[HN Gopher] I just want to code (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
I just want to code (2023)
Author : SCUSKU
Score : 269 points
Date : 2025-04-27 20:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.zachbellay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.zachbellay.com)
| xfeeefeee wrote:
| I've always thought of myself as a struggling artist and musician
| first, code being one of many avenues to express myself, and also
| to pay the bills until I got into more managerial roles, and now
| I get to use it more creatively or in pursuit of creative
| endeavors rather than during work time, and it is incredibly
| liberating.
| vicapow wrote:
| Just a suggestion: The github permissions your comment login
| thing requests is a bit too aggressive.
|
| > This application will be able to read and write all public
| repository data.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Can't everyone read public repo data?
| tczMUFlmoNk wrote:
| Not everyone can _write_ it...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Oh, I missed that. Thank you.
| gnabgib wrote:
| (2023)
| codr7 wrote:
| I've found that just writing code only takes me so far, I need to
| share as well to feel good about it. But sharing anything outside
| of the ordinary with the world means painting a pretty big target
| on your back. On the positive side, it also opens up an avenue
| for getting paid.
|
| My point is that if you start with the fun and let it grow from
| there, and you're willing to go through the discomfort of
| sharing, it doesn't have to be either or.
| mncharity wrote:
| > share as well to feel good about it. But
|
| I wish to share, but not to helicopter parent. I've long felt
| this case ill served, from 1995 Perl CPAN's "you own the
| package name" (vs _author_ -packagename-version triples), to
| 2025 github's impoverished support for communities of forks. No
| "past me wrote this; present me frees it to jam; future me
| isn't involved - play well together, and maybe someday I'll
| listen in or drop by". The emphasis has been on human
| ownership/control of code, and of limited human collaboration,
| rather than on code getting out there, building friendships and
| communities, having fun and flourishing with the humans.
| necovek wrote:
| That's only with GitHub. There are other platforms, obviously
| less popular, which don't take that approach.
|
| Heck, most of the "real" free software world (the one
| building entire operating systems, desktop environments,
| programming languages, games... other than Linus with Linux)
| operate in that manner.
|
| I am always perplexed when people ask me about my GitHub
| account for my opensource contributions: I point them at
| whatever the latest incarnation of ohloh (OpenHub) is where
| they can find thousands of my commits over hundreds of
| projects.
| mncharity wrote:
| https://openhub.net/ . Other platforms?
|
| Any platforms emphasizing rendezvous? Like... Let me know
| whenever someone on my <fun people list> commits a new
| project, or is looking for help. Any meet-and-hacks later
| today, anywhere on the planet, which welcome virtuals?
| Happy to do 20 minutes of pair programming now - you know
| my profile - is anyone around? Text me whenever a flash-mob
| hackathon gets going. Notify me whenever code, any
| language, seeks help with <expertise domain>. Using my
| profile-3, find me a couple of candidate tickets for later.
| ... Sort of AI-facilitated social networking for humans and
| code.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| I used to think the same thing, that sharing was caring. Now,
| for me, I would rather share with non-coders. So now everything
| is communicated as a product summary, not a coding project.
| androng wrote:
| >No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most
| hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing
| some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and
| watching the money roll in--without ever having to talk to users,
| or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's
| broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it.
|
| >One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers
| about the inevitability of schleps. No, you can't start a startup
| by just writing code. I remember going through this realization
| myself. There was a point in 1995 when I was still trying to
| convince myself I could start a company by just writing code. But
| I soon learned from experience that schleps are not merely
| inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company
| is defined by the schleps it will undertake.
|
| >The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is Stripe,
| or rather Stripe's idea. For over a decade, every hacker who'd
| ever had to process payments online knew how painful the
| experience was.
|
| https://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
| Macha wrote:
| A lot of why people didn't build Stripe before was that to
| enter the payments space you needed connections to get the
| banks and payment processors to work with you. In comparison,
| you don't need anyone's permission to make uber for dry
| cleaners or something in line with other trends of the time. I
| doubt the Collison brothers would have been as successful
| getting Stripe off the ground if it had been their first
| company.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Anything thats remotely disruptive requires the same deep
| connections.
|
| Tech just doesnt have many opportunities left.
| morkalork wrote:
| Working at a start-up now and seeing how many partnerships
| are solely due to connections of the CEO or a random board
| member is crushing. The tech side is an entirely and
| relatively easily solvable problem in comparison to the
| rest.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Has always been, there are a few cases where this wasn't
| true but odds are any industry you want to "enter" needs
| someone with connections to open the doors for you.
|
| Tech is a problem that needs solving but it isn't the
| biggest problem to be solved, having a network and
| knowing people is more than half the job.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| And?
|
| Those connections didn't materialize out of thin air, you
| know. Your CEO/random board member had to meet people,
| understand what they do, keep those connections alive,
| etc.
|
| Why can't you do the same? Start now and in five years
| you'll be a lot more connected than you are at this
| moment. This is also an entirely solvable problem.
| billybones wrote:
| Set a reminder for 10 years from now. Let's see how many
| incredible new tech products have been built. My guess is
| that ~any judge will decide that it turned out there were a
| lot of things still to be built
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Right? I'm willing to bet that people have been saying
| this in one form or another for the last thousand years
| or so.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Deep connections: the invisible wall the common man cannot
| pass.
| rat87 wrote:
| Banking is both deeply entrenched and well regulated. I
| suppose people could make a venmo/PayPal/
| rat87 wrote:
| Banking is both deeply entrenched and well regulated. I
| suppose people could make a venmo/PayPal/cash app payment
| system but dealing with cards would be more difficult
| jes5199 wrote:
| yeah. I worked on the internal banking connection at Square
| in the old days (~2011) and it was a _nightmare_. like, pre-
| TCP/IP connectivity that depended on dedicated copper to do
| teletype in COBOL-style fixed length fields in a cryptic
| format that was only specified in scans of paper documents.
| We had to write an adaptor that looked like, you know, REST
| on one end but then shoveled _all_ of the traffic onto that
| single upstream connection, and then had to try to map
| responses that came back out of order to the right client.
| Miserable stuff and a threading nightmare.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is hardly the point, but pg's use of _schlep_ is jarring:
| it 's primarily a verb ("to schlep"), but the noun form almost
| uniformly requires an article ("the schlep").
|
| "No one likes schleps" should be "no one likes to schlep."
| pkdpic wrote:
| Love it, perfect length and cadence for a blog post (imho).
| Stayed focused on personal perspective / experience. Perfect
| minimally distracting amount of CSS. Perfect skimmability that
| drew me in to read in more detail. And a perfect conclusion that
| I just happen to agree with.
| susam wrote:
| Outside of professional software jobs, for me code is also a form
| of personal expression. I code for work. But I also code for fun.
| Although there is some overlap in the experience between the two,
| the two forms of coding are wildly different.
|
| I probably don't need to explain much about coding at work. It's
| not just about "writing code". It's about software engineering.
| It's a responsibility that requires professionalism, discipline,
| and care. The real focus isn't the code itself. The focus is
| first and foremost on the business problems. Good code, good
| algorithms, and solid engineering practices are simply means to
| an end in solving those problems effectively.
|
| But in my free time, coding is something else entirely. It's a
| form of art and expressing myself. It all started with IBM PC
| Logo and GW-BASIC, where writing code to draw patterns on the
| screen was my way of creating art. While some kids painted with
| brushes and watercolours, I painted with code and CGA colours.
|
| Coding in my leisure time is a way for me to create, explore, and
| express my silly ideas without the constraints of business
| requirements or deadlines. It's where I get to experiment, play,
| and bring ideas, no matter how trivial or pointless, to life
| purely for the joy of it. Occasionally, these small experiments
| evolve into something I'm comfortable sharing online. That's when
| I write up a README.md, add a LICENSE.md, commit the code to my
| repo, and push it to GitHub or Codeberg to share with others
| hoping fellow like-minded individuals might find joy or utility
| in these experiments.
|
| Fortunately, I've been able to release a few projects that have
| gathered small communities of users. For example, my last such
| project was https://susam.net/myrgb.html which, as far as I can
| tell, has got about 50 to 60 daily users. It's a small number but
| it's not nothing. While coding for leisure has always been
| enjoyable, the presence of these small communities has also been
| quite motivating.
