| At uni, different styles do cluster.
|
| There are the circles in which the nerds cluster who are
| really in the tunnel about whatever subject it is, here
| it's programming or CS in general. They do it for fun, they
| come home and sit at the computer all evening and half the
| night. Occasionally they do the homework assignments, and
| if those are interesting, they nerd out about them
| endlessly. And they are really good at it. They don't
| really go to parties and are a tad (or a lot) anti-social.
| But they don't care. Typical minor subjects are math or
| physics. It's beautiful.
|
| Then there are the circles of the in-it-for-the-moneys.
| They do homework assignments because they have to, they go
| to classes because they have to, they read business news,
| go to parties, feel important and have dollar signs in
| their eyes every time they think about graduating and
| finally making big bucks. If lucky then they get help by
| some of the nerds (see above). But they actually detest the
| nerds, just as the nerds detest them.
|
| There are more circles and I don't want to deep-dive here,
| but I actually this also reflects at the workplace 10-20
| years later. It's easy to see from which of those two
| groups the high-performing ICs (some of them a bit socially
| awkward) come, and from which their managers, and why there
| is tension between those.
| bregma wrote:
| I interview a lot of students for co-op roles. Almost none
| seem to program outside of assignments -- or even show an
| interest in programming outside of assignments. We use that
| as a weeding-out criteria. Some terms we don't hire any
| students because we need programmers, not warm bodies
| looking for money in a hot field.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised. That was not my impression at
| university. Most people seemed to struggle with coding.
| tombert wrote:
| I have no idea if I am considered "young" (32), but I taught a
| few classes over the last few semesters to students who _were_
| unambiguously young, and I can definitely say that young people
| coding for fun are definitely out there.
|
| A few students of mine would show me little games they were
| working on, or websites they were building. Sure, they might be
| doing this a _bit_ for resume-fuel, but it was abundantly
| obvious to me that they were doing these things largely because
| they thought it was cool.
|
| And you know what? It _is_ cool! I tried my best to encourage
| them to keep at it.
| moffkalast wrote:
| The "it's for the resume" is a convenient excuse when people
| ask you why are you spending hundreds of hours on something
| that seems pointless but is fun to code.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| Anecdotally true: when my non-technically-inclined parents
| ask me why I'm working on my personal projects, I vaguely
| mumble something about "it'll be good for my resume" and
| try to change the topic.
|
| I definitely do not think these will benefit my resume in
| any way.
| franciscop wrote:
| Yeah exactly when "normal" people ask me why I contribute
| to open source now I tend to mumble something like that,
| career professional development blabla. When I was at
| university I would say something like "learning/practice
| programming", though back then most of my classmates spent
| their time playing LOL/DOTA/etc, so if I wanted to program
| for fun no one would care really.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I've reached a age where I have to answer "define young". Early
| thirties is weird. All the people I respect and learn from are
| still older than me, but not old old.
| vjk800 wrote:
| Hey, 30s is the new 20s, and so on.
|
| I'm in the same boat and I definitely still _feel_ young. I
| mean, I 'm fundamentally unchanged from when I was 16, and
| still like the same stuff like video games, computers, and so
| on. I have also always looked kinda young, which probably
| allowed me to propagate my youth until very recently. The
| biggest change I've noticed is not anything internal to me
| but how other people act around me; they talk to me like I'm
| an adult (which can be either good or bad depending on the
| situation), and the cashiers at the stores have stopped
| asking for an ID when I buy liquor (before 30 they still
| did!). Also, people don't give unsolicited advice as much as
| they used to; I suppose they think I know what I'm doing or
| don't care. This is definitely bad, because my modus operandi
| for life has always been to try weird stuff my own way and
| count on other people to stop me if I'm doing something
| completely stupid.
| qup wrote:
| I'm older than you and I actually considered that the author
| was talking about me! I thought "yeah, I'm an addict, we're
| still out there".
|
| It didn't occur to me that I was old until your comment.
| Thanks!
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| The "define young"-range seems to be a sliding window
| centered around your current age.
|
| Perhaps at some point there will be very few older than you
| and perhaps then the sliding window will be offset
| accordingly, but at least for me (almost, almost 40) I'm
| still well within the "define young" range from my own point
| of view.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Glypha looks like a lot of fun. A low-fi clone of Killer Queen -
| or is Killer Queen a hi-fi clone of Glypha? Either way, very
| nice!
| sethev wrote:
| Oh, wow! This is the creator of Glypha
| (https://boredzo.org/glypha/). I spent countless hours playing
| that game in the mid-ish 90's. Like so many games back then, you
| could tweak things with ResEdit. Nobody would believe my high
| score because they knew i could modify it.
| asveikau wrote:
| Oh, I recognize that name too, which he hasn't put front and
| centrer in the blog post. I remember playing Glider.
| cheschire wrote:
| I once had a PM who told me coding was just a stepping stone to
| them in their career. I couldn't understand, I thought they must
| not have been a "natural" like me.
|
| Fast forward a few years, after taking on more mentorship roles,
| then staff responsibilities, then slipping into project oversight
| roles... She was so right. Coding was a great stepping stone.
|
| Several years ago my father got promoted to some leadership role.
| In our conversation about it, he told me he had asked to get back
| closer tech, but his boss declined and said tech specialists are
| a dime a dozen. Technical leadership is very expensive to find
| though, and once you find one you don't let them go back to the
| production line.
|
| I still occasionally answer an SO question or make a few commits
| on personal pet projects, but lately I'm just as likely to go
| fishing instead or make edits to OpenStreetMap.
|
| Programming really is a special kind of career. I can't imagine
| making it the only one I ever tried though.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| wouldn't leadership value leadership? us vs them mentality?
| There are software eng at my company who are much much more
| valuable than some of the leadership
| varjag wrote:
| Rule of thumb is the worse an engineer is the sooner they try
| to make a dash into management or other non-coding role. Doing
| the job you're not cut for is incredibly stressful and
| humiliating.
|
| It is important though to not compensate for the humiliation
| with smugness to those who are good at their job.
| hdidhxifj wrote:
| or you're probably not that good programmer...?
| bratbag wrote:
| Or they are better at both then you, but value different
| things.
|
| Who can tell?
| mhh__ wrote:
| A cost of bad technical leadership is making it look like all
| talent is the same.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Several years ago my father got promoted to some leadership
| role. In our conversation about it, he told me he had asked to
| get back closer tech, but his boss declined and said tech
| specialists are a dime a dozen. Technical leadership is very
| expensive to find though, and once you find one you don't let
| them go back to the production line."_
|
| Ah, the foundational myth of middle management.
| biorach wrote:
| Middle managers are a dime a dozen. However a good technical
| lead - who can contribute to the engineering team's
| discussions _and_ lead the team are very very hard to find.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Hot take: I think good middle managers are more rare than
| good technical leads.
|
| "But my manager sucks!" Yes, probably. Part of the reason
| managers have a bad reputation is that there are so few
| good ones, and so many bad or mediocre ones, that most
| people deal with bad ones their entire career. And, since a
| good manager looks a lot like _leadership material_ if you
| squint, the great ones often get Peter Principled into
| being mediocre bosses.
|
| But when you do find a good manager, you realize they have
| a very specific skill set that is incredibly rare and
| difficult to master. They multiply the effectiveness of
| everyone on their team, including those good technical
| leads, but also the juniors and seniors.
| matwood wrote:
| The most important part of your comment is the distinction
| between 'management' and 'lead'. Leadership is critically
| important and very hard to find. Ideally you find a leader
| who doesn't mind managing, though you're getting into
| unicorn territory.
| urthor wrote:
| Really?
|
| IMO there's an awful lot, they just ask for mid 200,000s.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Key word is "good" here.
| jldugger wrote:
| I've met plenty of engineering leaders being paid double
| that who are not "good at their job."
|
| It's a hard job to do well; it requires you care about
| technical details but also deal almost exclusively with
| people. It's a rare person who naturally fits into the
| "extrovert engineer" role and corporations are shitty
| about training those who don't fit yet to practice the
| right behaviors.
|
| Plus, if engineering is "design with constraints" then
| you are given the extra restraint of headcount and
| finances.
| shapefrog wrote:
| _We_ are special and unique, that is why _we_ were chosen not
| them.
| pavlov wrote:
| I'm guessing the same story was told 600 years ago in
| Spain:
|
| "My father, an Inquisitor himself, told me of the time when
| the Grand Inquisitor promoted him. Ordinary priests are a
| dime a dozen, the great man said, but it takes special
| skill to be an Inquisitor. And that's why you never let
| them go back to the pulpit when you do find a good one."
| tnova wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow the analogy here, are you implying
| technical leadership is committing heinous crimes against
| humanity?
| Y_Y wrote:
| Or cleansing Christendom of its heresy? Or showing in the
| wrong sketch, quite contrary to expectations.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| asdfman123 wrote:
| No one expects the Spanish Inquisition
| pavlov wrote:
| It's a joke on the original anecdote's timeless formula
| of double-filtered appeal to patriarchal authority (the
| father relaying the wisdom of the boss to the son).
| psychlops wrote:
| Nobody expects the technical inquisition!
| 6510 wrote:
| I suppose that takes us back to "Beware of the Believers"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaGgpGLxLQw
| irrational wrote:
| > Technical leadership is very expensive to find though, and
| once you find one you don't let them go back to the production
| line.
|
| I have a friend at our company who is a gifted programmer. He
| was moved into a management position. He discovered that he
| hated working in a leadership position. He tried to get them to
| move him back to an individual contributor position. They
| refused. He said, move me back or I quit. It took them more
| than a year to transition him back to an individual contributor
| role. That was a few years ago and he has been happily plugging
| along ever since. He says that even after he transitioned back,
| they kept coming to him to get his opinion on issues, the only
| way he got them to stop was to completely refuse to respond.
| doppel wrote:
| I feel it's completely acceptable to wish to stay in an IC
| position, but to refuse outright to give advise or share the
| experience (it's hard to tell from your short paragraph)
| seems... odd?
|
| It's acceptable to want to stay in a specific role, but I am
| not certain I feel it's acceptable to eschew an increasing
| responsibility or mentoring role as you gain experience. That
| way lies the "genius programmer that works alone and writes
| code no one else wunderstands".
| amelius wrote:
| It can be explained by social anxiety issues, as these
| people typically prefer to sit in a corner coding and be
| left alone. Probably a self-reinforcing condition that's
| difficult to get out of. Just one example I can think of.
| [deleted]
| wiz21c wrote:
| > , but to refuse outright to give advise or share the
| experience
|
| I think there's mentoring and leadership. These are
| different. I sure can mentor and help people to better
| think/program but don't ask me to push a team to meet a
| deadline they don't want to meet because they warned the
| marketing department 2 months before that they wouldn't do
| it. Been there, done that. Once in that position, you're
| pushing people, you become the bad guy and you have to
| explain that it's "for the good of the company, because
| they have to see the big picture, etc", IOW "screw you, I'm
| the boss". For that you need to be crazy enough to think
| that what you want is more important than what other
| humans-like-you are. OK, leadership is not always that and
| most often, you have to gather enough trust from your team
| so that from time to time, you can be a pusher. But if you
| don't have trust and you are always pushed to push, well,
| welcome to hell, and say goodbye to your health.
|
| It's very different than "let's work together to find the
| best possible way to solve a problem, taking all the
| necessary time to produce something reliable".
| ravenstine wrote:
| This is how toxic middle management is born. Management is
| not seen as a skill of its own but as a title that
| _obviously_ everyone should strive for.
|
| Also, "acceptable"? By whom? Why should I care what they
| think? I want to be engineering software. If they don't
| like that, they can either deal with it or let me go. Good
| thing there's plenty of developer jobs as well as corporate
| bozos to take the coveted management positions.
