5 ms·

Ah yeah, the critiquing aspect is spot on. In my first programming job, my supervisor would try to be as gentle as possible in telling me why my code was wrong.

Ah yeah, the critiquing aspect is spot on. In my first programming job, my supervisor would try to be as gentle as possible in telling me why my code was wrong. I had to essentially say "dude, just tell me my code sucks and then tell my why!" I didn't realize how thick of a skin I have due to my arts background.

eludwig 10y ago
Totally agreed. Actors and artists have to develop a thick skin or else they would whimper daily. :D Any job where you are sort of putting yourself out there in the form of your work can be quite demoralizing, especially with the wrong people in charge. Programmers can be just as touchy about their work as artists--I've seen it personally. Some of this may have to do with cultural diffs. Some cultures seem (at least to me, with limited exposure) to be more or less amenable to "being nice" about criticism.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  To a degree, the same goes for scientists. Having anonymous peer reviewers telling you the past six months of your professional life has been a waste, because this was done by a Czhechoslovakian in '73 (paper never translated) and turns out to be uninteresting, can be quite demoralising. Or like one of my first papers, when sending it to a very good journal, having one reviewer say "this is all wrong" and the other saying "this is a well known result in the field, nothing new" and the editor just saying "reject".
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    Don't professional software developers feel the same way about crafting a masterful function, only to find their feature had already been implemented years ago? Somehow, this industry thrives in reinventing the wheel in slightly different ways - once a process is implemented mathematically (in code), it has to be reimplemented again, in slightly different terms (another programming language). We bikeshed in that it's cognitively easier to manually reimplement the function, instead of mathematically determining how to "rephrase" the math in the other terms. When you want 2 wheels, making a slightly different wheel is mentally easier than copying the existing wheel - in terms of coding.
    - rifung 10y ago
      > Don't professional software developers feel the same way about crafting a masterful function, only to find their feature had already been implemented years ago? Although I find it weird to call myself a professional, I don't really feel the same way because I usually enjoy the process of doing it and figuring it out for myself. I suspect that I might feel differently if my compensation were directly tied to coming up with new things though.
    - ianamartin 10y ago
      No. We don't. There's nothing in the world like standing up on stage in front of thousands of people and having a mistake creep into your work and having people write about it in every newspaper there is. Code review is absolutely nothing compared to what it takes to put yourself out there as a musician or a scientist and have it shot down. Absolutely not even close.
      - EthanHeilman 10y ago
        And scientists have the safety rail of peer-review prior to a public mistake. Musicians have the same thing in studio, but not live.
    - skybrian 10y ago
      I'm not sure why software developers should care about originality at the function level? If it's been implemented before, that just makes it easier to implement it again. (I assume there's a reason you can't just reuse or copy-and-paste the code - if you can, just do that.) There is plenty of work to be done that's essentially translating an idea from one situation to another. The satisfaction is from solving the user's problem.
galfarragem 10y ago
An architect (housing) must deal, daily, with the whys of his work, not only technically but also metaphysically. If an idea/concept is not rock solid, veto players will smash it in seconds. Once they are used to have their work criticized[1] it takes a lot to butthurt them. [1] Top architectural offices do mostly competition work. It's not uncommon that one architectural competition has hundreds of participants and only one winner.
amirmc 10y ago
> "I didn't realize how thick of a skin I have due to my arts background." Unfortunately, I think this says more about the programmers today and the culture they expect, rather than your resilience. (that's not meant to imply that you're not resilient, by the way).
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  Don't underestimate the brutality of art school critiques. Most fields wouldn't tolerate it, not just programming.
  - gajomi 10y ago
    Things can get brutal in art school indeed! I think that a big part of this (and its one of the parts that would be less tolerated in say, and engineering school) is that there can at times be a significant political dimension to the criticism. That is to say that the critiques are nominally focused on such and such a technique or choice of subject matter, but are actually about aligning oneself with a faction advocating the trend du jour or that one professor who hates anything X. Having said that, this sort of stuff certainly happens in business settings as well, which supports GGPs point.
  - spaceribs 10y ago
    Freshman year, at least one person would run out of each class crying during critique. First year is all about destroying everything you know about art and yourself so that you can be rebuilt, it's soul crushing but necessary to push people outside their comfort zone. The politics are interesting, but predictable and usually die out by junior year. Everyone gets hard critiques and even best friends know they should be pushing each other to be amazing and not let bullshit slide, that's the point of being there.
  - erickhill 10y ago
    True. I saw a few put to tears. A small handful washed out, too. 70-80 hour weeks of work, and harsh realities. It's not as easy as some think, depending on the school and program selected.