|
| I think it is possible to do both with some luck. While coding
| for work happens almost everyday by necessity, I think coding for
| leisure can also happen along with it, provided other
| circumstances of life don't get in the way. If circumstances
| allow, it is certainly possible. It doesn't have to happen
| everyday. I know everyone has got responsibilities in their
| lives. I've got too. But it can happen once in a while, when a
| spark of inspiration strikes. For me, it usually happens on some
| weekends when I get an itch to explore an idea, something I feel
| compelled to implement and see through.
| joshdavham wrote:
| I've actually been thinking about this a bunch the last couple of
| months and it's a truly painful dilemna!
|
| At a high level, for those of us who code outside of work, we're
| constantly faced with the choice of either working on something
| that we find interesting vs. something that would further our
| careers. It's awesome when they align, but it can be painful when
| they don't.
|
| I sometimes feel guilty when I choose to work on passion
| projects... but if I instead choose work on professional
| development, I feel like my creative soul starts to wither a bit.
| cladopa wrote:
| If you have issues with having proper material compensation for
| your work, you will have to work on those first before anything
| else.
|
| Doing necessary work, even when you don't like is for me the
| definition of "work". You should also learn to manage it, if you
| work too much, you should take a break.
|
| You don't need to get rich as "billionaire", but if you are good
| at your work it is reasonable that you will get "millionaire",
| because you gave society tens of times more value that what you
| got.
|
| That is not something to be ashamed of. If you got the money
| gambling(taking it from someone else) you can feel ashamed, but
| not if you made money generating wealth with effort and work.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Am I the only coder who has never really felt the desire to "be
| my own boss" and get rich from coding?
|
| I was so against the idea, actually, that I avoided majoring in
| CS because I didn't want to ruin my favorite hobby by doing it
| professionally.
|
| It wasn't until a few years after I graduated with my philosophy
| degree and couldn't find a career that I decided to try writing
| code for a living.
|
| It's been great for me for almost 20 years now, and thankfully I
| still love to code for fun even though I do it all day
| professionally, but I have not felt the pull to try to form my
| own startup and try to get rich.
|
| My favorite part of coding is having a problem and then figuring
| out how to solve it with the tools I have. I love working as a
| programmer because that is what I do all day, and someone pays me
| really good money to do it.
|
| And I don't have to worry about all the other stuff like business
| models or funding or getting customers or talking to people, I
| just get a problem and do my favorite thing to solve it.
|
| And I have more time to do other things because I am not hustling
| or trying to get rich.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| You're in the 99%. It's just that the other 1% write all the
| blog posts.
| mastazi wrote:
| I'm the same, I started coding as a kid on an Amiga 500. But I
| never thought it would become my job. I studied a degree in
| communication and worked as a journalist first, then as a press
| agent. Later I decided to move to a different country where I
| could not work in PR or journalism due to language barriers so
| I went back to programming. Eventually I even went back to Uni
| and got a degree in IT because I felt that I had some knowledge
| gaps due to being self-taught. Going back to uni in my mid 30s
| was actually a cool experience (despite the fact that I had to
| study & work at the same time).
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I like programming for my friends. The moment money gets
| involved it goes to shit. Idea guys want you to program for
| free , and offer you something like 1% vested over 5 years.
|
| They have you sign NDAs before you start working. The ideas are
| all really really stupid.
|
| I do have my ideas, but I'm also humble enough to just accept
| I'll probably never make any real money. I self taught my way
| straight to 6 figures ( back in 2016 when that still meant
| something). That's enough really...
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, I don't want to code for equity, either. I just want to
| code for a flat paycheck, with maybe an equity bonus. I have
| been able to do this for 18 years now.
| brulard wrote:
| First thing for wannabe enterpreneurs to learn is that
| allmost all your ideas are shit, and those that are good
| still need a lot of luck and the best execution to get
| somewhere. How many good ideas didn't work for first startups
| that came with it, but worked for someone else years later?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm fine with building out stupid ideas, for one of two
| reasons.
|
| One, we've been friends for a minimum of 5 years and I
| sincerely like you as a person.
|
| Two, you pay me.
|
| At least twice I've had situations where I basically need
| someone at a bar or something and within a week they're
| sending me a bunch of specs to program out something that
| will require a small team to do properly. Then when you do
| hack out a small prototype it's not good enough.
|
| At this point in my life, I'd rather work on my own solo
| projects if anything. I'll release the code MIT and if
| someone smarter than me wants to make money off it they can
| brulard wrote:
| I'm there with you. So many times I have heard this, what
| a great opportunity for me: build another guys (I have
| met 5 minutes ago) idea. It's simple, just a clone of
| (youtube|twitter|foursquare|...) with a little twist. It
| will certainly make me rich, because I can have a small
| fraction share of the project. Salary? No, that's for
| losers. We are going to make it big.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Even then, if you want to at least cut me in as an equal
| partner I think I'd be more inclined to build out your
| project. But that's not what I get, I get you and your
| other partners keep 97% of it, and at most I'll get 2% to
| 3% for building the whole thing.
| protocolture wrote:
| You wanted to get rich in the philosophy mines while coding as
| a hobby?
|
| Be cool if you pulled it off.
| cortesoft wrote:
| My plan was to be a stand up philosopher
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Speaking only for myself, I never wanted to be rich. It would
| have been _nice_ to have the money, but I never wanted to make
| the sacrifices necessary.
|
| I also didn't want to be used by some predator, to make them
| rich. I found a [less-than-perfect, but OK] company to work
| for, that had values I liked, and stayed there, for a long
| time. I got to hang with the _really cool kids_. I mean the
| ones that were so cool, no one knew who they were, because they
| didn 't care about being cool. They just liked doing what they
| were doing, and they were the best at it.
|
| I was the dumbest kid in the room, and I'm smarter than the
| average bear. I also got to play with some _very_ cool toys.
|
| But I was a manager, for most of that time, and I didn't want
| to give up coding. I didn't have a "shower clause" in my
| employment contract, so I spent a great deal of my
| extracurricular time, doing open-source stuff. I had an
| organization that could use my skills, so I worked with them.
|
| Eventually, the cool ride was over (after almost 27 years), and
| I found myself ready to roll up my sleeves, and help make
| someone else rich.
|
| But no one wanted me, so I was forced to retire, and I've never
| been happier.
|
| I was just talking about this, yesterday, to a friend of mine,
| who sold his company, and is getting set to become a Man of
| Leisure. He's like me. He needs something to do, and I suspect
| that he'll do something cool.
|
| I mentioned how upset I was, when I figured out that no one
| wanted me, but, after a year or so of following my own muse, I
| realized that I had been working at a state of chronic, low-
| grade misery, for over 30 years. I probably work harder now,
| than I ever did, drawing a salary, and I absolutely love it.
| This is what I've been working on, for the last month or so[0].
| Still have a ways to go, but it's coming along great, and I've
| been learning a lot.
|
| Here's a post that I wrote, some time ago, about how I like to
| approach things[1].
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/ambiamara/tree/master/...
|
| [1] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-
| ships...
| charlie0 wrote:
| I don't want to be rich either, but it would be awesome to
| FIRE before I'm 65.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It was never a goal of mine, but I found out I could, at
| 55.
|
| It would have been nice, to have the extra decade of
| salary, but c'est la vie...
| cortesoft wrote:
| You can do that on a normal salary, too.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| But only if you get incredibly lucky. Even in the Bay
| Area where many an employee became a millionaire the
| chance of that being you is still a single digit
| percentage.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not just luck. Self-discipline, structure, and sacrifice
| are necessary.
|
| Living frugally, deferring (or avoiding) purchases,
| saving a substantial percentage, etc., was important for
| me.
|
| Also, the world around us, changes.
|
| In my entire career, I never made more than what some
| kids make, coming right out of school, these days.
|
| The same for my father. He never made more than about
| $50K, his entire life, yet had a half-acre house in
| Potomac, two cars, and a stay-at-home wife.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| I'm wondering what a "shower clause" would be in a contract
| and hoping it's not a Silkwood reference.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| No. It's the clause that is common in tech contracts, where
| any idea that you come up with, "in the shower," belongs to
| the company.
|
| It prevents things like moonlighting, or doing charity
| work.
|
| I worked for a company that employed a lot of top-notch
| photographers, and there's no way that they would have
| agreed to anything like that.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| oh yeah, the 'no intellectually rewarding hobbies' clause
| ... that has always seemed counterproductive and short-
| sighted from my perspective
| test1235 wrote:
| > I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract
|
| what's a shower clause?