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| Saying "no" is the correct answer.
|
| It's the same as not solving chat request bypassing
| prioritization.
|
| The company is full of incentives to ask that guy for
| guidance/things, if he doesn't say no most or all of the
| time, he simply won't have time for his IC role, and would
| remain a lead just not in name.
|
| It's hard that it comes to that extreme measure, but if his
| requests aren't being heard, it's either that or leaving.
| The company has to let him be an IC or explicitly tell him
| that he can't stay there as IC, are at least negotiate some
| timme allocation for those requests and log them
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I think it's one thing to push back on repeated requests
| for your input/opinion outside of your role in a way that
| makes you a "de facto" leader. But I think it's wholly
| another if you're the person with the best insight, and
| there is need for your knowledge to be shared. Coders are
| knowledge workers, not widget makers - they're paid for
| what they know and can do with that knowledge. This
| doesn't need to mean you become a manager, join
| committees, get added to ever-increasing cross-functional
| project teams.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Another simple trick if you don't like saying "no":
| become a freelancer.
|
| It will never ever occur to anybody in the company that a
| freelance software dev could possibly be put into a
| management role, so they won't ask. As opposed to an
| employed software dev.
|
| Bonus if you're in the EU/UK: in most countries in the EU
| this will even lead to tax breaks and higher before-tax
| hourly rates. To the point that you'll make (way) more
| than your "higher"-up(s).
| haspok wrote:
| > It will never ever occur to anybody in the company that
| a freelance software dev could possibly be put into a
| management role...
|
| If by "freelancer" you mean "contractor", then this
| statement is false. I had worked at multiple places in
| the UK where this happened, I suppose mostly because
| paying these people a salary would have required an
| disproportionate amount of money (as opposed to a
| standard daily rate) - UK taxes are very high in the top
| bracket.
|
| If by "freelancer" you mean a real freelancer (the guy
| who has multiple short gigs at the same time, and needs
| to be constantly on the lookout for new opportunities)
| then that is already half of a management position, even
| if you don't have anyone reporting for you.
|
| It is true though that as a contractor one can reasonably
| easily avoid management duties, and enjoy not having to
| worry about company politics. The downside is that it is
| easy to end up in a place where you have to accept that
| comparably junior people dictate architecture and some
| tech decisions which you discarded 10 years ago as
| ineffective, stupid, fad, or all of the above (TDD being
| a typical example). The upside is that your time at each
| place is limited anyway, and there is always something to
| learn...
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >TDD being a typical example
|
| Shots fired! I love tests, but I mostly agree with you.
| The whole idea of 'write your tests first' is great if
| _everything_ is precisely defined. I find it odd I haven
| 't seen more pragmatism around unit testing in the
| blogosphere. It's TDD or death out there.
| MoreQARespect wrote:
| Where not everything is precisely defined but "you know
| the right outcome when you see it" is where I think
| snapshot test driven development really shines:
|
| https://hitchdev.com/hitchstory/approach/snapshot-test-
| drive...
|
| E.g. "define API call -> don't define API response ->
| write the code that spits out the correct response ->
| auto-rewrite the test according to the response and
| commit".
| damagednoob wrote:
| > Bonus if you're in the EU/UK: in most countries in the
| EU this will even lead to tax breaks and higher before-
| tax hourly rates.
|
| Having been a contractor in the UK for 5 years, I don't
| think this is true. Between VAT, Company and Dividend
| tax, the taxman (HMRC) always gets his share.
| wingerlang wrote:
| > I feel it's completely acceptable to wish to stay in an
| IC position, but to refuse outright to give advise or share
| the experience (it's hard to tell from your short
| paragraph) seems... odd?
|
| I think it depends on how much time they expected him to
| take out of his days. My girlfriend resigned from a job
| after becoming a go-to person for everything and everyone.
| It caused her to not have time for her own work,
| effectively being way underpaid, and being stressed all the
| time.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Yes, this happens. If one behaves like a pleasant,
| helpful individual (as one should!), it's a risk. There
| are only so many hours in the day!
|
| My advice for any such person is to find a way to
| redirect questions to other capable people (when you're
| overloaded), or to reframe answers to be more
| educational. I'm not perfect at it but I'm trying.
|
| Some helpful tips:
|
| - If you're going to give someone instruction, ask them
| to share _their_ screen while you walk them through the
| steps. They are far more likely to remember it this way.
|
| - Avoid short answers. Be annoyingly informative when
| appropriate. _Yes, I 'm happy to tell you about XYZ but
| not without giving you way more than you bargained for!_
|
| Consider these scenarios. In each scenario, which option
| would you pick?
|
| A: Look at my notes and figure it out for myself OR get
| an answer from Annie in 5 seconds
|
| B: Look at my notes and figure it out for myself OR be
| accosted by Annie for a 30-minute video call where I'm
| asked to screen share my way through the steps
|
| I think B is more likely to produce self-reliant
| teammates.
| irrational wrote:
| > in the same way we expect that a retired doctor probably stops
| performing surgeries and begins to spend more time on the golf
| course.
|
| My father is a retired doctor. I've never known him to play golf,
| but he works 60 hours a week in the emergency room of the clinic
| on the local Indian reservation. He claims only working 60 hours
| a week is retirement for a doctor.
| qup wrote:
| May he enjoy his retirement. Send him some thanks, from the
| rest of us.
| hgs3 wrote:
| > But there is something becoming more familiar to me as I go
| back to the wild west of C programming (where very little happens
| behind the scenes I might point out - no garbage collection
| here!).
|
| I share this sentiment. I pursued computer science because of the
| romanticized notation of tracking every bit and byte and talking
| directly to the hardware. I know I'm not alone given the
| popularity of old-school fantasy consoles and consumer
| microcontrollers, like Arduino.
|
| It saddens me to say but if I were starting over today I might
| not enter the field professionally. Most modern development is
| gluing components together and wrangling packages. It's so far
| removed from the machine and the distance is only growing.
| randcraw wrote:
| I've noticed the same transition away from wrenching your own
| low-level code to making high-level calls to routines written
| by others. Maybe that's partly because my employer (a big
| pharma) tends to attract either IT types or bench scientists,
| but few who are pure computist CS types inclined to get their
| fingernails dirty with bit twiddling. After 17 years working in
| biomedical R&D, each time a low-level CS topic happens to
| arise, I'm surprised again by how much it resonates with me and
| attracts my rapt attention. Alas, because pharmas seldom hire
| CS grads, there seem to be few with whom I can share my glee.
|
| Or maybe today's CS grads speak a different language too.
| xupybd wrote:
| The most unfulfilling days for me are when my dependencies seem
| to fall over.
|
| I have a project that only builds in one version of Visual
| Studio on my machine. I know it's bad, I know I should get to
| the bottom of it before it becomes a real problem, but it's
| soul crushing work.
| nasmorn wrote:
| Interestingly as frustrating as this sometimes is I tend to
| become obsessed with not letting the computer win. So it
| feels much less like work than some kind of mythical quest
| with a very shallow plot.
| bombolo wrote:
| > The most unfulfilling days for me are when my dependencies
| seem to fall over.
|
| I tend to pick only stuff that is packaged in a distribution,
| if at all possible. They usually do a decent job at
| gatekeeping the countless libraries created by people that
| have no idea on how to make a library.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| 'System' languages like c / c++ / rust are a natural fit for
| hobby programming because you're writing something to run _on
| your machine_ , to scratch your particular itch. All the better
| if that language is able to run on a little microcontroller and
| move an actuator or what have you.
|
| I say that to contrast with 'application' languages like java,
| nodejs, or whatever. I'm not saying hobbiest stuff doesn't get
| written in those but you're a lot less likely to see an OSS
| spring or react app on someone's github than you're likely to
| see some cool little command line program that does one small
| thing.
| worrycue wrote:
| > I pursued computer science because of the romanticized
| notation of tracking every bit and byte and talking directly to
| the hardware.
|
| Isn't computer science mostly math? Figure people in computer
| science would be more at home with the abstract stuff like
| Haskell where you can't even see the underlying hardware and
| your programs are expressed as a bunch of (declarative)
| functions where sequential execution of instructions is a very
| small part of your programs.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Um, no. At most schools, the only place you _might_ touch
| something as esoteric as Haskell is in a programming
| languages class.
| bombolo wrote:
| At my university haskell was required from the start and
| used in several courses.
| hdidhxifj wrote:
| it used to, outside of the us. now everywhere is java 101.
| Aperocky wrote:
| imo a self contained component are the same as bit and byte.
|
| To me, the draw of programming being that it is both a logical
| puzzle and a constructive endeavor, brings me a lot of joy to
| be able to see my stuff work. Whether that's manipulating
| memory bytes or using a package someone else wrote to do
| something I want, there's little difference in terms of
| satisfaction.
| the_only_law wrote:
| My entry to the field was a bit odd. I've been a hobbyist since
| I was a kid, but I never wanted to enter the files
| professionally, at least not the way I did. I knew I wouldn't
| like it.
|
| But my immediate post high school plans fell through I spent a
| year working crappy jobs until I eventually figured "you know I
| bet I could get a job as a software developer if I tried". It
| surely would do a lot better for paying the bills.
|
| Nowadays I mostly tell people: I didn't get into programming
| for the money, but that's sure as hell why I entered the
| industry.
|
| Of course, it looks like my little stint is over, but I don't
| know what to do now. On paper it's the only thing I'm qualified
| for that's not unskilled labor.
| digging wrote:
| Why is your stint over now?
| [deleted]
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > Most modern development is gluing components together and
| wrangling packages. It's so far removed from the machine and
| the distance is only growing.
|
| That's actually what I love most about things today. Hard
| components I might want to use probably already have a ready to
| made library I can start with. Time from inception to prototype
| to production is so short that it really removes a lot of the
| tedium. I wish it could be even shorter but a lot of the time
| I'm writing code is because there isn't something that meets my
| specific requirements. I wish AI could fill that gap but it
| feels like we're an extremely long way away from that. In other
| words, the part I enjoy most is the high level problem solving
| or even coming up with what new requirements might be to solve
| a problem. The mechanical aspect of realizing the vision can be
| fun but it can also be quite frustrating / repetitively
| tedious.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Same for me as well. I don't want to talk to hardware because
| the ideas I have in my head are so removed from that problem
| space. I want to build tools to help normal people do stuff
| or create automation. I fully understand and appreciate that
| to make all of that work, the low level stuff also needs to
| be fast and functional, but I'm not the person to make that
| optimization.
|
| I really enjoy being a web developer despite most of us being
| the new butt of the so many programmer-centric jokes.
| randcraw wrote:
| But does the cut-and-paste model of coding scale to 30+
| years of developing code? I don't know of any problem
| domain that's so deep and compelling that I could stay
| engrossed in solving high-level tasks for that long. Either
| I have to change domains (as I have maybe 4 times in my 37
| years), or vary my routine by occasionally diving into the
| nitty gritty of low-level code and O/S services.
|
| Being a _user_ of code doesn't appeal to me at all. I work
| at a big pharma and know lots of biologists and especially
| chemists who are proficient programmers. They use code
| (more than craft it), but they're impassioned by the
| science itself. Coding is merely a tool to them, the means
| to a more compelling end.
|
| I don't share their perspective, nor do I want to compete
| in that space, so I get my jollies by learning the info
| extraction process and diving into the cool, underserved,
| often complicated parts, like image quantification and
| pattern enhancement/recognition in raw and dirty data. That
| often requires some math and some low level bit twiddling,
| in code and in signals. I can't imagine cutting and pasting
| my way through that world, nor would I ever want to.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > It saddens me to say but if I were starting over today I
| might not enter the field professionally. Most modern
| development is gluing components together and wrangling
| packages. It's so far removed from the machine and the distance
| is only growing.
|
| I don't know what's sadder: That this kind of programming is
| becoming a lost art, or that nobody seems to care. I got my
| first job out of college partially because in the interview
| when I was asked to implement some algorithm XYZ in "any
| language I choose" I went with X86 assembly and nailed it.
| Well-performing code was highly valued at that company. Knowing
| how to ensure your code fit into the cache and your memory
| accesses stayed on one page were considered critical
| programming skills.
|
| Now, outside of a few rare embedded or game engine jobs, nobody
| seems to give a shit about any of this. It's just "glue these
| APIs and libraries together and ship the resulting crap as soon
| as it barely runs." Nobody cares about the size of the
| resulting executable. Nobody cares about or even knows their
| code's runtime heap footprint. Nobody cares or even measures
| how many cache misses they're encountering. I feel like an old
| grandpa even typing this stuff out.
|
| The worst part is that end users are the ones that end up
| losing. It's their system resources that are ultimately being
| wasted.
| visarga wrote:
| I have known programmers who don't know how a float is
| represented in memory. I just can't comprehend how they can
| gloss over basics like that.
| digging wrote:
| Guilty. I'm pretty good at my job, but I never learned CS
| fundamentals and don't work in a context where this matters
| (I currently work in front-end JS/TS).
|
| I don't think it's worthless knowledge to me, but I think
| you're a bit blinded by your own context. I have seen many
| comments on HN bemoaning "Developers who don't even know
| X", and X is always something different.
|
| I don't think there's a smoking gun for bad developers and
| it's weird to me when programmers think there is one, tbh.
| Everyone has gaps in their knowledge, and with something so
| arcane as programming, it's very easy to have _no idea_
| that you 're missing some important or "fundamental" piece
| of knowledge
| hugatest wrote:
| And why is that necessary knowledge?
|
| Don't get me wrong, once you go down to embedded you
| sometimes do need to know and sometimes it just improves
| your understanding (and it's kinda cool anyway), but if you
| do high-level work, perhaps web work, all you need to know
| is the abstract interface of floats as a data type. What
| operations you can do, what is guaranteed about the result
| of those operations (loss of precision etc). In other
| words, why would a Haskell programmer need to know the IEEE
| FP standard?
| visarga wrote:
| Maybe not everyone needs to know, but for example it's
| important to know about it in ML. You can have overflow,
| underflow, non-deterministic addition when parallelised,
| or just need to speed up your network.