eludwig 10y ago

Totally agreed. Actors and artists have to develop a thick skin or else they would whimper daily. :D Any job where you are sort of putting yourself out there in the form of your work can be quite demoralizing, especially with the wrong people in charge. Programmers can be just as touchy about their work as artists--I've seen it personally. Some of this may have to do with cultural diffs. Some cultures seem (at least to me, with limited exposure) to be more or less amenable to "being nice" about criticism.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
To a degree, the same goes for scientists. Having anonymous peer reviewers telling you the past six months of your professional life has been a waste, because this was done by a Czhechoslovakian in '73 (paper never translated) and turns out to be uninteresting, can be quite demoralising. Or like one of my first papers, when sending it to a very good journal, having one reviewer say "this is all wrong" and the other saying "this is a well known result in the field, nothing new" and the editor just saying "reject".
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Don't professional software developers feel the same way about crafting a masterful function, only to find their feature had already been implemented years ago? Somehow, this industry thrives in reinventing the wheel in slightly different ways - once a process is implemented mathematically (in code), it has to be reimplemented again, in slightly different terms (another programming language). We bikeshed in that it's cognitively easier to manually reimplement the function, instead of mathematically determining how to "rephrase" the math in the other terms. When you want 2 wheels, making a slightly different wheel is mentally easier than copying the existing wheel - in terms of coding.
  - rifung 10y ago
    > Don't professional software developers feel the same way about crafting a masterful function, only to find their feature had already been implemented years ago? Although I find it weird to call myself a professional, I don't really feel the same way because I usually enjoy the process of doing it and figuring it out for myself. I suspect that I might feel differently if my compensation were directly tied to coming up with new things though.
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    No. We don't. There's nothing in the world like standing up on stage in front of thousands of people and having a mistake creep into your work and having people write about it in every newspaper there is. Code review is absolutely nothing compared to what it takes to put yourself out there as a musician or a scientist and have it shot down. Absolutely not even close.
    - EthanHeilman 10y ago
      And scientists have the safety rail of peer-review prior to a public mistake. Musicians have the same thing in studio, but not live.
  - skybrian 10y ago
    I'm not sure why software developers should care about originality at the function level? If it's been implemented before, that just makes it easier to implement it again. (I assume there's a reason you can't just reuse or copy-and-paste the code - if you can, just do that.) There is plenty of work to be done that's essentially translating an idea from one situation to another. The satisfaction is from solving the user's problem.

galfarragem 10y ago

An architect (housing) must deal, daily, with the whys of his work, not only technically but also metaphysically. If an idea/concept is not rock solid, veto players will smash it in seconds. Once they are used to have their work criticized[1] it takes a lot to butthurt them. [1] Top architectural offices do mostly competition work. It's not uncommon that one architectural competition has hundreds of participants and only one winner.

amirmc 10y ago

> "I didn't realize how thick of a skin I have due to my arts background." Unfortunately, I think this says more about the programmers today and the culture they expect, rather than your resilience. (that's not meant to imply that you're not resilient, by the way).

Gargoyle 10y ago
Don't underestimate the brutality of art school critiques. Most fields wouldn't tolerate it, not just programming.
- gajomi 10y ago
  Things can get brutal in art school indeed! I think that a big part of this (and its one of the parts that would be less tolerated in say, and engineering school) is that there can at times be a significant political dimension to the criticism. That is to say that the critiques are nominally focused on such and such a technique or choice of subject matter, but are actually about aligning oneself with a faction advocating the trend du jour or that one professor who hates anything X. Having said that, this sort of stuff certainly happens in business settings as well, which supports GGPs point.
- spaceribs 10y ago
  Freshman year, at least one person would run out of each class crying during critique. First year is all about destroying everything you know about art and yourself so that you can be rebuilt, it's soul crushing but necessary to push people outside their comfort zone. The politics are interesting, but predictable and usually die out by junior year. Everyone gets hard critiques and even best friends know they should be pushing each other to be amazing and not let bullshit slide, that's the point of being there.
- erickhill 10y ago
  True. I saw a few put to tears. A small handful washed out, too. 70-80 hour weeks of work, and harsh realities. It's not as easy as some think, depending on the school and program selected.