|
| EDIT:
|
| "That's the clause that says your employer owns every idea
| that you come up with in the shower."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24585399
| platevoltage wrote:
| I never thought that I would "be my own boss" after making the
| moves needed to go beyond just being a hobbyist, but I was
| quickly shown that I'm essentially unemployable.
|
| It's been 2 years, and I can proudly say that i'm finally
| making more money than I did delivering packages on a bicycle
| in SF, which isn't much.
|
| Getting rich was never in the cards for me, but not having to
| answer to a tyrannical boss every day is definitely a positive.
| Coming from a blue-collar background, that's pretty much the
| norm, and that sentiment has stuck with me.
| cortesoft wrote:
| What makes you "essentially unemployable"?
| nottorp wrote:
| > try to form my own startup and try to get rich
|
| You don't have to do the kind of startup that is worshipped
| here on HN.
| brulard wrote:
| I think a mindset to "get rich" or even worse "get rich
| quickly" is reallt bad for everyone even outside tech. There is
| certain amount of wealth you need so you need not to worry
| about food, shelter, kids, education, health, etc, that's all
| right, but beyond that it's just getting destructive. When do
| you feel "rich enough" already? $1M? $100M? If you don't worry
| about getting rich and just be ok with being mid-class, you can
| code whatever you like. Even without getting single dime from
| the hobby code you will learn a lot, you will get good with
| tools and quick to find solutions, easier to be employed and
| progress in your career. And I would believe happier in the
| long run.
| hateful wrote:
| > I watched an Amazon Prime knockoff of Silicon Valley called
| Betas
|
| Not sure you can call it a knockoff if it came out a year
| earlier!
| CollinEMac wrote:
| As I get older I find myself embracing the angel more and more.
| I've met a lot of programmers that got what the devil was
| offering by only listening to the angel.
| alganet wrote:
| Honestly, the text looks like it was written by someone who does
| not understand hobbyist programming.
|
| It's not fun. The activity is not an enjoyable act of
| entertainment. It's stressful, time consuming and miserable.
|
| The result is what matters. You did something. Learned something.
| For you, not because it was in some work planning. It provides
| catharsis.
|
| That sort of catharsis does not exist in some work related
| environment. It never will, unless stars align magically, which
| they almost never do.
|
| I am highly skeptic of this "code is fun" perspective. Always
| was.
|
| That's why "all your base belong to us" kind of contracts in
| which stuff made outside work COULD become property of the hiring
| company makes otherwise happy developers into depressive under-
| productive nightmares. Let them code the toy thing unharmed in
| their spare time, for fucks sake.
|
| Let it be the real thing. Stop this nonsense fairytale.
|
| It is for your own good. It prevents companies from hiring con
| men, it prevents young folk from being drawn to a career they
| will despise, it prevents massive loss of investment.
|
| I wanted to code for catharsis. To learn. To feel I made
| something. Wanted, past tense. These "code for fun" people were
| serious contributors to my burnout.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Honestly, the text looks like it was written by someone who
| does not understand hobbyist programming.
|
| I don't think that at all. I think he just has a different
| perspective on it than you do. Whilst your perspective is
| valid, some people actually do enjoy the work of coding,
| especially if they can do so in an environment where they can
| immediately check intermediate results and use those to shape
| their coding trajectory as they work, creating a tight OODA
| loop. (Hi, Lisp!)
|
| > That's why "all your base belong to us" kind of contracts in
| which stuff made outside work COULD become property of the
| hiring company makes otherwise happy developers into depressive
| under-productive nightmares. Let them code the toy thing
| unharmed in their spare time, for fucks sake.
|
| > Let it be the real thing. Stop this nonsense fairytale.
|
| On this we can agree. I think that for programming to _be_ fun
| it has to be something you _want_ to see come into fruition,
| i.e., not any random thing someone else wants to see, done to
| their schedule by their rules. Good tech companies -- game
| studios in the 90s, Google in the early days, even Microsoft in
| the early days -- knew how to make the golden goose as
| comfortable as possible while slipping out the back with the
| eggs.
|
| But in the late 90s, Jim McCarthy's "Beware of a guy in a room"
| became iron gospel among management types, who interpreted it
| as meaning that developers must be subjected to a panopticon in
| which what they are doing at all times is tracked and analyzed
| by the chain of command going up to the C level. Hence Scrum,
| SAFe, and all that malarkey, and we've forgotten how to "let
| 'em cook" as the kids say now.
| alganet wrote:
| Sorry, still sounds like a fairy tale.
|
| I was fine doing some hours of planned teamwork. As long as I
| had some time to work on things I want. Spare non paid time.
|
| For those things I want to program on that spare time, I
| don't want anyone snooping around to collect anything. I
| realize I don't want anyone encouraging, questioning, giving
| advice, talking about it.
|
| The problem is much deeper. As I mentioned, this "code for
| fun" people had a prominent role in my burning out. They act
| as catharsis blockers as much as scrum people.
|
| It makes no sense to try anything anymore. There could be a
| con man happy supporter just around the corner waiting to
| "collect the egg for free". I will rather let them starve.
|
| Maybe this is exactly what the profession needs. A mass
| strike of some sort. Not for higher pay, but for better work
| conditions. It probably won't happen in my time.
| flmontpetit wrote:
| I don't find knitting fun, which is why I don't do it. Even if
| in theory I like the idea of creating custom clothing on the
| cheap, and whatnot.
|
| Maybe that's what programming is to you.
| alganet wrote:
| I do it for catharsis, to learn, to feel like I did something
| of my own.
|
| Maybe you do because of the fun. Then you don't need me.
| Leave me alone.
| gmoque wrote:
| Coding is another tool, just the same way you buy a piece of
| furniture online you can also build it yourself, if you have the
| tools and skills. It's up to you how you want to use your
| resources (time and money).
|
| Coding is a tool to solve data problems, I've been doing it for
| close to two decades now and I still find it fulfilling and fun.
| Many years ago I used to think, I love my job that I would do my
| job for free ... I was wrong! Others will paid for doing things
| you find fun, make sure you know your worth.
| delusional wrote:
| I understand your point, and I don't disagree with it as a
| matter of utility. It just doesn't capture all of what code is.
|
| I find computer systems beautiful. A system of parts
| interacting in a complex dance to process data. Each part
| effortlessly modifyable and reusable, executable by the generic
| machine people already own.
|
| I love the puzzle of putting data together, of shaping it in
| main memory, and the joy of finding that previous shaping makes
| the current problem easier. The joy of finding a hidden algebra
| or transitivity.
|
| All of these things go beyond the "tool" view of software and
| touches the "art" view. A painter doesn't find the painting
| useful, they find it beautiful.
|
| I would be writing software, even if I want paid. I would
| however be working on vastly different software, and I think
| that's the OP's point.
| GolDDranks wrote:
| > Coding is another tool
|
| Maybe to you. For some of us, it's also a form of self-
| expression, a hobby or a lifestyle.
|
| In my experience coding for money and coding for fun is a very
| different experience. I know my worth, but I am also free to do
| whatever I want out of my working hours.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| I have no idea why they mention coding. It is the same in any
| kind of job. You can bake cakes for fun, make music for fun,
| write poems, novels, play chess for fun, practice sports, grow
| potatos ...
|
| At a certain stage, you realize that in order to be able to do
| only that job, you must make someone pay you for it. You must do
| it in a way (or in a volume) which makes others happy. The fact
| that it makes you happy is not enough anymore.
|
| I don't think there is an angel and a devil. It is still the same
| thing. If you like the result of your work, there is a high
| chance that others will like it. You don't need to change what
| you do by a 100%. Changing it by 5% - 10% is often enough.
| blahgeek wrote:
| I think it's more common because one doing only coding can get
| paid reasonably. On the contrary, few people who "bake cakes
| for fun, make music for fun, write poems, novels, play chess
| for fun, practice sports, grow potatos" can get paid enough for
| a living, so that's usually not an option to consider. (Which
| is the reason that I find us coding people very lucky.)
| Juliate wrote:
| > only coding can get paid reasonably
|
| If you happen to work for a company that's big enough to pay
| reasonably. And even that is still a very temporary accident
| of times.
|
| There was a time with plenty (comparatively to today) of
| tailors, living very reasonably, because there was a demand,
| and the means.