| hugatest wrote:
| Right. You can know these abstract properties though
| without knowing how a float is _actually_ represented in
| memory.
| randcraw wrote:
| Debugging. If you don't know how your code is translated
| into CPU ops, you won't be able to recognize the clues
| that malfunctions almost always provide when code
| misbehaves. Translators, compilers, libraries, and new
| code routinely have bugs. Depending on a google search to
| pin down the source of your troubles often fails, and of
| course is of no help at all diagnosing your own bugs.
|
| It also depends on your philosophy. I want to master my
| machine not be its servant.
| dfox wrote:
| Because not caring how FP values are stored and what the
| implications are (or even not realising that you favorite
| programming language uses FP by default) is a
| particularly fast way to become the "minus 10 times
| programmer".
|
| Storing monetary values as FP is one thing, but I've seen
| phone numbers and other numeric identifiers (long time
| ago before PCI-DSS even credit card numbers) stored as FP
| values, with predictable results.
| hugatest wrote:
| As long as you know the implications, you don't need to
| know how the values are stored.
|
| You may say it's easier to know how they are stored, then
| you can derive the implications anytime you need them.
| Maybe that works for you, but most people who I know that
| got this wrong do actually know how FP values are stored,
| they are just drawing the wrong conclusions. So better
| focus on the implications, cause it's those that matter.
|
| I already expressed this in the GP comment, and it's a
| little shocking to see all the replies that didn't
| actually pick up on that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Knowing how the values are stored provides you the "why"
| behind the practical implications. Another example: Half
| of the range of all values that "float" can store lie
| between -1.0 and 1.0. Knowing how those values are
| encoded in memory tells you why.
| digging wrote:
| > Because not caring how FP values are stored and what
| the implications are (or even not realising that you
| favorite programming language uses FP by default) is a
| particularly fast way to become the "minus 10 times
| programmer".
|
| I don't think that's true at all. You're merely looking
| at a symptom of someone who is intrinsically a negative
| performer. But that's rather like assuming that someone
| with a cough has tuberculosis.
| dolmen wrote:
| You have to understand that float are negative powers of
| 2 and that conversion from decimal is not as
| straightforward as for integer: conversion from decimal
| often leads to loss of precision contrary to what happens
| for integers.
| thfuran wrote:
| You don't need to know anything about how they're
| represented to know they can't represent all decimal
| values.
| fnord77 wrote:
| because you would know not to represent money as a float
| in any sort of serious system
|
| or any other value where you have repeated calculations
| that would introduce errors
| digging wrote:
| > That this kind of programming is becoming a lost art, or
| that nobody seems to care.
|
| I think there are real costs if the level of incompetence
| adds up over a stack/system. But as a general rule, I don't
| think this is a sad phenomenon at all. Well, actually, it's
| fair to feel sad about it, but it should be understood as a
| form of growth for our society. (Growth is often painful.)
|
| Writing low-level code should be viewed like blacksmithing or
| any other technology. At one time, it was the cutting edge
| that enabled new tools to exist. But over time, it's become
| well understood and abstracted and it's possible for us to
| build factories that automatically output many of the steel
| products we need. And now we can mass-produce steel
| components for more advanced machines that would have been
| impossible if they had to be forged by hand.
| segfaltnh wrote:
| There's a bit of a renaissance here in Rust, or perhaps this
| is just my bias. Many people are drawn to the lack of a
| garbage collector and efficiency of the runtime code. Lots of
| packages optimize algorithms that are unlikely to be strictly
| necessary for the task at hand.
|
| I think it will remain niche to care deeply about these
| things but they aren't forgotten. In my late 30s and finding
| this type of thing more and more fascinating despite working
| for companies building criminally inefficient software using
| Ruby and Python and dozens of microservices.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I have a friend who's been a programmer at Apple for 30+ years
| now. He's still very enthusiastic, though I'm sure he could
| retire several times over by now.
|
| Great programmers are the ones who have side projects they're
| doing for the fun of it.
| kshay wrote:
| Glider was the Flappy Bird of its day!
| totorovirus wrote:
| What I've seen in the past two years, a lot of people who have
| seemingly no fit to a life of a programmer have joined software
| industry. In my experience the best devs were the people who
| self-taught programming for pure joy of building a software,
| making a glimpse of imaging to something real through writing
| code. The others who were on this job because the compensation
| was hefty - they were likely to opt out to a manager. I am not
| saying that hobby-devs are better people or co-worker. Every
| people has their role in a team. Nevertheless these people who
| habitually code are the ones who remain as devs after all.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| There is middle ground though. I love to code and am doing this
| job for that reason, but there's a lot of other things I want
| to do while I'm alive, too.
|
| When I'm done coding all day I want to do other things like
| exercise, climb mountains, learn instruments, etc. My
| motivation to do other things isn't due to a lack of curiosity,
| but curiosity channeled into other activities.
| imdsm wrote:
| And that's understandable. What John was saying and many of
| us here echo is that, for us, we'd like to want do the other
| things, but programming (outside of the commercial grind) is
| sweeter than all those things. To be consumed by (personal)
| work, working late into the night only to wake up and
| continue, uninterrupted and enjoying the bliss of focus,
| well, it can't be beaten. There's nothing like it.
|
| > Programming is beginning again to be to the exclusion of
| all else in my life. (The table saw sits slowly rusting. The
| bike hangs on the wall in the garage.)
|
| This in particular hits home. Programming, to the exclusion
| of all else in life.
|
| > What am I trying to say? I have a programming addiction?
| (Maybe.)
|
| There are times that I feel pulled in every direction by
| life, family, work, being alive, and it keeps me from this
| software ambrosia, even though I know that spending my life
| in front of a CRT/LCD/TFT/whatever they are these days is in
| a way wasted. I've spent 23 years doing it and I'm 33 now,
| and it feels like life has flown by in the glow of a terminal
| prompt.
| etherealG wrote:
| I would suggest reading a book called Zen and the art of
| motorcycle maintenance. It might help to align your
| feelings of addiction with your feelings of "spread" :)
|
| Engineering is a wonderful tool but also a form of art.
| It's ok to indulge your passion with some balance to the
| rest of life without calling it addiction.
| intended wrote:
| I used to love code in school. Never ended up coding for
| work: Went from finance to analysis, biz dev and
| management. Work was work.
|
| The happiest I've been is in the past few months, in a new
| role. There are several reasons, but one of them is
| definitely that i have ann excuse to get back to code.
|
| I find myself waking up early, and having work to finish,
| on a Saturday - that I enjoy. It's feeding my ability to
| work on other personal projects, that make me happier and I
| learn new things.
|
| > To be consumed by (personal) work, working late into the
| night only to wake up and continue, uninterrupted and
| enjoying the bliss of focus, well, it can't be beaten.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| That's interesting to me. Personally, I feel like you can
| apply the same mindset to a lot of other activities, which
| makes them satisfying in the same "way" that programming
| is.
|
| Putting things in neat little boxes, solving little
| puzzles... it's kind of hard to describe, but at least
| personally there are other things that give me the same
| sense of satisfaction.
| simonh wrote:
| I think the important thing is that people enjoy it. They may
| enjoy other things too, maybe more, and have other
| responsibilities and that's fine. One of my kids is obsessed
| with cars, she's a proper petrol head, but she's going into
| software engineering. I told her that's fine as long as you
| genuinely enjoy programming, cars can be a great hobby. Life
| doesn't have to be about one thing.
|
| Anyway in IT there are loads of different jobs other than
| programming. There's QA, application support, databases,
| project management, team leads, all sorts and it's pretty easy
| to switch tracks once you're on the inside.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| I think I'm conditioned to have reduced respect for managers
| because in my experience they are former devs who were
| "promoted" out of touching the code. As a result, when they
| offer technical advice, it's bad technical advice, or at best
| merely "unhelpful", usually because it's obvious (e.g. "did you
| try {first thing I tried}?"
|
| I pose that such people shouldn't be devs _or_ managers, but
| "manager" is a role that tends to be forgiving of under-
| qualification... because ultimately the good devs don't need to
| be "managed."
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Those kinds of managers may not be coders but assuming they
| are actually good at managing (and know their limitations),
| they play an important role.
|
| It's important to respect that other people are bringing
| different things to the table. Everyone's got different
| strengths and weaknesses.
| krageon wrote:
| > It's important to respect that other people are bringing
| different things to the table. Everyone's got different
| strengths and weaknesses.
|
| It is also important to respect that there are a lot of
| people that may bring _something_ to the table, but not
| necessarily a whole lot. Sure, they 'll have strengths and
| weaknesses and they are whole human beings with lives and
| people that love them, but this doesn't mean they are good
| at their job. And it also doesn't mean that they're good in
| a management or dev setting.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _> Those kinds of managers may not be coders but assuming
| they are actually good at managing (and know their
| limitations), they play an important role._
|
| What role is that?
| GoatOfAplomb wrote:
| Adding on to ambicapter:
|
| Get the high-performing devs their good ratings and
| promotions. Get the low-performing devs moving better or
| off the team. Bring in more good devs.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Translating good decisions from these genius coders into
| management-speak (aka justifying good technical decisions
| with sound business acumen) and managing political
| capital in order to be able to push through non-
| negotiable technical efforts or, on the flipside, gain
| favor in exchange for not being able to do all the things
| we want to do.
| Charlie_Black wrote:
| The best engineers I know all started coding for fun too. Not
| to build "real-life" usable software, but to solve algorithmic
| puzzles.
| stavros wrote:
| My fun is building real-life usable software and seeing
| people getting value out of them, so I guess YMMV. I'm very
| lucky that I really like doing this, as it makes work as fun
| as my hobby, and my personal portfolio has a bunch of
| finished (if generally small) products in it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'm getting my kicks from finding out why things don't work
| and making them work.
| godshatter wrote:
| I enjoy this too, but predicting who is going to like what
| exactly is still a mystery to me. Programs I built that I
| think are the most beautiful and useful thing around get
| ignored or just tolerated and some silly bash script or
| Word macro I wrote in five minutes as a one-off for someone
| has been passed around multiple times and is still in use
| 20 years later.
|
| Where I get my fun is that I live to increase my
| understanding of something. This code should be doing
| "this", but it's doing "that" instead. Is there something
| I'm missing in my basic understanding of this particular
| topic? When I follow it through and get that "Ahh, I get
| it!" moment, it's like a drug for me. All is suddenly right
| with the world again. It's why I gravitate to lower level
| languages and languages that give me more control.
|
| The rest is building scaffolding and applying standard
| recipes and carefully laying things out as I go. I still
| enjoy it, but I don't get the happiness that I get from
| getting one of those "aha!" moments. Or being told my
| stupid Word macro saved someone hours of work in some
| random meeting somewhere, I guess.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I definitely get that a lot, I build things I think
| are amazing, and then nobody uses them ever. Oh well.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| In my experience as a non programmer, the best devs are
| hobbyists. Having taught myself Python so I could empathise
| with my team I can confirm that the passion and enthusiasm for
| programming as a hobby can be strong indicator of a high
| performing engineer.
| deepzn wrote:
| I really enjoyed reading other posts from your blogs as well -
| https://www.engineersneedart.com/blog/interview/interview.ht...
|
| I have bookmarked many tech blogs, but find it hard to get the
| time to read or catch up with them. There are so many interesting
| stories out there. I hope to collect as many cool stories
| throughout my life and career.
| msarnoff wrote:
| I worked closely with the author (John Calhoun, @JKCalhoun) at
| Apple in my first job out of college. On my first day, I remember
| being introduced to him. I looked on his bookshelf and saw a
| printed and bound copy of the Glider source code. I asked him if
| it was the same Glider I remembered playing as a little kid in
| the early 90s on our friends' Mac. And it was. It was a real
| "holy crap" moment for me, not only did I get to meet the author
| of one of the very first computer games I ever played, but I got
| to work with him!
|
| We'd hang out in each other's offices (the "open floor plan"
| trend hadn't quite taken hold, we actually had private/semi-
| private offices back then) and talk about old computers and
| stuff. I was starting to get into hardware hacking as a hobby. He
| gave me a Tektronix oscilloscope and an Apple IIe (both still
| work, they're sitting on my shelves and I'm looking at them right
| now!) which was amazingly generous of him. He wanted to give me a
| big box full of helium-neon lasers and optics and power supplies,
| but had to decline due to my lack of space. Hope you're doing
| well, John!
