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I think the author nailed it on the head with the Workplace parts about why programming is difficult. The physical/socio-political environment that someone is i

by csydas 11y ago

I think the author nailed it on the head with the Workplace parts about why programming is difficult. The physical/socio-political environment that someone is in compounds the normal issues in the programming process and I've seen it drive quite a few programmers to straight up quit when the mountain of issues became insurmountable. Without the freedom to tinker and explore a bit, as the author bemoans, I think that it's when programming becomes a chore and At my last job, I think the only time that I had ever seen our programming team actually happy to work on a project was when by chance and via a minor mutiny, we were able to break them away from the minutia of constant maintenance and repair and let them actually just work on a project with no expected outcome. It was an alternative path for our identity management solution and the entire project was a challenge to the managers for the Enterprise team. Our programmers were down-right chipper at the prospect of just being able to flex their creativity and try something just to see if they could do it.

Roboprog 11y ago
I am thankful that at my current job, we do get some time to experiment here and there. Begin tangent: I work for a university doing grant projects for a few state and federal agencies, though. Some might like it, some might consider it hell for an entrepreneur. It works for me :-) We are in the process of re-writing our "flagship" app from 10+ year old java libraries. We were able to dodge the bullet of "upgrading" (???) from Struts to JSF. The new app is going to be a services based (REST + JSON) Java (mostly) back end, with an Angular based front end. We just did a demo of a subset of the new app at a trade show where a 3rd party app imports a partial record (via web service) into our app, then launches a nested browser window to run the rest of the relevant data entry. (the rest of the workflow will be handled by the legacy app until the complete new version is finished) No, I couldn't persuade my coworkers and supervisor to discard Java entirely and go with Node.js :-) I'm not entirely sure I would be comfortable with that, either. We are doing some server side Javascript lately, though, by using the Java scripting engine interface. We will likely soon be redoing another (30 or so year old) app from a sister university that the state uses, as well. Interesting times! For almost 5 years before this, I worked at a financial services company. I got paid a bit more (bonuses), but I spent all my time, really, keeping 2 legacy applications going without ever getting to spend much time REALLY updating some sore spots.

by csydas 11y ago

Roboprog 11y ago

I am thankful that at my current job, we do get some time to experiment here and there. Begin tangent: I work for a university doing grant projects for a few state and federal agencies, though. Some might like it, some might consider it hell for an entrepreneur. It works for me :-) We are in the process of re-writing our "flagship" app from 10+ year old java libraries. We were able to dodge the bullet of "upgrading" (???) from Struts to JSF. The new app is going to be a services based (REST + JSON) Java (mostly) back end, with an Angular based front end. We just did a demo of a subset of the new app at a trade show where a 3rd party app imports a partial record (via web service) into our app, then launches a nested browser window to run the rest of the relevant data entry. (the rest of the workflow will be handled by the legacy app until the complete new version is finished) No, I couldn't persuade my coworkers and supervisor to discard Java entirely and go with Node.js :-) I'm not entirely sure I would be comfortable with that, either. We are doing some server side Javascript lately, though, by using the Java scripting engine interface. We will likely soon be redoing another (30 or so year old) app from a sister university that the state uses, as well. Interesting times! For almost 5 years before this, I worked at a financial services company. I got paid a bit more (bonuses), but I spent all my time, really, keeping 2 legacy applications going without ever getting to spend much time REALLY updating some sore spots.