|
| Today, you're lucky if you manage to find one that's in your
| city, and even more if he/she's not too expensive (that is,
| compared to ready-made stuff).
| varjag wrote:
| Come on, coding is universally at a premium compared to
| other trades. Naturally you wouldn't have a FAANG salary at
| an outsourcing farm overseas but it'll certainly provide
| you with comfortable living by local standards.
| Juliate wrote:
| > coding is universally at a premium compared to other
| trades
|
| It has been and it still is at this time. Just saying
| that it won't last.
|
| The existential threat, and perpetual adaptation to
| technology musicians (classical as well as contemporary)
| have met since the invention of sound recording and its
| developments, is coming for software developers too.
| baud147258 wrote:
| > perpetual adaptation to technology musicians have met
|
| Didn't it also went with an important reduction in the
| number of people who could make a living out of that?
| Juliate wrote:
| Precisely.
| soco wrote:
| Like you almost spelled out, tailors were never competing
| with ready-made. Clothing used to be expensive, until
| people (sometimes children) working for pennies were able
| to send to you across long distances something good enough
| to wear.
| milesrout wrote:
| I'm not sure that is actually true about tailors. My
| understanding is that most clothing was homemade. I assume
| people didnt generally make their own shoes but they made
| their own textiles and basic garments and most people didnt
| have many garments.
|
| Maybe there is a specific time period you are referring to
| where this was common but as I understand it, pre-
| industrially there were very few artisans selling products
| for money. Clothes were made largely by women and girls for
| their families.
| foobarian wrote:
| Be that as it may, there definitely used to be more
| tailors.
| 9rx wrote:
| Presumably he is referring to the industrialization
| period when suits were the everyday fashion. Once we
| moved on to baggy jeans and sweatpants, where the fit
| doesn't matter much, then the tailor was no longer
| relevant.
| Juliate wrote:
| Yes, I'm referring to what we could call the golden age
| of tailoring, around 1800-1970.
|
| You could say it was brief, relative to humanity history,
| indeed, as a transition period between cottage/home
| textile manufacturing as well as sewing, and high (and
| accelerating) automation managed by fewer people and lots
| of low-paid workers (as it is today).
|
| And such is the trajectory for software development, a
| brief golden age, between the moment where computers
| barely existed, and the moment where
| automation/acceleration takes over.
|
| It won't eliminate software development, but it won't
| require as many people as it does today. Some "local"
| artisan shops, highly skilled, and more expensive, may
| still exist.
|
| But the capital currently feeling high tech salaries will
| inevitably seek new/other growth opportunities, as it has
| always done with other growth drivers.
| goodpoint wrote:
| so you are saying work is meant to be miserable and coding is
| the exception. Is that a life worth living?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's not that work is meant to be miserable, it's that if
| work wasn't in some ways
| miserable/frustrating/unrewarding/etc, more people would be
| doing it for free.
|
| Or rather, you wouldn't need to pay people to do things
| they already enjoy doing. So, the things you need to pay
| people to do must contain some things that people don't
| want to do for free.
| swoorup wrote:
| One can combat it by just choosing discipline, grit,
| perseverance and stop boxing themselves into angel vs devil
| kind of thinking. You are either working for self or working
| for someone else.
|
| Life is rather what you make of it than the society perception
| of it.
| gwd wrote:
| > I have no idea why they mention coding. It is the same in any
| kind of job. You can bake cakes for fun, make music for fun,
| write poems, novels, play chess for fun, practice sports, grow
| potatos ...
|
| One reason is that coding is so much more scalable than all of
| those. There are loads of stories of people who made some small
| thing that was useful, and were able to make a tidy profit on
| it (or sometimes a fairly large one).
|
| I enjoy making homemade wines. Occasionally someone will try
| something I've made and ask if I'm thinking about selling it
| professionally. No way -- it's a fun hobby, but definitely not
| something I want to do in enough scale to be self-supporting.
|
| I also enjoy languages, and developed an algorithm for helping
| me find material to read that's at the right level -- only a
| handful of words that I don't know. It's been incredibly
| helpful for me, and I'm sure it could be incredibly helpful to
| millions of people out there as well; so I quit my job and am
| trying to figure out how to make that happen:
|
| https://www.laleolanguage.com
| brulard wrote:
| I disagree that coding for fun and making it a product is 5-10%
| difference. I would say it's closer to 500-1000%. I coded a lot
| of tools for myself, for productivity or for fun. Currently I'm
| very quick in doing that thanks to LLMs, it's definitely not
| vibe coding, althoug there is a lot of code generated. As these
| tools serve only me, I may not care about code quality, about
| bugs, about someone elses data loss, about security, GDPR,
| different devices, mobiles, screen sizes, platforms, etc. I
| don't have to support "users" as an entity at all in my apps,
| it can be all hidden behind VPN, so i don't need auth. I have
| so many little issues in my apps so I know I can not for
| example click this and that in rapid succession, or drag this
| thing out of this container etc. It's 100% fine for me, it
| would absolutely needed to be fixed for other users. I would
| need something like a user manual, marketing page, payment
| processing? I don't get any support e-mails and angry users.
| There are many compromises that I can make with little value
| loss if I code just for me as compared to trying to offer a
| service for people and ask for money.
| ankurdhama wrote:
| When you start coding and start having fun, please remember that
| the "fun" doesn't apply to coding as profession. The same goes
| for any other profession. Doing something for fun vs
| professionally are two different worlds.
| xnickb wrote:
| Confidently wrong. Life is a bit more nuanced than that.
|
| Look at any popular open source project and tell me not a
| single contributor was having fun while writing it.
|
| I can give you examples of very high quality open source
| projects where I know for a fact that the person/team behind
| them were just having fun.
| ankurdhama wrote:
| Let me clarify what I mean by for fun vs professionally. For
| fun means you make decisions based on "That feature would be
| fun to implement". Professionally means you make decision
| based on "That's what good for business". Based on these
| definitions most of the open source projects don't fall under
| "professionally" category.
| 9rx wrote:
| Aside from maybe a handful of projects that got lucky
| squatting on the right name (e.g. left-pad), are there any
| popular open source projects that have become popular on
| "that would be fun to implement" rather than "that's what
| is good for business" (understanding the user, answering
| issues, implementing requested features, etc.)? The chances
| of your fun overlapping the exact market need seems rather
| slim.
|
| Even among unpopular open source projects, I expect most of
| them are published as a way to demonstrate ability to
| employers rather than "that would be fun". The latter
| projects do exist, but it is surprising if they make up
| most open source projects.
| ringeryless wrote:
| I am concerned about the authors propensity for taking pop
| cultural memes very very seriously. Somewhere in here is a
| lightbulb waiting to go off and a complete human ready to be
| born. Maybe consider going camping.
| queueueue wrote:
| For me, this has somehow gotten to a point where I keep
| questioning myself if I'm actually doing something out of
| curiosity or because of the idea I could share something with
| other people or some other motive. So I'm not even sure what I'm
| curious about anymore, which might sound ridiculous.
| ArcHound wrote:
| Hey, don't worry. In my book, if you do something because you
| want to share it, then you're still interested in it enough (or
| curious about if you want). You just like to share, and that's
| okay.
|
| It's also a good filter for topics. Naturally, the topics of
| interest of others seem more valuable.
|
| I am doing a similar thing on my blog. Generally, each topic
| must pass the test of: is this useful to at least some? And
| being commited to write means I can clarify and organize my
| thoughts.
|
| So nothing to worry about, keep on experimenting and sharing.
| wzhudev wrote:
| This is basically what I am thinking about in the past few
| months. When everybody is talking about AI but you don't buy it.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >In a perfect world, I could listen to the angel and solely get
| by having fun and working on things I enjoy. But if I didn't
| listen to the devil from time to time, I wouldn't stay up to date
| with the latest technologies, and as a result I wouldn't be able
| to pay my bills.
|
| Why do you need to listen to the devil to stay up to date with
| the latest technologies? You don't need to work on something
| monetizable to stay up on the latest technologies. You can work
| on something for fun and incorporate some of the latest
| technologies to learn about them at the same time.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Do many people hobby code with that entrepreneur mindset thing?
| Or sit down to play guitar thinking they want to make a hit and
| feeling bad if they just noodle some cover songs? What a
| miserable existence that must be. How do you get that way? Should
| we blame LinkedIn or what is it?