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Thanks for the write-up! I met one senior engineer like this
| and it was a fantastic experience.
| aeturnum wrote:
| For me, at least, programming is simply the most profitable
| articulation of an underlying personality trait that involves
| productivity, play, mischief, sardonicism and critique all
| together. This is what people mean when they point out that
| "hacking" isn't about software. The tantalizing just-out-of-reach
| articulation of a compelling concept. Satiating.
| badpun wrote:
| >The tantalizing just-out-of-reach articulation of a compelling
| concept.
|
| What out of reach concepts do you have? I've found that, with
| time, I could code almost anything (barring ultraspecialized
| programs like FEA analysis etc.). The only thing between me and
| the finished program is hundreds or thousands of hours of work.
| I don't see magic in that.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Oh - I was trying to gesture at that feeling you get right
| before you start implementing a solution. The one where you
| _think_ you see it perfectly and all you need to do is write
| it down and it will work. It 's the feeling you get right
| before you accidentally stay up until 2am.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Aim for small things. Creating a small nice pleasant to use
| intuitive API is like a puzzle. Make a super nice component
| entity system that 12 year old could use with pleasure. Or a
| hierarchical finite state machine that an average developer
| would reach for because of its sheer simplicity instead of
| creating their own tangled mess out of classes, variables,
| ifs and loops. Those goals often feel like just out of reach.
| awongh wrote:
| How is sardonicism involved in programming? It is a trait many
| in tech have, I'm not sure if you're saying that it's
| positively involved in doing programming....
| moffkalast wrote:
| It's a very effective coping mechanism for dealing with
| constant problems would be my guess. Here's what GPT 4 has to
| say on the matter, I think it's pretty hilarious:
|
| "Programmers have such a sunny job, full of rainbows and
| unicorns, that they've taken to leaving little love notes in
| the form of sardonic comments within their code. It's their
| way of whispering sweet nothings to the universe about the
| sheer joy of tracking down that one pesky, elusive bug at 3
| AM, or the pure elation they feel when the system crashes for
| the hundredth time for no apparent reason. They do it with
| such grace, wearing a smile that's as bright as their
| computer screens in a dark room. Indeed, who wouldn't want a
| slice of that pie?"
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think there are lots of opportunities to be sardonic in
| programs! Either literally in comments or figuratively in
| programmatic structures you use, or at a higher level of
| project design. Any time the system is in a bad state,
| appearing like it's heading towards a crash, but you've
| prepared a clause to catch and diffuse the situation it feels
| a little sardonic to me.
| cyberferret wrote:
| I can totally relate. I started programming at around 18, writing
| games and utilities for DOS and other OSs at the time. I am 56
| now and still actively writing code for my own SaaS.
|
| I expect that when I eventually retire, I will end up writing
| code for Arduino devices and other things because it is what I
| truly love to do, and I never want to stop learning something
| new.
| pluijzer wrote:
| After many years I'm still pasionate about programming, still do
| it in my spare time and enjoy my work.
|
| But, it really does need to be in a language and platform I
| enjoy. I also notice that if you have a job with a more niche
| language all your collegues will be passionate about the work
| too.
|
| This is why I personally do not care much about language
| comparisons. It might be that the language of my choice is only
| marginally better and in some case worse as a more mainstream
| language. But there are cultures around languages and you need to
| fit with that culture to get the most joy out of your work.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Niche languages filter for nerds, and nerds are more fun to
| work with? (if you are good at what you do, else you will incur
| the nerds' wrath).
| pluijzer wrote:
| That can very well be ;)
|
| I think those that choose to go into programming purely
| because it can earn well (I have nothing against this by the
| way) will choose to invest in one of the more popular
| languages because there are more job opportunities in it.
| Also there would be any, let's say, Common Lisp bootcamps so
| it is more likely that the people that know it have picked it
| up because of some passion.
|
| When focusing on nice languages it is very easy to get hired
| for positions that need it because there is less competition.
| Though, contrary to what I would have expected usually it
| pays a little bit less. The highest paying jobs I had so far
| were in Java.
| badpun wrote:
| I agree. Strongest and most passionate devs I've seen by far
| in my career so far were almost all Scala developers.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I can't imagine _not_ programming after I retire. My day job as a
| dev seriously infringes on my real programming tasks, and when I
| retire I will rejoice that I can finally get to spend more time
| on actually meaningful work.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| > I am not sure though if this is still the case for software
| engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for
| whom programming is not merely a job but something they can
| imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was
| winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or
| so when I started getting serious into programming that all
| fellow programmers I met were also doing it with a kind of
| passion. How is it you can love a machine?
|
| As someone who went into software development because it was my
| passion and my hobby, its always disappointing how often that
| isn't the case for so many people in this industry. It's draining
| actually; The lack of enthusiasm and genuine interest is replaced
| by a clock-in and clock-out mentality. Bootcamps have just become
| farms for people who need a job, but not those who really want
| this job.
|
| I want to work with more people who LOVE software and find the
| development of machines and the code that runs on them as
| fascinating as I do. Unfortunately, its less and less these days.
| sspiff wrote:
| In my experience, most of my coworkers have been passionate
| about some aspects of software development at least.
|
| People aren't always passionate about the projects we work on
| at work, but most are passionate about things like software
| craftmanship, quality, or maybe just technology itself, or the
| problem solving aspect, or some are perpetually in love with
| how software allows you to create almost anything out of
| nothing.
| jossclimb wrote:
| This is largely the result of one thing; Money.
|
| The past few years have seen salaries climb to what could even
| be claimed as crazy levels, when compared to what other
| professionals make, esp non CS engineers. Compounded even more
| by the portrayal of the software dev lifestyle. Working from
| home, or being in an office with lots of free perks.
|
| This naturally led to lots of people wanting in.
|
| I like you, originally got into programming as a career as it
| was what I loved doing, it was a given I would go that route.
| This was at a time where engineers made far less than they do
| today.
| opk wrote:
| Maybe salaries are crazy in Silicon Valley, but in Europe I
| really don't see this. I got a decent starting salary 25
| years ago but having remained in a technical role I've never
| got more than minimal pay rises. I now earn way less than my
| contemporaries from University who went into other fields.
| And if I look around for job vacancies, they're never
| offering big money, certainly never close to 6 figures. Yet
| the perception in the wider public seems to be that CS
| professionals have loads of money even here.
| rustybolt wrote:
| As much as I am a programming enthusiast, since I started
| working I really think 40-50 hours of staring at a screen is
| enough (if not way too much).
|
| Especially if you're overweight, spending more time sitting
| behind a desk is just a poor life choice.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I mean... I don't know, I've done this as a full-time job for
| 10 years already. I still like it but I have other stuff going
| on I'm interested in and it's hard to sustain the same level of
| enthusiasm after that much time. Even in a career like acting
| or pro sports a lot of people eventually are just working for a
| paycheck and not really sustained by a passion for their work.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| My passion was sucked away by leetcode interviews, BS
| management processes, writing more JIRA tickets than code and
| ineffective management mistakenly thinking PIPs will somehow
| produce better output and improve team morale.
|
| The reality is that this industry operates with a factory
| worker mentality. It is no surprise to me that young people
| don't care about programming. It just isn't valued.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I'm one of those folks who loved writing code before I realized
| people would pay you to write code. As a result it has been my
| recreation for a long time.
|
| A surprising number of acquaintances of mine have failed at
| retirement[1]. That has never been my problem :-). That said, I
| still do consulting because it lets me play with equipment that
| I might not otherwise decide to buy (like million $ RF labs
| :-)) However I've structured it to take a back seat to my own
| projects and the opportunities as they present to go camping or
| on other adventures.
|
| I also know a bunch of people who never wanted to see a
| computer again after they didn't need to work, one of whom
| actually went back and got a degree in creative writing because
| they really wanted to be a writer all along.
|
| It is also super helpful to have a spouse or partner you like
| to hang out with. One friend of mine opened an office so that
| he could be out of the house sometimes when things got too
| hectic.
|
| All good problems to have.
|
| [1] To fail at retirement is to have the resources to pay all
| the bills and do fun things without "working" but getting bored
| from the lack of interesting challenges and so going back into
| the workforce anyway.
| paganel wrote:
| What's there to love nowadays when it comes to software? I'm
| genuinely asking. What's there to love in making a company
| worth $2 trillion into becoming, what? A $3 trillion company?
| What's there to love in helping with making a tech dystopia
| more and more a reality each and every day? The dream of the
| '90s - early 2000s is well and truly dead, even in Portland.
| WJW wrote:
| Not all programming has to be for some megacorp. Clever
| solutions to (say) Advent of Code problems bring a smile to
| my face but they don't bring any sort of dystopia closer.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Some believe that they're working against that, however
| misguided it may be.
| tombert wrote:
| I get frustrated by how much "math" is a dirty word in
| engineering circles.
|
| There have been plenty of times where I have felt that
| utilizing formal methods would benefit some problematic patch
| of code, but when I suggest something like TLA+ or Isabelle,
| every engineer in the room will wince at me and act like I
| asked them to solve the wave equation. It'll usually be
| dismissed in some form of "we don't want to force every
| engineer to learn all that math".
|
| It's frustrating to me because, I mean, we're _engineers_. Any
| high school kid can learn to program for free on YouTube these
| days. If we 're not utilizing theory, then what exactly are we
| doing to earn our ridiculous salaries?
| richardw wrote:
| I think of it as:
|
| When people didn't know what to do in the 90's, they went into
| e.g. advertising or banking. They just wanted a job,
| advertising was big, seems fun, let's do that. Now those kinds
| of people "get into tech because you can earn a lot". So you
| get people who focus more on what they can extract rather than
| the craft. They arrive, do a job, pretend to be value adders
| because it's good for bonuses, go home to do what they really
| want to do.
|
| I guess that's ok, it takes all kinds and it's a big world. But
| the passionate, the people who love to create and love to
| refine and want to contribute and make a mark, those are my
| people. I think they're more likely to be there when you're in
| the first part of a company's life, before the extractors
| arrive. Right now I work with many of the builders and it's
| just wonderful.
|
| I also think that as companies change, get more sluggish and
| require more paperwork, passion goes out the window and the
| organisational imperative drives the experience.
| Raineer wrote:
| I have loved programming (literally) my entire life. Some of
| the books I learned to read on was TS-2068 BASIC program
| listings in kindergarten.
|
| Luckily for me, before I got too far down the road into
| choosing a major, it became clear to me that I would never love
| getting paid to program. Writing code as a career was not going
| to appeal to me. Being able to keep it as a hobby, where I can
| choose how much time I put into it, has kept me happy.
|
| I will always wonder about "the road not taken", but I do think
| others are coming to that realization.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In my experience, people staying in the field as developpers
| for 5~10 years have a genuine interest in the trade.
|
| It might be different if they have some other personal/skill
| issue, but I've seen anyone doing a decent job for a few years
| get a path to either management, PM or something more
| "businessy", and in effect many PMs around me started as
| programmers. That's where I see the natural filtration of those
| who actualy saw it as a career and not just as a starting job
| (pay is usually not that different, or better when you go to a
| businessy path).
|
| Now, that doesn't mean they (we) don't have a clock-in/clock-
| out mentality. E.g. I want to have multiple hobbies, and
| programming is only one of them. I deeply respect people who
| breath programming day-in day-out, but don't see it as an ideal
| or something to long for everyone. That's where I'm a bit sad
| it actively disappoints or drains your energy. I hope you'll
| find a happy place with people you enjoy working with !
