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There is a quote from Louis Nizer that applies here: "He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who

There is a quote from Louis Nizer that applies here: "He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist." Its that last part that is hard to bridge for a lot of engineers. The thing that did it for me was sitting through a LOT of formal usability studies. Seeing folks actually use an application you made, where they make mistakes, get stuck, will change your relationship with your code. Even if you work purely on the back end building APIs, you have customers (other developers in this case). Focus on the what the code does, and why someone would use it, care about your customer... the how only matters to your fellow engineer, and if it is that bad they are going to give you grief for it and you can fix it.

deleted 11y ago
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humanrebar 11y ago
> ...and if it is that bad they are going to give you grief for it and you can fix it. You can't always fix it. If it were that simple, everyone would be using Python 3 already.
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  I think the argument could be made that python 3 is an example of "great engineering" and (in hindsight) "poor customer understanding". Python 3 is the polar opposite to Linus' meltdown on not breaking user space see: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 Sadly I like Python 3 and wish it was more popular.
  - BuckRogers 11y ago
    I see Python3 as poor engineering. There are no technical reasons why you can't run bytecode from both 2 and 3 together. Various JVMs and the CLR solved this problem. They created their own problem by refusing to built or maintain a comprehensive solution. As well, there's nothing in Python3 that didn't already exist in the Python2 ecosystem or was trivial to add to Python2 (backport or otherwise). Thus many of us see CPython3 as technical churn rather than technical innovation. I share your sentiment about having 1 version of Python but it's not the users fault. It's the core dev team's and Guido's.
peterclary 11y ago
I started my career in a small software company that wrote Mac software (in the System 6.5, System 7 days). We had no dedicated support staff, so support calls were either handled by the sales staff or development. Talking directly to customers, hearing where they were having trouble, and learning what they wanted to do, was probably the single most valuable experience in my career. My first thought with any work became "How can I completely eliminate the possibility that I will end up having to support this?" Of course, this backfired spectacularly a few years later at a different company, when a customer stopped paying a lucrative support contract because the software always "just works". I have decidedly mixed feelings about that!
- monkeyprojects 11y ago
  That isn't such a problem nowadays as you could move the business model from outright purchase plus support to a software as a service model with monthly fees and minimal support costs.

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humanrebar 11y ago

> ...and if it is that bad they are going to give you grief for it and you can fix it. You can't always fix it. If it were that simple, everyone would be using Python 3 already.

zer00eyz 11y ago
I think the argument could be made that python 3 is an example of "great engineering" and (in hindsight) "poor customer understanding". Python 3 is the polar opposite to Linus' meltdown on not breaking user space see: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 Sadly I like Python 3 and wish it was more popular.
- BuckRogers 11y ago
  I see Python3 as poor engineering. There are no technical reasons why you can't run bytecode from both 2 and 3 together. Various JVMs and the CLR solved this problem. They created their own problem by refusing to built or maintain a comprehensive solution. As well, there's nothing in Python3 that didn't already exist in the Python2 ecosystem or was trivial to add to Python2 (backport or otherwise). Thus many of us see CPython3 as technical churn rather than technical innovation. I share your sentiment about having 1 version of Python but it's not the users fault. It's the core dev team's and Guido's.

peterclary 11y ago

I started my career in a small software company that wrote Mac software (in the System 6.5, System 7 days). We had no dedicated support staff, so support calls were either handled by the sales staff or development. Talking directly to customers, hearing where they were having trouble, and learning what they wanted to do, was probably the single most valuable experience in my career. My first thought with any work became "How can I completely eliminate the possibility that I will end up having to support this?" Of course, this backfired spectacularly a few years later at a different company, when a customer stopped paying a lucrative support contract because the software always "just works". I have decidedly mixed feelings about that!

monkeyprojects 11y ago
That isn't such a problem nowadays as you could move the business model from outright purchase plus support to a software as a service model with monthly fees and minimal support costs.