| stepbeek wrote:
| I had my own company previously and I found it hard to detangle
| that commercial mindset from hobby coding. I'm employed now and
| find it much easier to code purely for fun.
|
| If I played guitar professionally then I'd probably find it
| hard to not think about new pieces in the context of a gig-
| worthy repertoire.
| p0nce wrote:
| This is real, anytime I code I'm obsessed about RoI
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This is a reaction that I had for a time, until realizing that
| outside of just "some people are different", there is also the
| wider protestant work ethic putting work at the center of their
| life, and assigning a moral value to productive work.
|
| I'm describing it in too vague terms to be appropriate, and
| most people might be thinking it in that way, but I genuinely
| think there's a part of it in a lot of the "I did this paid
| service as a weekend project" mentality.
| cess11 wrote:
| Many people think that they just have to write some code and
| execute it publicly and they'll somehow be provided for. That
| can sully recreational coding since it makes it hard to see
| that it will most definitely not be directly profitable without
| a lot of non-coding labour.
|
| Doing business is demanding, you've got compliance and
| documentation and code needs to be intelligible to other people
| and finances and marketing and planning and customer support
| and all that domain knowledge that allows you to catch more
| than one or two paying customers because your solution works in
| most of a sector of society and so on.
|
| With this in mind you'll have an easy time seeing that your for
| fun, recreational project is not a business and that you can't
| think of it as one until users are starting to force you to by
| being so many or offering money for additional services.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Because having your own product is something that on paper
| sounds extremely rewarding. If you do it well, the maintenance
| might be less than the work you put in your actual job.
|
| Some people want to break out of the cycle, and you can't
| really blame them for it when the economy is hurting working
| people (ofcourse excluding that writing software is relative to
| other jobs a cushion job)
| zeroc8 wrote:
| It's not a cushion job. At least not when you are working on
| a huge codebase together with lots of other developers.
| sethammons wrote:
| What other jobs have you had? I have been a photo lab
| assistant, a sign maker apprentice, a graphic designer, an
| insurance agent, a financial advisor, a construction worker
| and manual laborer, an inner-city math teacher, a software
| developer turned manager turn developer, now at the staff
| level.
|
| Software is the most cush job I have had. More money for
| less work. Better perks. Less stress overall. Constantly
| learning, yes. Often frustrating, yes. But having financial
| resources beyond what the other jobs could provide is a
| thing. Other jobs I could leave at work, sure, but others I
| couldn't. I would never go back to being a public high
| school teacher; that shit was the suck. So was selling
| stocks. Software is a dream in comparison.
| codebastard wrote:
| That is from the viewpoint of the top 10% earners if you
| look at the european market or small / local business
| than you are looking at people doing the job of multiple
| departments and getting blamed if something does not work
| or for their salary if everything works.
|
| And the salary is most of the time lower than anyone from
| the HR or Marketing department whose job if you are
| unlucky you also have to do because the tools they use
| are too complicated for them.
|
| And if take the freelancer / remote work market into
| consideration everyone wants to pass all the work to the
| lowest bidder and some of them get lucky with skilled
| workers whose salary may be in the median considering
| their location after substracting the share of the
| middleman.
| pc86 wrote:
| 100% - my friends who have only ever written code think
| it's a "hard" job in the objective sense. That among all
| possible jobs, it is on the difficult side of the
| spectrum.
|
| I've been an EMT, a line cook, a dishwasher, a waiter,
| sold insurance, and worked on political campaigns. The
| easiest of all those is 10x harder than the hardest day
| of writing code.
|
| It's frustrating at times, sure. There's office politics,
| sure. We probably have to deal with a disproportionate
| percentage of weaponized autism, sure.
|
| But it is a cushy job and the "money per unit of effort"
| metric is off the charts compared to basically every
| other job I can think of, and definitely every other job
| I've ever had.
| Izkata wrote:
| I don't have much experience in jobs like those, but a
| family member who jumped between whole different
| professions for years does. He always got bored of them
| because, at least according to him, all of them had one
| failing: you learn everything you need in a couple of
| months or so, then it's pretty much just getting better
| at doing those things repeatedly.
|
| Eventually he tried out programming and found there's no
| real end to the amount of things to learn. It was the
| only job he found that he wouldn't get bored on. He only
| eventually left because of bad bosses.
|
| I think that might be the factor that makes it hard vs
| easy compared to others - that for a lot of people,
| continual learning (which they thought they'd left behind
| when they finished school) is why it might be harder than
| the other jobs ones you listed. Though I know I'd find
| those ones harder for other different reasons.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Any time you see
| someone saying how hard it is to write code as a job, you
| can tell they've never had a "real" job. I grew up
| working on a farm every day - I would take programming
| every day of the week. Even on the days when I'm
| frustrated or dealing with difficult people, it's better
| than hard physical labor which wears down your body, is
| fairly gross (lots of poop!), and doesn't even pay 1/2 of
| what programming does.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Software is the most cush job I have had. More money
| for less work. Better perks. Less stress overall.
| Constantly learning, yes. Often frustrating, yes. But
| having financial resources beyond what the other jobs
| could provide is a thing. Other jobs I could leave at
| work, sure, but others I couldn't. I would never go back
| to being a public high school teacher; that shit was the
| suck. So was selling stocks. Software is a dream in
| comparison.
|
| The problem is: there exists a very specific group of
| people who do software development as a job who are
| really passionate and idealistic about software (that's
| why they actually got interested in software development
| and decided to do this professionally). For these people,
| the whole "politics" about software devlopment, bullshit
| project management processes, not being allowed to make
| use of their full potential and skills, and office
| politics _is_ (thus) hell on earth.
|
| I thus very plausibly do believe that exactly for people
| who _are_ incredibly passionate about software
| development, other jobs (that are outside their passion)
| can actually (paradoxically!) be more convenient.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| I will preface this by saying that, I decided to stop pursuing
| a job as a software developer because my 2 years of work
| experience mean nothing in the job market.
|
| Now that I ended up finding a job as a waiter (of all things) I
| finally enjoy learning new things again. Before, I would get
| chronically stressed researching the job market, gathering
| keywords from job openings, consuming Udemy courses at 2x
| speed, using AI to plan the project and scaffold it. I was
| writing projects to save my life, because my finances are just
| that bad.
|
| Surrendering and giving up the pursuit of work made all this
| mental load go away, and ironically made me progress in a
| personal skill level faster than anything else. I can now learn
| deeply. I can tinker with code to my heart's content. I can see
| all the warnings. I can research why this and that happen,
| without feeling like I have to "sigma grindset" every second.
|
| Perhaps when the storm is gone with the whole "AI is gonna take
| our jobs" and the market demanding every keyword match, and I
| feel more confident in myself I'll try to get professional
| again. Or not. All I know is that I love programming.
| yapyap wrote:
| In all seriousness, being able to pinpoint what is causing
| the possible stress / load and making choices to get rid of
| that is pretty amazing, props!
|
| Though as for the job market, I'm sure the AI hype will blow
| over but I don't think it'll remain silent for long, there'll
| be another nonsensical trend within reach.
|
| Tech needs to keep innovating to keep investors happy and
| keep investing. That's why it's going this AI bubble route.
| Cause they don't have any groundbreaking innovations at the
| moment but want to keep the investors they got when the web
| was newer and was worthy of the real hype.
| john_the_writer wrote:
| blockchained api for AI with anti-mushroom (non-fungible)
| recursion.
| leansensei wrote:
| This is The Incredible Story of Deft...
| https://leanpub.com/deft
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| > Tech needs to keep innovating to keep investors happy and
| keep investing.
|
| It's nice to think that this is just a "tech" problem but
| unfortunately this is a wider problem in the rich world -
| it just so happens that "tech" has been the answer for
| finding huge economic growth for the past few decades. The
| whole economy is addicted to tech growth at this point
| (including your 401k if you have one, those of your your
| friends and neighbors).
| nottorp wrote:
| Related: Historically, most "universal men" that greatly
| advanced science before the last 1-2 centuries were
| independently wealthy.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| This also depends heavily on the field, some sciences need
| particle accelerators and mass spectrometers, meanwhile we
| can get by on a $200 pc and free wifi. This means you can
| bypass a lot of traditional university/lab structures.