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I used to be _into it_. Self taught, burning the midnight oil,
| loved the challenges, loved the highs.
|
| But canceled projects, inept managers and deadend startups led
| by brain dead CEOs knocked it all out of me. I'm heading into
| my 40s and I'm officially a clock puncher. Could not care less
| who knows it.
|
| I wish I could work somewhere that would just get the fuck out
| of my way and let me build, fix and make, but tech is full of
| people riding on the coat tails of engineers now, pretending
| we're all on equal footing. We're not. We don't need the middle
| managers and HRs and dozen VPs. We just need some good
| designers and some good engineers and we can blow peoples'
| minds.
|
| But makers making things makes people who can't make anything
| uncomfortable.
| sureglymop wrote:
| As a young software engineer.. I had an insane amount of
| passion right until I got into the workforce. As a kid hacking
| around was great and I thought that's what the job would be
| like. As soon as I entered the workforce it was pretty apparent
| that it's not about creativity, curiosity and being passionate
| and knowledgeable. It's about being agile and delivering
| quickly, quantity over quality, being good at talking,
| socializing and networking. And all the older people in the
| jobs I've worked with were definitely not passionate, they
| struggled along trying to do what they could to somewhat do the
| required tasks of the job. I'm still passionate about it but
| now mostly on weekends when I can use the two days to work on
| my own side projects. But i think an important point is also,
| we younger people have a pretty bleak outlook and seemingly
| uncertain future ahead. With covid lately and other challenges
| like AI and whatnot there may just be no time to be passionate
| because it is time spent worrying.
| badpun wrote:
| > With covid lately and other challenges like AI and whatnot
| there may just be no time to be passionate because it is time
| spent worrying.
|
| It was always like that, it's basically the human condition.
| You may choose not to worry and live your life how you'd want
| it to be lived. You might get crushed in the process, though.
| If you don't, you'll die of old age anyway, but the overall
| ride may be more comfortable.
| kkfdkerpoe wrote:
| I think one would have to be mad to love many ordinary software
| jobs out there. Being a cog in the machine, with average
| salary, and a job to maintain boring legacy apps, now that
| really doesn't sound fun to me. It might be a decent job, but
| not something to love.
| [deleted]
| teirce wrote:
| There are a few old-adage counterpoints here, such as: don't
| make your passion/hobby your job, have hobbies outside of your
| work, etc. But you also touch on something that has surfaced as
| the money in tech has grown and become much more loud in the
| last few decades.
|
| > Bootcamps have just become farms for people who need a job,
| but not those who really want this job.
|
| This isn't exclusive to bootcamps - they just happen to be the
| most expedient way to act on particular desire. The real
| problem is how LOUD money has become in 'tech' in the last
| several decades. When I started undergrad ~10 years ago, at a
| small school not known for anything Math or CS, there were
| still a lot of students who entered the CS program because they
| heard, from their family the internet or the world at large,
| that it was "a good job". (This also stems from college being
| seen as 'job prospect' improvement as opposed to something for
| learning, but that discussion lies elsewhere.)
|
| I got lucky that I liked it. Most of them would drop out of the
| program / transfer to a different area of focus within a year
| or so. There were probably somewhere around 50-60 people in my
| low level CS courses. My graduating CS cohort was 9.
|
| Despite liking it, I still find little desire to tinker on
| things outside of work. A large part of it is that it _is_ my
| job. I don't want to work, then go home and 'work' for 'fun'.
|
| The other part of it is, as mentioned by others here, the parts
| of software a lot of us enjoy the most aren't usually what we
| get to focus on, in one way or another.
|
| > I want to work with more people who LOVE software and find
| the development of machines and the code that runs on them as
| fascinating as I do. Unfortunately, its less and less these
| days.
|
| I get the impression most of this is going to be exclusive to
| small projects, teams, and in particular startups. Bigger
| operations are going to prefer prioritizing the more 'stable'
| or boring sides of software.
| DanielHB wrote:
| > Despite liking it, I still find little desire to tinker on
| things outside of work. A large part of it is that it _is_ my
| job. I don't want to work, then go home and 'work' for 'fun'.
|
| I am the same way, but when I take 5-week long vacations I
| usually start to tinker with stuff on week 3. So it takes me
| about 2 weeks to detox from job grinding
|
| Funny to realise the best thing my job could do for employee
| training is to just give me more vacation. Not like they give
| me any official training though. They let people occasionally
| go to conferences but I don't really like those, so I don't
| codazoda wrote:
| Just a small note... Making my programming hobby into a job
| has resulted in a wonderful and rewarding career for me. I've
| now been coding professionally for around 25 years. I go
| through waves, but you'll often find me coding in my spare
| time before work, after work, or on the weekends. I do much
| of the stuff this author mentions too, such as designing and
| 3D printing parts for repairs around the house.
|
| Anyway, to each their own, but I purposely made my hobby my
| career and I believe I've benefited greatly from that.
| teirce wrote:
| And if that has worked out for you, that's great! It's not
| wise to make generalizations about this kind of thing.
|
| To be clear, I think using what I said in the first bit
| against the author or comment I replied to is kind of side-
| stepping the real issue. The first of my comment
| essentially translates to: turning a hobby into a
| profession is a high risk, high reward scenario. It can
| work out fantastic (as in your case) or you can come to
| hate something you used to enjoy.
|
| Programming-adjacent things, I can enjoy. I like puzzles, I
| like factory building games, I could see myself building
| robots or getting into 3D printing random bits. But I don't
| think that I would ever sit down and write a software
| library outside of work without a strong personal
| incentive. I'd just rather spend my time on other things I
| enjoy equally as much.
| kweingar wrote:
| I had this attitude in college. I wasn't a CS major, but I
| really enjoyed programming. I was floored by how many CS majors
| seemed to not enjoy the discipline.
|
| My interest in computers and programming hasn't waned. But with
| every passing year, I have become more invested in my
| relationships, obligations, health, and other hobbies. So
| programming is a much smaller slice of the pie these days.
|
| I still think of myself as an interested and enthusiastic
| programmer, but I will admit that my interest and enthusiasm
| pales in comparison to my hobbyist coworkers.
| emodendroket wrote:
| That's well said... I feel this way even about pure fun
| pursuits like video games. Yeah, I still like video games,
| but I also like time with my daughter and wife or getting
| outside and playing sports or a bunch of other things I
| didn't use to do that kind of crowd out a well I've gone to
| many, many times anyway.
| nine_k wrote:
| I think video games (like movies, books, etc) are a
| different kind: they are about consuming, while programming
| (electronics, carpentry, etc) is about creating.
|
| Some games, like Sim City or Factorio, sort of blur the
| line though.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The phenomenon is mostly the same though: something I've
| enjoyed for a long time doesn't have the same prominence
| in my life anymore because of other things I've taken an
| interest in.
| ehnto wrote:
| Games are somewhere in between, you are engaged in the
| doing of the game and that itself can be creative and
| involve problem solving. Certainly moreso than TV, but
| less so than a craft of some kind.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| The CS degree became the most popular at my school in a short
| period of time. I was told as recently as 25 years ago,
| hardly anyone was in the program so it's reasonable to assume
| that CS itself didn't change but the demand did.
|
| My take on students in the program is that a CS engineering
| degree is viewed the way a business degree might have been
| for a different industry like finance. It's a ticket into a
| high paying, tech job. From there, many want to climb the
| corporate ladder and move into management. There are people
| who like the topic but also quite a few who treat it as a
| corporate credential. I think this second group is a very
| recent development that only started happening in the last
| decade or so.
| ITB wrote:
| I agree. I understand there's a diverse set of people in the
| world, with various degrees of interest and passion in their
| work. But I only much prefer to work with people who are
| intensely attracted to their work. It's contagious. Passion
| breeds passion, and too much "balance" leads to people being
| ambivalent about work.
| zorrotorro wrote:
| > I want to work with more people who LOVE software and find
| the development of machines and the code that runs on them as
| fascinating as I do. Unfortunately, its less and less these
| days.
|
| While I like software I'm beginning to see it as a rather bad
| career. While you make more money early in the career, you stop
| doing so rather fast and other jobs catch up quite quickly and
| surpass you.
|
| I guess there's always the exception company, etc. but as a
| non-US career, it can get taxing to see de-growth.
|
| https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/ was a neat
| read along the same lines.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Wow, that's depressing. So that seems to suggest that
| assuming I am smart (which I'd like to think I am), I should
| have already ditched software engineering and gone into a
| different field altogether.
|
| It's got some interesting points. I'd love to hear more about
| their assertion of how someone who is a fast learner benefits
| from a more stable field. It sort of makes sense as they
| wrote it but I'd like to read more about it.
|
| Here I thought I was always going to do software in some
| capacity as long as I was working professionally, but maybe I
| really shouldn't. No idea what that would be though. Just
| going into management isn't it, at least not for me.
| conductr wrote:
| It's been nearly a quarter century since I began university as
| a CS major. I had been hobby coding for a couple years and the
| courses were not interesting at all to me compared to actually
| building things. So, I decided to get a gig writing code. It
| was sort of a part-time job ahead of when people normally would
| get an internship (which back then anyway, was not common in
| first 1-2 years). This job was excruciating. I realized I had
| no interest in writing code for other people/companies/etc. but
| my hobby was really building things that I thought were
| interesting. Anyways, I switched majors and continue to code as
| a hobby/entrepreneur and have continued to enjoy it. I really
| don't think I'd like it as a hobby if I went into the
| profession.
| robbyking wrote:
| I genuinely enjoy writing code at work (the same way I enjoy
| doing crossword puzzles), but I literally never do it in my
| spare time. I already spend a greater number of waking hours in
| front of my computer than I do with my family (or playing music
| or mountain biking or...), so even though writing code at home
| isn't on my list of priorities it doesn't mean I lack of
| enthusiasm, it just means that itch is already being scratched.
| scottLobster wrote:
| At least where I work, it's hard to have passion given the
| fundamental issues with the codebase that there's never any
| time or money to address. It's like being on a ship pockmarked
| with holes and water coming in, that by all rights should be
| sinking, but is kept going by the endless pockets of our
| customers paying us to man the various pumps and keep the
| engines from flooding. And of course throw on new features that
| create yet more holes that there's no time or money to fix.
| However there's never any money to patch said holes, despite
| the buckets that get dumped on manning the pumps on a daily
| basis. The ship does something important, so you can take some
| pride in fulfilling the mission in spite of circumstances, but
| that tiny sliver of satisfaction is all there is.
|
| If you're passionate about the mission/coding you will just
| produce a lot of impotent anger, because there's no way an IC
| is going to restructure the program given the layers of
| bureaucracy in the way. Maybe if you went management and then
| spent a decade or two climbing the corporate ladder, and even
| then you'll run into brand new managerial constraints. So if
| you're going to stick around, you learn to detach. It's one of
| the many reasons I plan to have a new job by Christmas :)
| ornornor wrote:
| I have a similar experience. Working as a programmer is what
| killed my joy of programming. When I'm done working, I don't
| want to look at a computer anymore. Or rather I can't because
| I'm exhausted of all the firefighting and bullshit I have to
| go through for a paycheck.
|
| My most enjoyable moments are the times when I'm in between
| jobs which I try and stretch for as long as I can (months)
| and which make me start new side projects just for the fun
| and enjoyment of it. But once I'm back to the grindstone, I
| start questioning my life again and wish I was doing anything
| else than programming.
|
| I think turning a hobby into a career is a good way to ruin
| that hobby, so I can understand clock punchers and sometimes
| wish I could just "turn it off" and become one. It would save
| me a lot of frustration, anger, and unhappiness.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| When a hobby becomes a job, it's now work. Do you really wanna
| do more work in your extremely limited leisure time?
|
| Think esports pros, playing games used to be a break, but after
| working 8+ hours a day. It's no longer that relaxing fun
| activity.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You're looking at it wrong. Some people really love flying
| planes. Some pilots clock off and go straight home to not think
| about their jobs until they're back. If you want to work with
| people like that, look at the programming equivalent of your
| local airshow, not SFO.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think, as you move on to higher and higher paying positions,
| you slowly start being surrounded by people that optimize for
| money, instead of skill.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > replaced by a clock-in and clock-out mentality
|
| I started as a software engineer who was "passionate about
| software" and could see my life revolving around it. The change
| in my mindset towards this, that gradually happened few years
| ago, i.e. the "clock-in and clock-out mentality" is one of the
| best changes in my life!
|
| It always shocks me to see such sentiments from people. I mean
| how difficult is it for people to comprehend that that are too
| many kinds of people out there and hence too many kinds of
| software engineers out there!
|
| Clock-in, clock-out doesn't mean these software engineers don't
| like the work they do, or do not write software that is good,
| or that they do not take pride in, or they do not feel
| responsible for it. Anyway that doesn't mean every other free
| hour, or any free hour in their lives, away from that day job
| (which is software engineering) have to be about software or
| code, or hell even an hour have to be about software.
|
| Your job, your profession doesn't have to be your passion! Not
| everybody needs to be an artist, or a software artist (if I can
| say so)! There is a work that needs to be done and there are
| people who can do this and they do this and it can be just
| that, nothing more.
|
| Did you every think about yourself, how you got into software
| engineering? Did you really always want this trade - truly? Was
| this genetic in some way? Or some kind of divine intervention?
| I mean I know I am getting facetious here with this analogy but
| just look at it before pointing a finger to a whole new
| generation of people who are maybe just different.
|
| I kinda disliked it, at the beginning of my career, when I saw
| my engineering peers moving into finance, MBAs and what not,
| but slowly I have started to appreciate it as I am getting this
| idea sunk into me deeper - work is work, nothing else. There is
| whole lot of rest of the life out there. Go where you want, how
| you want to, immerse yourself into something only as much you
| want, there doesn't have to be a scale of "passion" you have to
| conform to.
|
| It is so tiring and frustrating to keep encountering this
| mindset so often. Luckily my generation is genuinely starting
| to stop giving a fuck about this and the newer generation is
| more vigorous in rejecting of "your work has to be your
| passion" regressive mindset.
| linguae wrote:
| I understand this point of view. Unfortunately, for those who
| entered computing out of a passion for it, it's difficult to
| work for employers or managers where computing isn't a
| passion. This leads to all sorts of practices that suck the
| joy out of programming (e.g., Leetcode, meetings, KPIs, PIPs,
| certain design decisions, etc.), reducing it to a corporate
| "monkey dance." Maybe I have rose-colored glasses, or maybe
| I'm simply expecting too much from employment, but it seems
| to me that back in the 80s and 90s there was a lot more
| passion in the field compared to today. The pressure and the
| constraints are enough to make me want to change occupations
| at times away from computing and treat it as solely a hobby
| or as a side venture, except I can't think of any other
| occupation that pays enough to live in America's expensive
| cities that doesn't require returning to graduate school and
| getting into five or six more figures of debt for a
| professional degree.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Leetcode is actually one of the things that makes me feel
| energized about programming... it's just the pure problem-
| solving part without logging, legacy software constraints,
| tedious debates about code styling, and the other lame
| parts of the job.
