4 ms·

I'm not sure how to feel about this. In 1995 I was hacking scripting languages and MySQL... and that's what I'm doing in 2010. Hardly anything of substance has

by neilk 17y ago

I'm not sure how to feel about this. In 1995 I was hacking scripting languages and MySQL... and that's what I'm doing in 2010. Hardly anything of substance has changed. The one thing that's different is my attitude. Sometimes I feel that I know too much about programming to be employable as a programmer any more. So much of our industry is about foolish waste. Half of all projects fail. Most of the other ones are rotten ideas that make life worse for everyone. Few managers (or markets) really have the patience to build good software, or the maturity to listen to advice about what might be better. When I was in my 20s, I was dumb enough to commit crazy overtime hours to making projects work, even if they were ultimately doomed and stupid. And this served me well in the job market. In this environment, experience may not be an asset. It seems to me that the ideal programmer, in an economic sense, is someone who obediently writes unmaintainable code quickly and is unaware of the future pain they are creating for themselves and their customers, or is unaware that all their work is likely to be forgotten in a few months.

dasil003 17y ago
There is a time and a place for one-off throwaway code, and also for extremely fault-tolerant provably correct code. Most stuff falls somewhere in between. If you are experienced you can determine what is necessary and make good recommendations accordingly. If you are good at what you do, you should be able to get a job working with other people who are good enough at what they do to listen to you. Maybe you'll be involved with a few projects that fail for various reasons, but I think it's possible to navigate the morass of failure and come out with a good track record at the end. Your production code may not last a long time, but if it served its purpose at the time then you should be proud.
strlen 17y ago
> In 1995 I was hacking scripting languages and MySQL... and that's what I'm doing in 2010 I think that's the problem (I'm also not a technology bigot: you can do s/scripting languages/J2EE/ and s/MySQL/Oracle/). Doing simple things may pay well at some point, but there's no technical career growth path. There's also no security: there's no experience/education/intelligence based barrier to entry. In the end, there's nothing to differentiate a 40 year old CRUD-screen developer from an 18 year old one. You can't say the same thing about a (for the education/domain knowledge angle) search relevance expert or kernel hacker.
- bootload 17y ago
  "... I think that's the problem (I'm also not a technology bigot: you can do s/scripting languages/J2EE/ and s/MySQL/Oracle/). Doing simple things may pay well at some point, but there's no technical career growth path. ..." Intelligent comment. Does it break down when you do startups? In all the products I've worked on you start off doing simple CRUD but pretty quickly move into doing other deeper things.
  - timwiseman 17y ago
    I think what he means is if you just stay withing doing simple CRUD. I think the vast majority of programmers do CRUD or slap GUIs on other people's code as a way to start (I know there are exceptions, but they are exceptions). What differentiates those that grow from those that don't is whether they go deeper or just keep doing more CRUD and more GUIs on other people's deeper code.
    - bootload 17y ago
      "... What differentiates those that grow from those that don't is whether they go deeper ..." Good point.
- marshallp 17y ago
  Depends on how you think of CRUD. CRUD is actually just what were called 'expert systems' in the 80s. Once you realize that, you can see that it is actually the most interesting type code. The real problem with programmers is that they don't specialize in a specific type of application and become domain experts in it. Choose a field, such accounting, or hr, or finance, and become an expert in it throughout your career, so that you develop the most featureful CRUD application of that type in the fastest time (or base a startup around it). Knowing java, php, sql, etc. is like an accountant claiming he just knows bookkeeping. A really valuable accountant is someone who might be a specialist in taxes for medium sized manufacturing firms in california for example.
  - strlen 17y ago

by neilk 17y ago

dasil003 17y ago

There is a time and a place for one-off throwaway code, and also for extremely fault-tolerant provably correct code. Most stuff falls somewhere in between. If you are experienced you can determine what is necessary and make good recommendations accordingly. If you are good at what you do, you should be able to get a job working with other people who are good enough at what they do to listen to you. Maybe you'll be involved with a few projects that fail for various reasons, but I think it's possible to navigate the morass of failure and come out with a good track record at the end. Your production code may not last a long time, but if it served its purpose at the time then you should be proud.

strlen 17y ago

> In 1995 I was hacking scripting languages and MySQL... and that's what I'm doing in 2010 I think that's the problem (I'm also not a technology bigot: you can do s/scripting languages/J2EE/ and s/MySQL/Oracle/). Doing simple things may pay well at some point, but there's no technical career growth path. There's also no security: there's no experience/education/intelligence based barrier to entry. In the end, there's nothing to differentiate a 40 year old CRUD-screen developer from an 18 year old one. You can't say the same thing about a (for the education/domain knowledge angle) search relevance expert or kernel hacker.

bootload 17y ago
"... I think that's the problem (I'm also not a technology bigot: you can do s/scripting languages/J2EE/ and s/MySQL/Oracle/). Doing simple things may pay well at some point, but there's no technical career growth path. ..." Intelligent comment. Does it break down when you do startups? In all the products I've worked on you start off doing simple CRUD but pretty quickly move into doing other deeper things.
- timwiseman 17y ago
  I think what he means is if you just stay withing doing simple CRUD. I think the vast majority of programmers do CRUD or slap GUIs on other people's code as a way to start (I know there are exceptions, but they are exceptions). What differentiates those that grow from those that don't is whether they go deeper or just keep doing more CRUD and more GUIs on other people's deeper code.
  - bootload 17y ago
    "... What differentiates those that grow from those that don't is whether they go deeper ..." Good point.
marshallp 17y ago
Depends on how you think of CRUD. CRUD is actually just what were called 'expert systems' in the 80s. Once you realize that, you can see that it is actually the most interesting type code. The real problem with programmers is that they don't specialize in a specific type of application and become domain experts in it. Choose a field, such accounting, or hr, or finance, and become an expert in it throughout your career, so that you develop the most featureful CRUD application of that type in the fastest time (or base a startup around it). Knowing java, php, sql, etc. is like an accountant claiming he just knows bookkeeping. A really valuable accountant is someone who might be a specialist in taxes for medium sized manufacturing firms in california for example.
- strlen 17y ago