| gh0stcat wrote:
| I went through this exact thing. I became so depressed and
| stressed out during my last real software development job,
| after making it to a pretty respectable senior software
| engineer. I quit as a life saving decision, and now it seems
| that those 5+ years I put in just don't matter, as I had been
| getting to the final hiring stages and then getting passed up
| constantly. In the other hand, I have been able to get into
| graphics programming, painting, 3d modeling, etc, because I
| don't have to come home and force myself to learn the new
| frontend/backend framework, I have a lot less stress and I
| have no desire to get back into the hamster wheel of the tech
| world. I love creating and building, it gives me a reason to
| live, I now know that I was preventing myself from this very
| important life satisfaction, which led me to my huge career
| impasse/quitting my job. I think some of us are just not
| built for the hyper optimization and materialism of the
| modern corporate tech world. I err personally more toward the
| artistic side, and that quality is not appreciated by the
| vast majority of recruiters and hiring managers. Like you, I
| am hopeful for the future, but I also no longer hold the
| delusion that I can find life satisfaction through the job
| alone, as I so naively pursued before. It's so much harder to
| measure success when its not based on those simplistic
| metrics like company status or income, but maybe that's
| because it never should have been the concern. :)
| milesvp wrote:
| I am a firm believer that the brain has finite resources. It
| is fundamentally no different than a muscle, in that, the
| muscle has resources at its disposal, and using those
| resources causes them to deplete faster than they can
| recover. This means, that at best, you can optimize how you
| use your brain, similar to how you can optimize how you use
| your muscles. You can train, to get "more" out of your brain,
| similar to muscles. But at the end of the day, there is only
| so much your brain can do. I have found, through fairly good
| time keeping, that I can do ~6 hours of deep work in a 9 hour
| period. Maybe 7 in a 12 hour period. This is the amount that
| puts me at the edge of burnout, and requires no other
| commitments in my life. 4-5hours in a 7.5 hour day is
| sustainable. Others may be able to do more, or less than
| this, but many people are fooling themselves if they think
| they are doing good work that is also deep for more than
| this, for more than say 4 weeks at a time.
|
| That said, if you can find ways to use very different parts
| of your brain... well, then you can squeeze out more
| performance. In the same way that in the gym, if you find
| exercises that isolate different muscle groups, you can
| squeeze more sets in throughout your workout.
|
| I have seen this with people who can produce a lot of output,
| they tend to not do the same thing all day, but find ways to
| work on unrelated projects. So, I'm not terribly surprised
| that you have an urge to code now that your brain is focused
| on non code related things for a large part of your day.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| >I have seen this with people who can produce a lot of
| output, they tend to not do the same thing all day, but
| find ways to work on unrelated projects. So, I'm not
| terribly surprised that you have an urge to code now that
| your brain is focused on non code related things for a
| large part of your day.
|
| Funnily enough, I do still code for the largest part of my
| day (10am-10pm, with lunch/dinner breaks + 1 hour of
| gaming/Reddit), simply because I'm starting my hotel job in
| 2 weeks, making me technically still unemployed.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Sure. I used to enjoy playing the Sims until I had that gut
| realisation that I was trying to get them to grind out better
| lives, when I should just spend that time doing it for myself.
|
| I also bought Shenzhen I/O, because the idea of being able to
| program in a game seems fun. But after reading more, I didn't
| end up playing it because it would involve too much study of
| how the in-game computers work, and I'd get much more long-term
| satisfaction from studying real assembly languages etc.
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| When I was younger, early in my career, I coded to learn more
| about what I was doing at work. Pure career progression.
|
| The older I get, the less I care about career progression and
| the more I allow myself to just use code to explore thoughts or
| ideas.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Do many people hobby code with that entrepreneur mindset
| thing? Or sit down to play guitar thinking they want to make a
| hit and feeling bad if they just noodle some cover songs?
|
| I absolutely do. Money and power is a great motivator. I don't
| feel bad about any of it. I took my shot and continue to do so.
|
| >What a miserable existence that must be. How do you get that
| way? Should we blame LinkedIn or what is it?
|
| It was not. I made some good side money. I always joke that I
| program to feed my computer habit. The benefit of it is you
| actually code like you are making a product, and there is
| usually a big skill difference between someone coding for fun
| and someone coding to make an actual sellable product; it's the
| 80/20 rule. That last 80% is what separates the good from the
| great. Like Jobs said, "Real artists ship."
| 59nadir wrote:
| > The benefit of it is you actually code like you are making
| a product, and there is usually a big skill difference
| between someone coding for fun and someone coding to make an
| actual sellable product; it's the 80/20 rule. That last 80%
| is what separates the good from the great. Like Jobs said,
| "Real artists ship."
|
| I don't think this really holds true in any meaningful
| capacity. People who put in hours of practice in inherently
| unviable things can learn very useful skills; remaking Pacman
| or other arcade games over and over won't be very useful
| financially but it will definitely be good practice for how
| to put together a game, and practicing making ever-more
| advanced games will naturally lead to even more development
| of skills.
|
| Someone who's constantly just tried to put together
| commercial game after commercial game in Unity/Unreal will be
| much less useful overall and will have spent most of their
| time on trivialities/superficial things that will never be
| useful out of the exact contexts they were in at the time.
|
| I think your positioning of yourself as better than other
| people is unfortunate, but keep that in mind for the
| following:
|
| It's very unlikely that I'd ever hire you over someone who's
| made databases/search engines/games just because they wanted
| to learn how they work, mostly because most of what you've
| done is probably trivial, not very good practice and hasn't
| taught you as much as these people learned from doing for the
| sake of practice. Odds are you know very little about how
| things work, how they're actually made and how you'd approach
| building things from scratch, because it's simply not
| something you're likely to practice with your mindset. In
| contrast, exploring and practicing as an activity has a much
| clearer correlation with high skill levels and knowledge than
| the grinding mindset, in my experience, and you sound like
| you're firmly in the grind camp.
|
| I can teach someone who knows how things work how to glue
| libraries together when/if we do need it, but I can't teach
| someone who glues libraries together how to make their own
| things; it's simply not worth the time or effort because it's
| effectively like starting from scratch and I may as well
| start with a complete junior in that case.
|
| Edit:
|
| With all of that said, if you made tons of stuff from scratch
| and made tons of these supposedly "for-profit" projects I
| think you've really just made your hobby projects and fooled
| yourself into thinking you're making them as financially
| viable side projects. I am assuming that you're putting these
| things together as most of the industry does (i.e. gluing
| libraries together) and that these projects are comparatively
| low in volume, which means you'll get less actual practice
| done.
| Clubber wrote:
| You've made a whole lot of assumptions in that reply, all
| from 10 sentences. Maybe ask some questions next time
| instead of making assumptions that fit your preconceived
| notions. Your intuition is a bit off.
| 59nadir wrote:
| I think I was about as charitable as your post deserved,
| and I stated my assumptions clearly. You can either
| address them (and the bigger point) or choose not to.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > I can teach someone who knows how things work how to glue
| libraries together when/if we do need it, but I can't teach
| someone who glues libraries together how to make their own
| things; it's simply not worth the time or effort because
| it's effectively like starting from scratch and I may as
| well start with a complete junior in that case.
|
| I just want to point out that this goes beyond an argument
| explaining how hobby projects can be useful and enters the
| territory of personal attack. I presume you mean that
| whatever they made is substandard in some way ("[gluing]
| libraries together" is nonsense criticism; everything in
| software is someone's abstraction) but I don't see why you
| would think that.
| 59nadir wrote:
| For any given singular project "gluing libraries
| together" is not a particularly interesting critique, but
| as a default way of doing things it is very relevant to
| the resulting skill levels of people as well as their
| respect for quality. I have enough experience with former
| coworkers to understand which attitude results in which
| and it's with that backdrop in mind I've written the
| post. I stated my assumptions pretty clearly and why I've
| made them as well.
|
| I absolutely think gluing libraries together is a
| substandard default way of working that leads to poor
| results, by the way. "[...] everything in software is
| someone's abstraction" is a cop-out that ignores the
| massive gap that exists between finding the lowest level
| you can execute (in many cases an OS call that cannot be
| split up into a smaller part, or calls into the lowest
| API you can find like OpenGL, Vulkan, etc., where we have
| to play by a driver's rules) and executing a function in
| a library that calls a library that calls a library that
| calls the OS or the like.
|
| Taking on the cost of countless layers of function calls,
| potentially manager code, etc., just because "everything
| in software is someone's abstraction" is, to use your
| phrasing, a "nonsense" excuse for poor work and not
| taking ownership of the code that will execute.