| peyton wrote:
| Definitely worth checking out ICPC problems if you like
| Leetcode. IPSC is another good one.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I think you're getting vloser to the root issue.
|
| You can work with passionate people. You can work for a
| large corporate, for a huge paycheck and stock options.
| Pick one.
|
| I work for a small company, and I make a great living, but
| it's a fraction of a fang salary, and there is no stock to
| option.
|
| On the upside I'm responsible for my code base, I work on
| whatever I like, (which largely overlaps with customer
| needs since I like getting paid.) I rarely have a zoom
| meeting [1], I have in-person catch-up with colleagues once
| a month, usually at a restaurant over a meal.
|
| The rest of the time we gave informal chat, we push the
| boundaries of the possible, we experiment, try out big
| ideas,and generally it's still enough fun to get me out I
| bed in the morning.
|
| [1] I have a few corporate customers. They exist to remind
| me why I don't work for a corporate. We have a weekly zoom
| catchup meeting. Their two lead programmers go from meeting
| to meeting. Its hilarious and I mock them ceaselessly for
| it.
|
| But they get paid a lot more than I do, and frankly they're
| welcome to it.
|
| And clearly I'm not living in San Francisco ;)
| [deleted]
| ehnto wrote:
| Small companies are where the fun software work is for
| sure. That has been my secret sauce for a while.
|
| It is the corporate environments and the entanglement of
| Business BS that ruins software work for me.
| sawyna wrote:
| I hear you and share the sentiment (for the most part). I
| don't understand what's with leetcode. Granted it's not the
| best for way to judge the capabilities of a programmer, but
| then what is? A design round can be gamed as much as an
| algorithmic round can be. At least with leetcode, people
| become aware of different ways of thinking. By different
| ways, I don't mean different algorithms. I mean, given a
| base set of capabilities (algos), how to use them
| effectively to solve a much more diverse set of problems.
| This kind of pattern almost always exists in my day to day
| job. The constraints are limited, and I need to figure out
| an effective way forward.
| linguae wrote:
| It's not Leetcode in of itself that I hate; in fact, I
| enjoy programming challenges such as Project Euler and
| Advent of Code, and I occasionally read my Knuth volumes
| for fun. It's the interview process that sucks the fun
| out of it, where you have to compete against those who
| just seem to eat, sleep, and drink Leetcode. It reminds
| me of my high school days when I stressed out over grades
| and SAT scores. I understand that for highly-desirable
| companies there needs to be some mechanism for culling
| the mass number of applications they receive, but when
| just about every company seemingly asks difficult
| Leetcode questions even if the job doesn't require
| sophisticated algorithms, it's very demoralizing. I'm
| getting tired of monkey dancing and I'm researching
| alternative ways of making a living.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Plus an interest in developing one's career eventually means
| focusing on things other than growing slightly better at
| writing code (such as mentoring, designs, apportioning work,
| working with many stakeholders, and so on).
| 59nadir wrote:
| Programming in your free time isn't "work", though. The
| people I've worked with who aren't programming in their free
| time have all been worse than the ones who did, which really
| isn't a big surprise.
|
| It's not hard for me to understand why someone would want to
| only develop software during work hours, but that doesn't
| mean I have to force myself to like working with them as much
| as I like working with people who do engage with programming
| outside of work.
|
| > I mean how difficult is it for people to comprehend that
| that are too many kinds of people out there and hence too
| many kinds of software engineers out there!
|
| How difficult is it to accept that if you're not doing much
| to become better at your craft you'll also likely not be
| deemed as good as your peers who are? I don't know why people
| who admit to not caring as much as others about growing their
| skills and expressing enthusiasm about programming are so
| offended that some people would rather work with people who
| are doing those things.
|
| All things being equal I'd rather work with someone who can
| tell me about their weekend project on Monday.
|
| P.S.: If someone said "I don't like working with people who
| program in their spare time" that's also fine. We don't all
| have to like working with each other and pretending there is
| some kind of fairness equalizer that makes everyone as good
| as everyone else helps no one. If work is truly just work,
| just do your work and accept that some people don't like your
| attitude.
| Aloha wrote:
| Your Wwrk should be a passion in your life, not the only
| passion.
|
| People often assume that "work should be your passion" means
| that it should be the singular one.
|
| It's my passion, but I still don't being work home, even if I
| work on related (if distantly) hobbies in my free time (and
| at work too sometimes)
| resonious wrote:
| "Work is work" is a perfectly fair conclusion. It works
| pretty well (so to speak) and you can live comfortably like
| that. Many people do.
|
| On the other hand, there's something that eats at me all the
| time: the fact that a huge portion of my life is spent on
| work. If I had to choose between zoning out for 8 hours a day
| vs working towards something I care about for 10+ hours a
| day, I can't help but feel like the latter just sounds
| better. Maybe not easy to attain, but definitely better.
| nemetroid wrote:
| The parent commenter wrote:
|
| > Clock-in, clock-out doesn't mean these software engineers
| don't like the work they do, or do not write software that
| is good, or that they do not take pride in, or they do not
| feel responsible for it.
|
| I don't think "zoning out for 8 hours a day" is a fair
| representation of that.
| violiner wrote:
| I'm really, genuinely happy for you that the thing you're
| passionate about is something you're good at and is extremely
| lucrative, but if I tried to make a living doing what I'm
| passionate about I'd live in a cardboard box. The reality is
| that software eating the world (and admittedly a number of
| other things, but this is a big one) have made it much, much
| harder to make a living doing just about anything else. I got a
| job in software development because I was good enough at it and
| I needed to pay the loans from pursuing my passion. I continue
| doing software development because it's a way to eventually
| maybe escape capitalism without swallowing a bullet.
| nemetroid wrote:
| > The lack of enthusiasm and genuine interest is replaced by a
| clock-in and clock-out mentality.
|
| There's nothing incompatible about those two things.
| rbongers wrote:
| What I tell people who get into software because they need a
| job is always that the industry also needs people with quality
| assurance and management skills. Not because I want to offload
| people who are just looking for a quick buck onto those fields,
| but because I sometimes find that people with the right skills
| just take the long way around to transition into those roles.
| (I've even seen this happen once with a UX designer, but I
| think artistic people mostly know to try for those roles.)
| People don't really consider the fact that it is a successful
| industry, but there are more roles in the industry than just
| developer. When the company I'm part of was a small startup, it
| was hard to find good people who were interested in taking on
| entry-level QA/scrum master positions.
| onion2k wrote:
| _The lack of enthusiasm and genuine interest is replaced by a
| clock-in and clock-out mentality._
|
| In my experience people who treat programming as a job rather
| than a passion _often_ build better apps (note that this is
| different to saying they write better code..). They don 't try
| all the latest shiny things, they treat things like tests and
| docs as a boring necessessity rather than something they can
| ignore, they go for simple solutions they can think about less
| over complex abstractions that require lots of time. They're
| also happy to stick with something a bit dull like maintaining
| an old app so long as their pay keeps coming.
|
| Passionate and enthusiastic devs are definitely more _fun_ to
| work with, but if I 'm going to be on a team with 6 or 7 others
| for a couple of years I would rather not come in to work to be
| faced with someone's 'clever' idea that they opened a PR for at
| 2am every day.
| denkmoon wrote:
| I like to program as a hobby, but I still maintain a clock-in-
| clock-out mentality. If I didn't, my work would own my life.
| and why would I give that to my employer for free?
|
| You can't expect to work with people who LOVE their work.
| That's just not how the world is set up. People gotta eat, so
| they take the least bad path to that. I can entirely understand
| why someone would pragmatically choose this career regardless
| of their lack of enthusiasm for it.
| deepGem wrote:
| My younger self was loathe to programming. It was just a job
| for me, clock in clock out as you say. I was always in this
| zone of product managers and managers are superior as they were
| always in some meetings and it gave me the impression that
| important work gets done in meetings. I hated being a lowly
| engineer right from the start.
|
| Only when I got into those meeting rooms, did I have a rude
| awakening. I realized the value of shipping software. I rolled
| up my sleeves and started getting back into building software,
| reluctantly initially but then I fell in love with the craft
| eventually.
|
| Today if I find anyone who is getting disillusioned as I was, I
| try to educate them and help them find the joy in shipping
| software. Am not sure if it has really helped anyone, but I
| think it's the right thing to do.
| protonbob wrote:
| While I certainly clock in and clock out for my day job which
| is mostly writing crud apps, I still am passionate about
| programming. I'm just also more passionate about things like
| family.
| eastbound wrote:
| > How is it you can love a machine?
|
| How can a child fall into programming when the computer yells
| at you, with cryptic messages, uncomprehensible for a child,
| moreso since I was French-speaking only. "ERROR!" It even
| accuses you: "YOU are about to reformat this DISK. Do you want
| to proceed?" (7-year-old me looking up "proceed" in the
| dictionary, missing "reformat". Ah, fdisk, so many nights
| crying that I had lost my computer).
|
| But, speaking from experience: At least it's _your fault_. You
| can _do_ something about it.
|
| Now compare to the sand pit at school: You play marbles with a
| girl, if she loses she goes crying to the teacher. It's not
| your fault, you followed the rules, teacher tells you off, ah,
| gotta learn the rules of life. "Girls have cooties" is the most
| funny self-reflection on my childhood. There was no way as a
| child to learn navigating that complex rules of social
| precedence, implicit expectations, social cues, untold obvious
| rules. Even today: I'm bad at office politics, so I'm a CEO and
| make a million a year.
|
| At least, with computers, when it doesn't work: _It's my
| fault_. I can _do_ something about it. Same with business. It's
| my fault. A provider defects? Still my fault. Economic crisis?
| Still more my fault than playing by the rules in the sandpit
| and being told off.
|
| But people? I need five times my IQ.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Passion for working is different then coding or hacking on
| stuff or w/e you call it.
|
| Personally, I like learning how things work and doing things at
| my own pace. Expecting passion for integrating SaaS apis and
| working with legacy code is not the tech that got me
| interested, I want to clock out of that ASAP.
| strken wrote:
| I think there's a number of hours a week I want to spend
| writing code, but while it's more than 10 it's less than 40.
|
| Above and beyond that, I love software, but I don't love Zoom
| calls, on-call shifts, unnecessarily annoying processes that
| I'm not allowed to automate, Slack messages, KPIs, objectives
| that combine vagueness about what we're doing with strict rules
| about what we're _not_ allowed to touch, horrific dynamically
| typed JS code where half the arguments to a function are
| obscure mashed-together objects, over-specified tickets that
| leave no room for creativity, trying to jam my code into a
| service where it doesn 't fit because leadership wants to
| encourage code reuse but doesn't understand DRY, or anything
| else that makes up the actual profession of software
| engineering.
| sawyna wrote:
| That's all not programming. I absolutely hate the corporate
| working style.
|
| The programming part in itself is always interesting to me,
| because regardless of who sets the constraints (me in a hobby
| project or the leadership in a company), they are what make
| the problem challenging and exciting.
| nly wrote:
| I work for 40 hours a week but I'm pretty sure only 2 are
| writing code.
|
| That's the problem. I'd happily write code for more hours
| turdprincess wrote:
| I think in this career it's possible to optimize for 3
| levers - WLB, money, and fun work. If you truly want to
| code a lot, a startup is the place, but you will earn less
| money and work more hours. Big tech offers big money and
| good WLB but often at the sacrifice of interesting work.
| cutler wrote:
| Interesting that the OP reverted to C after playing with JS and
| Python. Maybe having to do everything manually at the lowest
| level maximises focus, assuming you have the time and patience.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's less magic, I think; I'm working in React right now and
| it's its own paradigm, separate yet from just JS or C or
| whatever.
| [deleted]
| amadazia wrote:
| Find a goal to put your talents to use. Retirement is a social
| fiction to encourage lack of engagement. Your democracy needs
| you.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| > What am I trying to say? I have a programming addiction?
| (Maybe.)
|
| I think all of us do, to some degree. You have to to endure hours
| on end staring at a glowing screen and banging your head against
| a mechanical keyboard.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I've been programming professionally for over 25 years. I have
| not written a line of code for "fun" since I graduated from
| college.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| But did you have fun while being payed to write those lines?
| I hope so.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It's not fun or not fun. It's a necessity like going to the
| bathroom.
|
| It's the easiest method I have to support my addiction to
| food and shelter.
| kharak wrote:
| Not OP, but not really. I do not hate it, but enjoyment is
| not something I get out of coding. It has gotten better
| over the years, as I have become a better programmer.
| Liking what you are good at is natural, after all.
