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It is plain and simple, Kids. I'm 52 - been programming professionally since the 70's when I started writing C code and getting paid for it in 5th grade. Our "p

It is plain and simple, Kids. I'm 52 - been programming professionally since the 70's when I started writing C code and getting paid for it in 5th grade. Our "professional" is writing glue code, and how it is done and what hoops are jumped through simply do not matter: all that matters is the final shipping product, widget, or logical dodad works for the immediate marketing moment. I speak from enviable experience: game studio owner at 17, member of original 3D graphics research community during 80's, operating system team for 3DO and original PlayStation, team or lead on 36+ entertainment software titles (games), digital artist, developer & analyst for 9 VFX heavy major release feature films, developer/owner of the neural net driven 3D Avatar Store, and currently working in machine intelligence and facial recognition. Our profession is purposefully amateur night every single day, as practically no one does their computational homework to know the landscape of computational solutions to whatever they are trying to solve today. Calling us "computer scientists" is a painful joke. "Code Monkeys" is much more accurate. The profession is building stuff, and that stuff is disposable crap 99% of the time. That does not make it any less valuable, but it does render it quite ridiculous the mental attitude of 90% of our profession. Drop the attitude, write code freely knowing that it is disposable crap, and write tons of it. You'll get lazy and before you know it, you'll have boiled down whatever logic you do into a nice compact swiss army knife. And the best part? Becuause you'd stepped off the hype train, you'll have more confidence and you'll land that job anyway. If they insist or require you to learn and know some new framework: so what? you're getting paid to do the same simply crap over again, just more slowly with their required dodad. Get paid. Go home and do what you enjoy. This is all a huge joke anyway.

lgieron 10y ago
> "Get paid. Go home and do what you enjoy. This is all a huge joke anyway." Would look great on your employer's (if you have any) "Our team testimonials" page :)
landongn 10y ago
I can identify with this sentiment completely and fully, as someone with close to 15 years in this industry can be. It's all just the same as Mary in accounting making spreadsheets, or your boss making powerpoint decks. The fact that our product requires compilers and runtimes and virtual machines is just a footnote. It's just as disposable, most of the time. Why not enjoy it and get rid of the rampant NIH/New-and-Young-Is-Best attitude? Just build cool shit, and ship it.
gkya 10y ago
Baby boom's done and gone sir, now everyone's up to changing the world with an ad supported smartphone app or some grammes of silicone.
nambit 10y ago
You're totally right but then people are faced with the possibility of an increasing number of code monkeys graduating from college every year. Then the question becomes, how do you keep your job year after year when the number of code monkeys just keep on increasing. Some of them are shitty but a lot aren't.
- abledon 10y ago
  it seems programmers are one of the most in-demand type of worker right now. I understand the fear of becoming pressured out of a job... but what about every other sector in the economy? I think before our profession's sector becomes threatened, a whole lot of other sectors are going to blow up in a mushroom cloud of automation/obsoleteness (caused perhaps by us!) and force the economy to rethink jobs/food/shelter/basic necessities for everyone.
nikki93 10y ago
Do you think it's about this; and the "scalability" of the software stuff confuses one part of the manufacturing (copypaste by distribution through people installing from internet) with another part of it (copypaste by programmers copypasting copypasta code to "manufacture" more apps)? It seems like you have introduced a new notion of manufacturing as part of coding which I like, and is a way to make yourself disciplined; while at the same time given that coding has potential for "research" by individuals with not much means the manufacturing process can be itself improved greatly (new libraries or techniques or things like when WWW happened but needs externalities like ARPA hardware prior work), and that's what I think makes it exciting. We are basically teaching machines to understand language that is intuitive to us so we can make it do things people want, and new things people want that weren't possible earlier or were only done by people earlier can often only be gotten to by Kuhn-esque revolutions in the philosophy. We started with code, and either more people code or computers understand people more, or both and we meet in the middle. To go with the trend; this feeling of "nothing new" in CS and engr-using-CS is nothing new, it's how science and engr-using-science has seemed to work if you look past the programmable machines. [1] "normal science" cycles with paradigm shifts have happened in all sorts of engineering-influencing research processes (often called "science," at least part of it). Its just that in CS the period-length of revolution-normal things is quick because of, among many things, increased empowerment of individuals. And to the extent that this empowers individuals that can afford programmable devices and learn somehow (see many kids in many parts of the world that don't have much means) or having their friends teach in social settings if unempowered (visit that rich friend's house play video games and accidentally learn from them to code), that is a normative-ethics motivation to "contribute to society," and often even empathy-ethics works out because kids coding can remind you of you coding as a kid or something. The hope is that kids socialize across and often in spite of traditional barriers and spread the knowledge / empowerment; and while teaching them (fact-leaning) we learn from them about our own personal biases (which we can still teach but why not program-in perspectivism). In the end some may have personal ethics or motivation structures that cause them to way that sort of thing vs. personal allegience to a status quo, or through chance encounters happen to do it more. Sorry about the philosophy rambling, I just sort of find it fun and similar to coding. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science