|
| I have a former coworker that elected to use a
| tokenizer/parser library that clocked in at about 6k
| lines of Rust code, where I personally decided to simply
| write one in about 600 lines (in Odin, which probably is
| considered more verbose). The 600 line one was faster,
| used less memory and naturally was easier to understand
| (easy enough to understand for someone who literally had
| never written a tokenizer/parser before to use and
| extend). It's defensible to use a library for a
| tokenizer/parser, of course, because "everything in
| software is someone's abstraction", but do you see the
| problem here where we get worse software and no one ever
| learns how to make better things if everyone just decides
| to `cargo install` readymade solutions?
|
| I'm not saying that my colleague could at that moment
| have written the Odin solution in this case, but he would
| certainly be more likely to if he implemented things from
| scratch as a way of practicing, or decided to otherwise
| take ownership of the code that runs in work projects.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > I stated my assumptions pretty clearly and why I've
| made them as well.
|
| The first yes, the second no. If you had a reason for the
| assumption, I think it would not be an assumption.
|
| > I have a former coworker ...
|
| One might assume you are thinking more about your former
| co-worker than you are about Clubber. They could make
| that assumption because you describe in detail an actual
| instance of what you complain about in the absence of any
| other such description in Clubber's comment.
|
| Should they assume that? Even if they have reasons? Even
| if they're right? What does it add to the discussion?
|
| I think you could have made a good point about their
| assessment missing the mark because I agree that the
| skills you write about are improved by "finding the
| lowest level you can execute" more than "coding to make
| an actual sellable product". Still, they might consider
| the latter to be no different from the former (the former
| is certainly a more precise description, regardless).
| Your story about the co-worker is a good one on that
| topic. It's unfortunate that the assumptions make your
| comments easier to dismiss.
| nicbou wrote:
| Coding is a small but very fun part of my business. I code for
| fun because I can afford to, but most people need to put bread
| on the table, so they must remain competitive.
| onion2k wrote:
| _What a miserable existence that must be._
|
| This ignores the fact that people are motivated by different
| things. If you're someone who thrives on the intrinsic 'do this
| for the love and joy of it' motivation then you should
| absolutely just write code for the fun of it. But not everyone
| is like that. Some people need an extrinsic motivator to drive
| them to do things - that's usually money, or praise, or a
| punishment for failing. _There is nothing wrong with either
| approach._ Neither is better.
| spicyusername wrote:
| I mean... one is definitely better...
| 59nadir wrote:
| While it's not wrong to be extrinsically motivated (it's not
| morally wrong, or a value judgment), it's definitely worse
| and more fickle (it will produce worse results in most
| cases). Intrinsic motivation is much more likely to lead to
| long-term growth even in the face of adversity and in general
| be more resistant to changing circumstances.
| retropragma wrote:
| Important to note that it's not a dichotomy as long as you're
| not an "extremist" of either side. Build for yourself _and_ a
| big market. Take pride in competing at a high level. If you
| view "hustling" as an 'all work, no play' experience, you're
| engaged in absolutist thinking.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Seems reasonable that you would struggle with the opportunity
| cost of your time when you're writing software for fun since
| you could also be working towards a greater goal of launching
| something that might make money.
|
| Software is relatively unique because of the multiplying
| effects of software (without banking on a moonshot) unlike,
| say, carpentry or strumming a guitar. So the opportunity cost
| can be even higher.
|
| You should always be cognizant of opportunity costs because
| they're always in play. And I can see that getting away from
| people, especially if you haven't already achieved your
| financial life goals.
|
| I feel similar when I try to play a game in my 30s. It feels
| like a huge waste of time compared to something that would
| advance me towards my aspirations. But I think that's just part
| of being an adult. Just be aware of the trade you're making.
| mibsl wrote:
| Being always cognizant of opportunity costs also has an
| opportunity cost in terms of mental health and life
| satisfaction.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Depends on what you do with that information, doesn't it?
|
| I think you want to embody both awareness and acceptance.
| And probably make a deliberate choice in the matter instead
| of just drifting.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I ended up on SSRI because of that, personally.
| analog31 wrote:
| Some of us do. The hobby may consist of simulating the
| professional experience, but to a limited extent and on our own
| terms. For instance in my own case, I play an instrument -- the
| double bass -- and I perform sporadically. When I practice at
| home, I'm aware of the qualifications and competency of a
| professional bassist, I measure myself against those standards,
| and try to keep improving.
|
| This doesn't detract from the pleasure of playing, at all. If
| anything, it gives me some structure and motivation. And I
| still don't mind noodling for a while when I need a distraction
| that doesn't involve a screen.
|
| But I only count the money that I make, because I have to
| report it. ;-)
| betenoire wrote:
| I do both of those, it's a constant battle in my own head. I'm
| always reminding myself that it's ok to make music just for my
| own enjoyment, and that don't need a potential monetary angle
| for some hobby.
|
| I'm not justifying this mindset, which preceded LinkedIn. I
| don't like it.
| pacifika wrote:
| The angel is human curiosity and the devil here is capitalism
| society pressures. be you.
| defanor wrote:
| > But if I didn't listen to the devil from time to time, I
| wouldn't stay up to date with the latest technologies, and as a
| result I wouldn't be able to pay my bills.
|
| It appears to imply that new technologies do not count as fun,
| which may be the case for the author, but not generally. And
| there are indeed fewer open vacancies requiring older (decades
| old) technologies exclusively, with vacancies often including
| currently-hyped technologies in addition to established ones,
| which opens more options and potentially leads to a higher salary
| if one employs those newer or hyped ones, but I guess that it is
| quite possible to pay the bills while using mostly the older
| ones, too.
| rorylaitila wrote:
| I've thought that recently there are things I'm willing to build,
| things I'm willing to sell, and things I'm willing to support. My
| desire for each is not in equal measure. There are vastly more
| things I will build for myself then I can sell, and there are a
| lot of things I like selling but I hate supporting. Only when I
| feel the trifecta do I release it to the public. The rest I tell
| myself I can just enjoy the process of building and throwing it
| away if I want, it doesn't matter.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| At least for me, I enjoy trying to solve problems using code.
| Kind of like how some people enjoy solving cross-words, math
| problems, and what have you.
|
| As for the larger things that could potentially lead to a
| business, those types of problems usually come from something I
| encounter at work. If I'm stuck using software that sucks,
| identify some obvious demand, etc.
| milquen wrote:
| ...man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as
| what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a
| truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys
| its fruits...In view of this consideration, it seems as if all
| peasants and craftsman might be elevated into artists; that is,
| men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their
| own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate
| their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine
| their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very
| things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve
| to degrade it...But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the
| indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most
| congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in
| producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from
| a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and
| guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien
| to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human
| energies, but merely with mechanical exactness...
|
| ...we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.
|
| https://readmorestuff.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/extracts-from...
| firemelt wrote:
| its the opposite for me, I always choose to have fun, instead
| making mone, 0 motivation to chase the later. I wish I tend to my
| devil side :(
| kgeist wrote:
| For me personally, there's no dilemma. I was landed a pretty
| good, high-paying job after showing my pretty sophisticated pet
| projects I made for the fun of it. In my free time, I keep making
| pet projects out of "curiosity, enlightenment, and purity", and
| if some have potential, I showcase them to the employer and
| they're integrated into the product, or as a dev tool. Builds a
| good resume, too. Maybe I'm lucky that my employer is open to new
| ideas/projects. So, both the angel and the devil are satisfied :)
| coev wrote:
| Do you keep ownership over those tools when they're integrated
| into your employer's product? What are the terms on your
| employment contract? This can get muddy.
| gitroom wrote:
| i feel this deep, it's way too easy to forget why i started
| coding in the first place
| simpaticoder wrote:
| But shipping is in service of curiosity, though! There is nothing
| more fascinating than watching your work come into contact with
| real users. They will find error modes and use-cases you never
| imagined. If you code for fun and no-one ever sees it, then
| you'll never have this experience.
| mihaaly wrote:
| My angel and devil have reverse roles.
|
| My angel wants me to do my side hustles and produce well made
| products. For the users and myself. But he sits behind me in the
| corner now with a bitter face. Neglected and left out.
|
| The devil took over making me work for money, sell my hours for
| the high bidder, for current income. So I could provide for the
| three most precious ladies in the world: my wife and daughters.