|
| Still, I failed to find a career where what I enjoy is tied
| to what I am getting paid for. I am pretty sure that is the
| case for most people around the world. Life can be good
| regardless (and is for me), but actually enjoying what you
| are doing professionally, that is a cheat code for living
| well.
| ummonk wrote:
| Not necessarily. At least for those of us from Asian cultures,
| it's not that unusual to sacrifice and do something you hate or
| at least are ambivalent towards because it's a well paying
| stable career.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I love programming. More each day and I've done it for
| decades.
|
| But I think everyone who enjoys the process of squeezing
| their thoughts through the rigors of a machine is at least a
| little bit funny in the head. I love it, but it's bonkers.
| nawgz wrote:
| I don't really follow you. This roughly implies everyone is
| addicted to their jobs...
| arealaccount wrote:
| Or more like the paycheck is an enabler for an unhealthy
| escape
| nawgz wrote:
| Seems like an extremely unrealistic representation of
| people's motivations to work, to me.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| There is a group who focusses on the paycheck. In my
| experience they often aren't the better ones. For many
| there however is also some intrinsic motivation in doing
| something "worthwhile" or "challenging"
|
| For me money is a necessity, but not the goal. I could do
| jobs I care less about for more money (which of course
| makes my boss happy, that I don't change)
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Most people are. Even stuff you might not like, such as
| pressure, can be addictive.
|
| I know I've felt "withdraw" symptoms on extended holidays
| after intense work sprints. And I consider myself a lazy
| bastard.
| nawgz wrote:
| Haha, I don't think you should try to generalize your
| emotions - "withdrawal" symptoms on vacation could easily
| just be your stressed out body finally resting, or one of
| many other emotions. None of what you have said tracks for
| me. I can shut off work in a minute and I feel glorious
| when I do it; it's purely a practical thing. I will stop
| the minute I can, which I seem to be about 30% of the way
| to
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Not generalizing my emotions, there's even a term for it:
| workaholic. It's a thing.
|
| You may not experience it, but your "I can stop whenever
| I want" kind of phrase doesn't help you make your point.
| nawgz wrote:
| This whole conversation is a ridiculous stretch - you
| just misquoted me to imply I'm a workaholic, and implied
| everyone else is too. Enough.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I think I might have hit a nerve. Not my intention,
| sorry.
| nawgz wrote:
| Let me be crystal clear: most people fucking hate
| working. Bosses are the worst, the money is the sole
| reason to do it, and we'd all be happier working way
| less.
|
| The idea people are "addicted" to working under a
| capitalist society is absurd; we are forced like
| prisoners, not free to make the choice ourselves. Or
| maybe you consider being unhoused and underfed "freedom".
|
| The "nerve" you've hit is that I hate people excusing our
| disgusting lack of free time in a post scarcity society.
|
| Enjoy your job though, prick
| tambourine_man wrote:
| HN is a different bubble than the rest of capitalist
| society. I get the feeling that most people here enjoy
| their work and get really well paid for it, so the logic
| is completely flipped on its head.
|
| But if you're calling me names, then this discussion is
| really over.
| badpun wrote:
| Most people work way more than they need. No one needs a
| six figures salary for 30 years straight. People just get
| addicted to the nice, non-necessary things, they can get
| on such income though. This, and their taste for anything
| other than working slightly withers away (as it's not
| practiced, due to lack of time).
| nawgz wrote:
| Are you fucking serious? Most people are living paycheck
| to paycheck
|
| This place is a fucking ivory tower huh? You guys are
| clueless
| badpun wrote:
| I meant - most people on this forum. The whole discussion
| was in the context of programming jobs.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| This was great to read. This is always how I imagined my career
| would go, but I don't hear about it enough. I enjoy my job, and
| also look forward to having more free time to contribute to
| various OSS and hobby projects i've done over the years.
| nadermx wrote:
| What is retirement, if not doing things you enjoy. Coding is
| unique in its ability that you can even do it as an old man.
| qup wrote:
| Not unique, but it is a nice perk. Poker is a great retirement
| game for many, and I suspect most programmers would both enjoy
| it greatly and excel at it.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Hacking should be recognized as an arts and crafts category.
|
| It is a bit more abstract than making music or painting or
| messing with materials (wood, stone, metal etc), but it pushes
| the same pleasure buttons. Its the simple joy of building and
| sharing stuff.
|
| In a professional context programming mutates and becomes what
| organized society and economies want it to be. Another cog in the
| machine.
|
| Coding for money is no more or less happy than cooking, making
| music or applying any other intrinsically pleasurable dexterity
| for money.
|
| What is intrinsically fun and something you would do "for free"
| becomes draining, stressful and devoid of purpose. The "purpose"
| in organized work is dictated by large scale patterns of supply,
| demand, monetisation games and organizational structures.
|
| In a sense what we are missing are meta-tinkerers who would (for
| free and for fun) hack society and its economy to be a more
| meaningful place, one that does not make us to need to "retire
| from".
| kstenerud wrote:
| In 2 days time I'll mark my 27th year as a professional
| programmer (and just over 40 years since I started programming).
| I've worked in small companies, big companies, and mega-
| corporations. I've been a programmer, manager, team lead and CTO.
| And in doing so I discovered that I don't like managing people, I
| don't like meetings, and I don't like paperwork. I like long
| periods of focus.
|
| So I'm a software dev/architect again, working in esoteric and
| interesting spaces, and will continue to do so until I "retire"
| (meaning that I switch to full time on my open source projects).
| victor9000 wrote:
| I took the same path and came to the same realization, yet my
| current architect role is still nothing but meetings. Ugh.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Code is easy, people are hard.
| badpun wrote:
| "Architect" in most places is basically "code politician".
| arvinsim wrote:
| Me, on the other hand, long to be an architect so that I can
| influence some technical decisions.
|
| Grass is always greener.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Dont be the architect be the guy who tells the architect
| what to do. Because they are too busy in meetings.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You _hope_ you can influence some technical decisions, but
| it 's not just a title of architect that gives you
| authority, you need convincing and communication skills as
| well.
| moreshadowbans wrote:
| [flagged]
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| My personal opinion:
|
| After looking at my current manager and previous managers in my
| previous jobs I decided to never become a manager.
|
| Being a manager means that I'll have to fill my day with
| nothing but meetings I cannot skip, keep talking on and on and
| on, deal with delivery headaches, respond to requests even
| while on PTO, do a lot of context switching between Slack,
| email, calendar, documentation, and other things. I used to
| like that level of being "busy" but now it seems that having my
| focus time is the best thing ever.
| samstave wrote:
| I made the mistake of entering management WAY too early in my
| career.
|
| I wish I had not. it relegated my time to many tasks other
| than tech implementation.
|
| FN having to train CFOs on financially managing cloud
| environs, managing people, pestering people for status
| reports, c-level presentations on this that and the other
| thing, etc...
|
| My biggest mistake in my career was thinking I was "climbing
| the ladder" when accepting a position as a manager, director
| etc...
| blastro wrote:
| gulp
| marktolson wrote:
| Same path, but for the last 10 years i've been a CTO. Right now
| i'd kill for fewer meetings and more focus time. Starting to
| take its toll.
| andruby wrote:
| Make the changes you'd love to see. The CTO role is vague and
| broad and is defined differently in most companies anyway.
| You can delegate things to an engineering manager or
| director. Or if the company is large enough to a VP.
|
| find a cross-section of what is valuable for the company and
| what you like doing
| onion2k wrote:
| Hire an engineering manager and delegate.
| jksmith wrote:
| Suggest wrong direction. Make teams more autonomous and
| develop the art of the backlog. Too much management is
| what's wrong with organizations these days.
| szundi wrote:
| I am not sure what I want more anymore. I love these periods of
| flow, but I am so good at integrating other people's work,
| making them agree on the best while being happy and feeling
| productive. Also flow makes time fly and I feel I would just
| die very soon, heh. Anyone feeling this too? But I crave this
| feeling very much anyway.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| This is my exact feeling :D
|
| I love coding and problem solving, but during my career I
| noticed that I'm _really_ good at getting technical people to
| communicate with each other and integrating their work.
|
| I try to do both, but I still don't know which I like more. I
| tried the full manager / chart drawing architect -route and I
| hated it. Just coding was a bit boring too in the long run,
| because I want to make an impact on the org-level and I'm
| incapable of shutting up if I see any inefficiencies that
| could be improved by communication.
| morning-coffee wrote:
| Just can't help but share: (I Have People
| Skills!)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcIMIyQnOso]
| zachturn wrote:
| > I'm incapable of shutting up if I see any inefficiencies
| that could be improved by communication
|
| This is one of my biggest struggles. I see so much flawed
| work and I can't help but voice my opinion, but I can't
| possibly dedicate time to try to fix it all, so I'm often
| afraid of just coming across as a complainer.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| My "problem" is that if/when I open my mouth, people give
| me more responsibilities.
|
| "Don't like how it's done? Now you're responsible for
| it." Granted I usually got a raise to go with it, but it
| was just admin work and not-coding - which I didn't like.
| arthur_sav wrote:
| Trying new (work) positions is underrated imo.
|
| You could try being a manager for a while and see how it goes
| - you can always go back to what you know.
|
| Ofc you have to find a company where it allows for such
| options.
| api wrote:
| Developers, or good ones at least, are puzzle solving junkies.
| cocacolacowboy wrote:
| [dead]
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Any interest in workers coops given that realization? I too
| realized I don't want to manage/own workers nor be managed but
| there is a third way
| mechanicker wrote:
| I am on my 26th year as a programmer. I love the fact that I
| can imagine and also make it happen.
|
| However, I see a constant push from people around me to focus
| on creating a pipeline of ideas and let others implement them.
| Unfortunately, I do not see the same level of enthusiasm I have
| in implementing some of those ideas - could be due to lack of
| recognition since it is not their original idea.
|
| Once I retire, I will just go back to where it all started.
| Come up with an idea followed by implementation. The sheer
| pleasure of seeing your idea working in a reasonable timeframe
| is exhilarating!
| vjk800 wrote:
| I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever
| since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It
| turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the
| life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely
| is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets
| very difficult.
|
| I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the
| problems at home, etc. when they sit in front of the computer
| and start coding, but I can't, and as a result my ability to
| focused work has gone down a lot, and nowadays I do more
| "people work" simply because that's easier to do when my head
| is not in it 100%.
| haswell wrote:
| I feel like I'm somewhere in this comment. For me, the stress
| and worry about things going on in my life eventually led to
| full burnout. Those periods of flow were what kept me going,
| and when I could no longer find them, it only compounded the
| stress.
|
| I ended up going on a self-funded sabbatical to focus on
| sorting out my personal and internal life, and the #1 change
| that has led to rediscovering deep focus was starting a
| mindfulness meditation and yoga habit each morning. These
| core habits led to changes in how I was relating to the
| worries and created space for me to sort through the
| underlying stressors.
|
| YMMV, but I realized that some of the things I was worrying
| about were just consuming energy (despite being legit
| concerns), and I started actively reframing worries using
| some of the exercises in the book "Learned Optimism" (Martin
| Seligman, 2006). This book also made me realize how deeply
| hardwired my pessimistic defaults were, and these defaults
| were the source of a lot of my daily rumination and worry.
|
| All of this to say, if you are at all similar to me, it might
| be worth considering the lack of ability to find flow a big
| red flag worth actively investigating. I don't know if I
| could've avoided burnout, but I'm sufficiently convinced now
| that internal work is one of the most important (and
| accessible) ways of addressing this.
| vjk800 wrote:
| > All of this to say, if you are at all similar to me, it
| might be worth considering the lack of ability to find flow
| a big red flag worth actively investigating. I don't know
| if I could've avoided burnout, but I'm sufficiently
| convinced now that internal work is one of the most
| important (and accessible) ways of addressing this.
|
| Don't you worry, I have plenty of other red flags besides
| inability to concentrate to keep me worried :).
|
| I've tried meditation before, but didn't really "get" it.
| The instructions always tell me to let go of my thoughts
| and concentrate on a mantra or my breathing, but not a
| single time during the two months I followed a meditation
| program was I able to do so properly.
|
| Exercising is one of the few things that even remotely work
| for stress relief. I've also done yoga and it works, but
| not any better than jogging or weight lifting.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| On flow: back when I started my blog (2004) I soon realized
| that nothing had ever turned on the "flow switch" as
| predictably as preparing and publishing posts: for 4-6
| hours/day, 5-6 days/week, I was in heaven.
|
| Reading the comments on vjk800's comment led me to focus on
| my state of mind today (I'll be 75 on June 8) as I work on my
| blog in its nineteenth year.
|
| Though I spend perhaps 2-3 hours/day 3-5 days/week on it now
| (I post 3x daily, 7 days/week, down from 8x daily 7 days/week
| when I started), my flow state is as automatic as it was at
| the beginning.
|
| I feel fortunate to have found something so reliably
| rewarding that has persisted throughout the ups and downs of
| everyday life.
| verelo wrote:
| Love this. After 19 years I imagine your blog gets some
| traffic. Would you mind sharing how it's worked out? I
| think its pretty rare outside of newspapers to see someone
| publishing content for this long.
| jprd wrote:
| Love this too! Super interested in this story, I'm
| seeking inspiration for this kind of activity and you
| seem to be hitting the "sweet spot".