lgieron 10y ago

> "Get paid. Go home and do what you enjoy. This is all a huge joke anyway." Would look great on your employer's (if you have any) "Our team testimonials" page :)

landongn 10y ago

I can identify with this sentiment completely and fully, as someone with close to 15 years in this industry can be. It's all just the same as Mary in accounting making spreadsheets, or your boss making powerpoint decks. The fact that our product requires compilers and runtimes and virtual machines is just a footnote. It's just as disposable, most of the time. Why not enjoy it and get rid of the rampant NIH/New-and-Young-Is-Best attitude? Just build cool shit, and ship it.

gkya 10y ago

Baby boom's done and gone sir, now everyone's up to changing the world with an ad supported smartphone app or some grammes of silicone.

nambit 10y ago

You're totally right but then people are faced with the possibility of an increasing number of code monkeys graduating from college every year. Then the question becomes, how do you keep your job year after year when the number of code monkeys just keep on increasing. Some of them are shitty but a lot aren't.

abledon 10y ago
it seems programmers are one of the most in-demand type of worker right now. I understand the fear of becoming pressured out of a job... but what about every other sector in the economy? I think before our profession's sector becomes threatened, a whole lot of other sectors are going to blow up in a mushroom cloud of automation/obsoleteness (caused perhaps by us!) and force the economy to rethink jobs/food/shelter/basic necessities for everyone.

nikki93 10y ago

Do you think it's about this; and the "scalability" of the software stuff confuses one part of the manufacturing (copypaste by distribution through people installing from internet) with another part of it (copypaste by programmers copypasting copypasta code to "manufacture" more apps)? It seems like you have introduced a new notion of manufacturing as part of coding which I like, and is a way to make yourself disciplined; while at the same time given that coding has potential for "research" by individuals with not much means the manufacturing process can be itself improved greatly (new libraries or techniques or things like when WWW happened but needs externalities like ARPA hardware prior work), and that's what I think makes it exciting. We are basically teaching machines to understand language that is intuitive to us so we can make it do things people want, and new things people want that weren't possible earlier or were only done by people earlier can often only be gotten to by Kuhn-esque revolutions in the philosophy. We started with code, and either more people code or computers understand people more, or both and we meet in the middle. To go with the trend; this feeling of "nothing new" in CS and engr-using-CS is nothing new, it's how science and engr-using-science has seemed to work if you look past the programmable machines. [1] "normal science" cycles with paradigm shifts have happened in all sorts of engineering-influencing research processes (often called "science," at least part of it). Its just that in CS the period-length of revolution-normal things is quick because of, among many things, increased empowerment of individuals. And to the extent that this empowers individuals that can afford programmable devices and learn somehow (see many kids in many parts of the world that don't have much means) or having their friends teach in social settings if unempowered (visit that rich friend's house play video games and accidentally learn from them to code), that is a normative-ethics motivation to "contribute to society," and often even empathy-ethics works out because kids coding can remind you of you coding as a kid or something. The hope is that kids socialize across and often in spite of traditional barriers and spread the knowledge / empowerment; and while teaching them (fact-leaning) we learn from them about our own personal biases (which we can still teach but why not program-in perspectivism). In the end some may have personal ethics or motivation structures that cause them to way that sort of thing vs. personal allegience to a status quo, or through chance encounters happen to do it more. Sorry about the philosophy rambling, I just sort of find it fun and similar to coding. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science