|
| The devil turned out to be not a powerful figure but a ruthless
| but pity, sweaty salesguy selling crap that I stuck in. Need to
| carry on with the technology mandated in the position, outdating
| as we speak, making me increasingly unemployable elsewhere
| without the 10 years hands on coding experience in 15 kinds of 2
| - 7 years old technology, with leadership and mentor abilities of
| course as an essential trait required. Willing to be
| enthusiastically agile the hell out of it! For free pizza and
| fruit bowl!
|
| No good path ahead.
| skor wrote:
| I code purely for fun, creating programs that generate and
| compose music. Sometimes I hit the record button and capture the
| results.
|
| Here's one of my latest recordings, if anyone's interested:
| https://lowveld.bandcamp.com/album/etches.
|
| Musically I think this belongs in the underground - and should
| stay there.
|
| I'm very interested in the theory behind software & music. Over
| the years I've mostly focused on the engineering side, but maybe
| one day I'll document and publish more about it too.
| acureau wrote:
| I'd love to read some of these programs and/or read about the
| process of writing them. "Etches 04" is awesome, it sounds like
| I'm looking out at some post-apocalyptic cityscape. Please do
| drop a line if you publish anything.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Interested. Would like to hear more (of the music, and what you
| code).
| LandR wrote:
| Man, I work 8-4 Mon-Fri.
|
| As soon as 4 rolls around, I'm done with the money making portion
| of the day and the rest is just entirely fun stuff. I couldn't
| care less if what I'm doing isn't ever going to make money, it's
| just fun / interesting / satisfying curiosity.
|
| I run - but I know I'm never going to make money running. I climb
| - but I know I'm never going to make money climbing. I code for
| fun on my side projects - same deal.
|
| That work mindset gets turned off hard at 4pm.
| dripdry45 wrote:
| Fellow climber/coder... Where you climbing these days?
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| I think part of the author's point is that, specifically if you
| are _coding_ for fun, it is much harder to "turn off" that part
| of your brain that analyzes it from a business perspective.
| It's not as if you can close one IDE at 4 and open another IDE
| at 4:01 at put yourself in a different mindset.
| blenderob wrote:
| Of course you can. (I mean many of us can.) I've been doing
| it for years. I'm surprised that because you find it hard to
| "turn off" that part of your brain, it must be so for
| everyone else. It isn't. There are many of us who code for
| fun and do it with a totally different mindset with no
| "business thoughts" in mind.
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| Speaking for myself, the author's post resonated with me in
| two ways - both that it's hard to turn off the business
| side of the brain ("Could this side project be a startup?
| Should I build it this way just in case I decide to do that
| later?") but also that I find it hard to turn off the
| manager brain ("Is this really the right order to do
| things? Is this the most valuable thing I could be
| doing?"), too, other people in the thread are mentioning
| thinking about opportunity cost to be interfering with
| their ability to commit to side projects (and also to
| actually _enjoy_ doing them).
| criddell wrote:
| It's easy to switch for some of us because the last thing
| in the world we want is more work and a startup is a
| _lot_ of work. When I 'm making something for myself it
| never crosses my mind that I could commercialize my hobby
| project because I know that's the fastest way to ruin a
| hobby.
| yifanl wrote:
| I do just that by switching colour schemes. Light mode at
| work, dark mode at home. It takes a little bit, but the brain
| is easily tricked by flashy lights.
| ______ wrote:
| That's great!
|
| Also - coffee at work, tea for play
| optymizer wrote:
| I would like to be able to do that - I have such a long list of
| things I want to learn and do - but I can't just turn off my
| work brain at 4pm. I get sucked in by interesting problems. Low
| level optimization? They pay me for 9-5, but you can bet I'll
| be thinking about it over the weekend, maybe code up a
| potential solution.
|
| I used to think less about people who check out at 5pm - how
| can you just leave and not give a shit that the code is a mess?
| - but as I grew older, I understood that they don't associate
| their self-worth with work. Their value system is different,
| and it's got benefits, like better mental health.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| How long have you been a software engineer if I may ask?
| optymizer wrote:
| About 17 years
| warp wrote:
| > I used to think less about people who check out at 5pm -
| how can you just leave and not give a shit that the code is a
| mess?
|
| As someone who checks out at 5pm, I think you're looking at
| it from the wrong POV.
|
| The main thing that drives me is the projects I work on in my
| spare time. I care that _that_ code is a mess. So, I might do
| a bit of work on that in the morning, but then start my
| actual paying job at e.g. 8am.
|
| So how can I just leave my hobby project and not give a shit
| that the code is a mess? Because I get paid to do so, I have
| to work on whatever my boss wants me to work on because
| that's my job -- but as soon as 5pm hits I get to think about
| the stuff I really care about again.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| I think your attitude is fine. You most likely enjoy your
| job. You are lucky.
| didip wrote:
| This resonates greatly with me.
|
| It used to be such a torture (in my own mind) to constantly
| trying to come up with a new hustle.
|
| But not anymore. As I got older and after fatherhood, I have
| learned that balance is everything. Including valueing my time in
| having fun doing productive things.
|
| If the hacking side project gives me tremendous enjoyment, then
| it is a win already both from happiness and the "job training"
| aspect.
|
| As it so happened, I just hang out with my little cousins who are
| into robotics and so glad that my side projects in the past
| helped me connect with them, and I was able to give valuable
| advice. That was a big win for me.
|
| Also, I have learned the value of providing stability for my own
| family. Something that the childless me never appreciated.
| Throwing away stability to start a startup has a steep cost these
| days.
| kelsey978126 wrote:
| There's more than code to build a startup. I have found the best
| way for me to avoid burnout or alternatively feeling like i am
| behind is to set very high goals. Find a lifetime goal. Maybe
| it's making a startup, maybe it's something else. Everything you
| do should mostly fit into some super long term plan that could
| take an entire lifetime's worth of work. If you are doing
| creative or personal projects, these build skill and experience
| which will be needed by that long term project. Martial artists
| train by punching trees. To build micro fractures in the hand
| bones and increase the density and strength of these bones. Go
| punch your trees.
| some1else wrote:
| I just want to kick back and code like it's 199NaN
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Sounds like a conflict between wanting to do something you love,
| and wanting success and fame. Nothing wrong with either of these
| things, or trying to have both. But what you might be missing is
| that the _way_ you pursue these things has a much larger impact
| on the outcome than simply whether you make an attempt or not.
|
| You might have been reading all those stories of startups, and
| now you're stuck in a box shaped like all those stories. That you
| have to start a startup at all, or that you have to go about it
| in the way those stories told. You might think that's your only
| path. But the only limits in this world are the ones we put on
| ourselves.
|
| Meditate on what you really want, at your core. Start the wheels
| turning of thinking of ways to get those things that aren't
| immediately obvious or don't seem likely. Consider a world in
| which you didn't have fear, doubt, anxiety, or other kinds of
| limitations. Which path would you choose? What are all the ways
| you might use to walk that path? You don't need to know the whole
| path to start walking on it.
| kelnos wrote:
| I feel like there's some middle ground that OP is missing.
| Perhaps intentionally, but that might not be for everyone.
|
| I worked for software/hardware companies for 21 years. Some were
| stable income for me, but nothing amazing. A few were startups
| where I worked hard but they didn't go anywhere (fortunately I
| earned a stable, market-rate income before they failed). One
| turned out to be reasonably life-changing, and I'm very lucky for
| that. On and off over that period of time I worked on open source
| projects, some that didn't go anywhere, some that have been
| successful.
|
| Right now I'm building something to try to sell. I'm not going to
| take any VC money or pursue high growth. I'm not chasing the
| latest whiz-bang AI whatever. I'm building a fairly boring
| product (that is still fun for me to build), using the tech stack
| that I want, to the standards of quality that I want. Right now
| I'm working hard on it, but the goal is that, once it's "done"
| and has customers (fingers crossed I manage to attract paying
| customers), I'll be spending no more than 10 hours a week on it
| (and hopefully less on average). If it "only" gets to $500k/yr in
| revenue or so, after some number of years running it, I'll
| consider that a fantastic success. If I can run the entire thing
| on one or two VMs, and it never grows past that infra-wise,
| that's a fantastic success.
|
| You can listen to both the angel and the devil and still control
| your own destiny, outside of the scraps your employer will throw
| at you. Who knows, though, maybe this idea of mine won't work.
| But I'm happy I'm giving it a try.
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