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| Hmm, interesting. I'm 39 and used to have amazing flow
| sessions in late 20s and early 30s but not seeing them much
| anymore. I can't tell if it's because of stresses of life or
| simply because I don't have enough time (with 3 young kids)
| to allow myself to fall into a state of flow. I really hope
| it's not stresses or my brain changing because I really
| valued those periods of focus.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| No kids here, but similar in that I remember sessions of
| long focus, and being able to do them repeatedly, for
| multiple days in a row. I typically can't do that as much
| now. Perhaps more to the point, I can't do them on demand.
| I do still have periods of 'focused flow', and they're
| great, but they just 'happen'. But... I never could just
| turn them on/off in the past either - they just happened
| far more frequently.
|
| I predict you'll have more, just not as frequently as you
| used to. :)
|
| FWIW, many of the things I used to have to spend long
| periods of focus on are now simple/common libraries that
| just didn't exist 30 years ago. Or, if they existed, there
| wasn't any convenient way of discovering them. So I find my
| _productivity_ is still comparatively high, even with fewer
| number of flow states.
| neilv wrote:
| Have you tried going back to the theory of Flow, and the
| conditions for it to happen, and compare&contrast your
| current situation with earlier ones?
|
| I suppose that the differences might be subtle. For one
| example, for the condition that you have a sense of doing a
| good job, your metric for good job might have changed: it
| might no longer be simply _make an algorithm to do X_ , but
| include larger context, including the reason X is being
| done.
|
| BTW, keeping in mind that techbro ageism is a thing,
| especially in YC-type circles (that's how YC started), I
| suppose that HN comments by over-30 people can be fodder
| for confirmation bias by 20yos.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" -- Mihaly
| Csikszentmihalyi (1990)
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/66354
|
| https://positivepsychology.com/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-
| fathe...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >BTW, keeping in mind that techbro ageism is a thing,
| especially in YC-type circles (that's how YC started)
|
| Can you elaborate on 'that's how YC started'?
| neilv wrote:
| As PG was getting into angel investing, he started by
| soliciting ~20yos to be founders, and wrote about his
| reasoning for that.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Fwiw, I've never had good flow states. :p
|
| When I code, there's always so much stuff I don't know that
| I have to look up or so many big design/refactoring
| questions that I'm discovering in real time and have to
| grapple with. It's as flowy as your car getting stuck in
| the mud every 2 miles and having to get out and push. It's
| as productive as having a bipartisan Congressional hearing
| on the best posture to use every time you have to push it
| out of the mud. Incrementalism and time management are my
| friends cuz it's exhausting to do that for too long without
| breaks!
|
| Nevertheless, programming remains my favorite professional
| and hobbyist activity.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I don't think it's time, it's priorities; your work is,
| naturally, a lower priority (both in terms of your focus
| and your actual time) than your kids, spouse (if any) and
| yourself. Whereas in the Before Times, it was just you and
| your keyboard.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Having family as priority compared to work is more than
| fine, it makes you (potentially, not necessarily) a good
| human being, a good parent or husband. This world needs
| that 10'000x more than another code ninja optimizing some
| corporation by nanofraction of a percentile.
|
| The opposite is extremely valid too (to not leave any
| room for misunderstanding - folks prioritizing work over
| their kids are shitbags, no exception, and every single
| one I've met in their later years deeply regret that...
| apart from outright sociopaths and similar careless
| crowd).
|
| Focus on career if thats your calling and spent whole
| live in it if you want, but then please don't have kids.
| Every kid with missing/bad father figure I've ever met
| later in their lives was a mess in one of myriad ways,
| endlessly compensating for this and never actually coming
| over it, permanently. If you know what to look for, you
| can start seeing it around you quite easily. It breaks my
| heart a little every time I see it. These folks often
| repeat same mistakes of their parents too.
| phkahler wrote:
| I think it's your kids. They should be your priority for
| now. You really can get back to tech stuff later. Phases of
| life and all that.
| threadweaver34 wrote:
| Late 30's no kids, no stresses beyond the threat layoffs
| and still being single.
|
| I recently tried playing some video games adjacent to ones
| I've loved before, and I found it really hard to get into
| them. The games are Red Dead Redemption and SimCity 4, so
| the graphics and gameplay mechanics are ok. It's just been
| hard to really get into them.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I find that my taste for games and tv reflects what is
| missing in my life. If your life is relatively peaceful,
| maybe you would enjoy more action-oriented games like
| FPS?
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Try Cities Skylines. The newer SimCity games really
| botched it and Cities Skylines came along and ate their
| lunch. It's a fantastic game with a vibrant modding scene
| vjk800 wrote:
| The same for me. I still _sometimes_ find games that I
| can really get into, but it 's much harder than it was
| 10-20 years ago. I think part of that is because I've
| played so many games that many new games just feel like
| the same old again and again. The other reason is, of
| course, that the general inability to concentrate hard on
| stuff makes it so much more difficult to immerse myself
| into the game world.
|
| Some exceptions in the past few years have been Zelda:
| breath of the wild and GTA V (yes, I know both of them
| are a bit older, but I only played them relatively
| recently).
| pmarreck wrote:
| big into the star wars and hogwarts games recently, both
| open world rpg's of a sort
| jgraettinger1 wrote:
| Also 39, also three young kids. It's hard.
|
| One thing I've noticed, though, is that my difficultly in
| getting into a flow state is more often than not because of
| a subconscious hang-up about the approach that I haven't
| articulated yet.
|
| I've learned to recognize and lean into this, and actively
| look for what's bothering me about a design. Usually while
| doing other things.
|
| I suspect it's actually saved effort overall.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| I also think that having a messy personal life that you CARE
| ABOUT is really important for fostering good people
| management skills. I've never had a good boss whose primary
| identity was work.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Really interesting point, looking back it holds true for me
| as well. My last two bosses were single dudes with no
| partner, family or even dog and their management style was
| impersonal and difficult. It was like working for an AI
| trained on the most popular management books.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Do you feel that managing helped you in some ways with your
| later IC work or was it a waste of time?
| tus666 wrote:
| He aint 35.
| wglb wrote:
| This is pretty cool, in my book. I was first paid for programming
| 57 years ago, and have continued to program. I even was
| programming while I was CSO (but didn't tell anyone). To this
| day, I feel vaguely uncomfortable if I haven't programmed for a
| while. Flow is a bit less due to other responsibilities, but I do
| enjoy even a little programming.
|
| A while back, I tallied all the languages that I had programmed
| in and it was like 36 (if I can count the machine languages
| produced by compilers I worked on). There are a few more, like
| Snobol and Prolog, that were part of coursework. These days,
| almost all of what I do is in Common Lisp.
|
| Your System 6 looks quite cool.
|
| And no, I don't plan to actually retire--I'll always be
| programming.
| asimjalis wrote:
| I can totally relate to this. I find myself forcing my attention
| away from programming to do other work. Programming is like an
| infinite game.
| tail_exchange wrote:
| OOC, what do you program so much? I usually don't program after
| work, not because I don't want to, but because I don't have
| anything to build.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom
| programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine
| doing in their spare time?
|
| I'm sure there are, but I don't know any. I have the passion
| (obsession as my mother called it). I've been fascinated with
| computers since before 3rd grade when my public elementary school
| installed a computer lab with TRS-80s. They soon invited me to
| help teach the "adult" computer class (as a 3rd grader) they
| offered in the evening to the local community. It was then
| discovering the world of BBS, then running my own, then coding it
| to my taste. In college came the internet and the rest is
| history. I have the theory that it was the timeframe when
| microcomputers just started to come and grow their legs is what
| birthed such passion in so many people. I'm not sure how much of
| it still exists to the current youth generations, but it sure
| existed in mine.
|
| PS: I do miss those cigarettes.
| pmarreck wrote:
| OH MY GOD, GLYPHA!
| EGreg wrote:
| Hey everyone. I have just completed a release of an iOS app,
| being a web developer.
|
| Let me tell you... the Apple developer ecosystem is sooooooo
| convoluted! Is it just me or does anyone else feel that way?
|
| Don't get me wrong. The company is innovative and a trailblazer.
| It has done so much in terms of hardware-software integration.
| And I am not even talking about anything before MacOS X or iOS.
|
| I mean ... Objective C. XCode. The hodgepodge of a million
| different things smashed together. I have seen many people say it
| is elegant... I have seen many ecosystems. Apple's one is, well,
| kludge upon kludge.
|
| First there was [foo bar] but then you got also foo.bar and
| foo.setBar. You null, NULL but also nil, you had YES and NO but
| also got true and false later. You could swizzle but also you
| could have C++ features alongside Objective C for a while, for
| the ultimate in language law degrees. You got #include #import
| but also @import because hey, @ gave you random superpowers. You
| had protocol but later got NS versions of everything (like
| NSCopying) and then ARC bolted on and auto draining pools that
| worked some of the time.
|
| Swift was much nicer and tried to go back to simplicity. It even
| helpfully renamed all your methods. But then it had things like
| exclamation points that you were never supposed to use, and a
| weird try/catch syntax that could crash your app anyway. And when
| Swift came out you also got YourApp-swift.h generated magically
| by XCode to bridge to Objective C, because of course you did.
| After all, you have to rely on XCode for so many things. Assets
| go in a special Package format, you see. They used to live on a
| Resource Fork but the filesystem got changed.
|
| Apple's class system is also a hodgepodge. You have NS from the
| good old days, you have Foundation framework, but then you also
| have a ton of others which duplicate some of the functionality.
|
| But that's just the start. You've got nib, make that xib, make
| that storyboards, and they are all different. You've got
| constraints of 10 different types but they don't work as you'd
| expect with all the various tools. (Man I miss Visual Basic, that
| was 20-25 years ago!).
|
| The buttons are tiny and functionality like dragging an IBOutlet
| are hard to discover when clicking does nothing. As a teenager I
| was on the Apple Human Interface Developers mailing list, and
| their Guidelines (anyone remember those?) said "no hidden modes".
| Well, that is so quaint now, for the last 20 years the new Apple
| has violated all their HI Guidelines. Oh, and did I mention, you
| only had a couple page transitions, one of which was a curled
| page turn, and one was sliding up from the bottom -- but sliding
| down from the top is just not a thing! Write it yourself! If you
| can.
|
| But that's not all. Not by a long shot. You have to work with
| CocoaPods as a package manager along with other ones, and put up
| with arcane error messages with each new OS version as things
| break because things that used to be OK are now not. And if that
| error comes from any of the hundreds of random build settings --
| good luck, buddy. Here is a video from an expert in the trenches
| ... who is glad to discover someone else has been cataloguing all
| these build settings for years:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJLBTIWE-yQ&t=57s
|
| No wonder Apple is trying to move towards an all-Swift future.
|
| Did I mention Apple FORGOT TO RENEW THE CERTIFICATE ON ITS OWN
| MAC APP STORE -- not once but twice?
|
| I imagine it is better actually inside Apple. But hey, I worked
| inside Bloomberg and I can tell you, that codebase is ...
| idiosyncratic to put it mildly. I guess it is like that inside
| many companies, but when you build a platform for developers to
| use, you need to make it clean and cut down on the number of
| concepts that have to be used, or at least make the concepts all
| consistent, like BSD.
|
| On the bright side, Apple did usher in the Mac, the iPod, iPhone,
| Apple TV, many innovations. It did absorb NeXT, try to bridge
| with Darwin, change CPU architectures a bunch of times, make
| Grand Central Dispatch, create secure enclaves, and more. So we
| can give them a pass I guess as a company. But boy does their
| development ecosystem feel a lot of kludges that accumulated over
| the years!
| b20000 wrote:
| so this guy never had to deal with leetcode BS
| WalterBright wrote:
| > How is it you can love a machine?
|
| That's not it for me. For me is I can create things. I always
| wanted to create machines, but even simple machines required
| enormous amounts of time in a machine shop, and once I left
| college I no longer had any machine tools available.
|
| But with programming, I could create all kinds of machines,
| limited only by my imagination, at no cost.
| digitalianz wrote:
| [dead]
| osigurdson wrote:
| I think being a coder is a bit like being a musician - you never
| retire.
| flatline wrote:
| In my younger years my obsession with programming was complex. It
| was partly an escape, partly a reveling in the godlike powers
| bestowed upon me by the machine. I think both aspects were
| unhealthy, and were effective at keeping me from dealing with the
| more complex realities of developing and maintaining a balanced
| lifestyle, especially in my social life. I still enjoy writing
| code, but I could never imagine a return to this extreme focus
| unless something was out of place elsewhere.
| hacky11 wrote:
| [dead]
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