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"Nobody cares about your code" That's a peculiar claim about people who hire employees to create code. "It’s not the code that counts, it’s the product" So i

"Nobody cares about your code" That's a peculiar claim about people who hire employees to create code. "It’s not the code that counts, it’s the product" So is everyone only hiring programmers who write code which can be sloppy and full of technical debt and impossible maintain, as long as the product works okay for now?

humanrebar 9y ago
Yeah. Code is the product. It's like saying, "we don't sell ingredients, we sell meals".
- cubano 9y ago
  So not really, right? Code is just symbols on a screen. It's the abstractions that count.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Code is how we realize abstractions. They complement each other. The point is that the code is a key part of the product, so saying it's an afterthought is to misunderstand the product.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      I think the context matters here. The underlying point is not to be taken so literally. It means don't prematurely optimize your code until you have a functional, enjoyable piece of software. Then sure, work on maintainability and improved performance.
- dsacco 9y ago
  ...which is true. Restaurants sell meals, not ingredients. Chefs don't give you ingredients to eat, they craft the base ingredients into something worth selling, preferably with a good experience. I get your point, but that analogy has backfired on your point. I'd rather cook something that tastes really good using whatever ingredients are around and then improve the ingredients (among other things) later on.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    The meal is made up of the ingredients. You can't make a good meal from spoiled meat. Restaurants sell meals. Because of that, they have to pay attention to their ingredients. At least to make sure they won't make anyone sick. And, if they are making a premium product, they need high quality ingredients to make a high quality product. You can't just replace the fresh mozzarella with Kraft singles and still sell pizzas for a premium price.
    - oliv__ 9y ago
      Fast food begs to differ: you can make some pretty tasty stuff with terrible terrible ingredients. It's tasty alright... Just don't expect to wake up feeling great the next morning.
      - quesera 9y ago
        That's true, but fast food ingredients are not substandard ordinary ingredients. Fast food ingredients are highly tuned and customized products -- they're just not optimized for traditional notions of quality or nutrition.
- isaac_is_goat 9y ago
  Code is not the product. Code is part of the assembly line that becomes the product. An innefficient/bad quality assembly process will result in a sub-par product. Developers don't build the product, they build the assembly line.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
Here's a really simple project for this kind of stuff if anyone is stuck on ideas: - Make a website that accepts some form values - After submitted, send an email to someone Congratulations, you now have an exciting SaaS solution built with love using modern web technologies that can be hosted on any cloud provider or on-prem infrastructure and scales extremely well for businesses and companies which can save them thousands of dollars and reduce printing and faxing overhead. If you're having some trouble, try to get a 4 year CS degree and several internships.
- eterm 9y ago
  You jest, but it's clear you've not tried to make that product, as it is much harder than it sounds if you count "make it past their spam filter" as delivering email.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    I've made that product. I've had 10 customers ask me for that product with a straight face. The spam filter isn't a concern if it's an intranet product -- at worst, it's a support call which leads to some instructions on the page. It still saves them from buying some amount of printer toner and using fax lines. Everything else there is true to some degree, which captures the spirit of writing resumes. (IMO the biggest concern is security but frameworks handle a lot of that out of the box) And that's still not the point -- the point is that a Github profile may becoming a checkbox for the hiring filter that few scrutinizes. They are using weak hiring signals and I will absolutely punish them by bypassing it with as little effort as possible for not doing their homework while making me jump through interviewing hoops.
    - VLM 9y ago
      "It still saves them" I've done the same, its a classic corporate warfare tactic, there exists an agreed on paper form to standardize the demarcation point between two warring internal groups (and all internal groups are at war because of stack ranked management reviews, formal or otherwise...), someone on the home team was manual data entering that paper form into "something" now you can push that labor cost onto the other side who now do the manual data entry for the home team. For bonus points toss each data entry into a database and provide some manner of weekly reporting via web or email cron job, maybe some dynamic error checking at data entry time. Classic weapon of internal politics. I've made a lot of money off this, historically. There's a whole universe of MBA companies out there that see computers abstractly as mere fancy electric typewriters, merely a modern Linotype machine, its just a modern mimeograph nothing more, a way to format manual data entry for other humans to read and manually data enter in something else. Computers that don't compute or have flowcharts, merely manual human I/O devices. Adding the slightest bit of automation can blow the minds of business people. Beware of the inner product effect. A simple web form that emails the ticketing system in restricted cases can eliminate enormous amounts of manual data re-entry if it happens enough, but trying to turn it into a generalized tool will merely result in a "simple web form" that becomes more complicated than the ticketing system everyone was avoiding because it was too complicated for end users. Don't write a feature complete 100% wrapper for JIRA with the expectation it'll be simpler, thats not going to turn out well. Of course in corporate warfare sometimes punishing the other internal department is more important than making things simpler and faster for all, and if it gets your team out of the data entry task and puts them on the data entry task, well, the guy on your team who signs your paychecks is going to be happy with you.
ntnn 9y ago
> So is everyone only hiring programmers who write code which can be sloppy and full of technical debt and impossible maintain, as long as the product works okay for now? The result is the only thing the customer and upper management sees. Doesn't matter if it will explode in a few months at best, right then and there it generates revenue and visibility.
FRex 9y ago
I can't be absolutely sure but I think my code and online participation (totally unrelated, not even same programming language, domain, etc.) helped me in the end. It shows I have MY (as opposed to 'uni forced me') foot in the door and proves (along with a certificate) that I know English really well. There are many people who just coast through their CS degree on medium grades but still have basic problems with git, bash, English, etc.
jorgemf 9y ago
They care about the money the code/product generate. If it doesn't generate money nobody cares how good it is, when it generates money them you can care about good code and improving things.
reboog711 9y ago
> So is everyone only hiring programmers who write code which can be sloppy and full of technical debt and impossible maintain, as long as the product works okay for now? My experience says yes. The people hiring programmers usually have no ability to validate a programmer's skill. The only thing they care about is a working application that solves a business problem. The bulk of code I come across as a consultant is "sloppy and full of technical debt". There are various reasons for it, not all of them reflect on the programmer.
- orange_bear 9y ago
  This completely depends on who you are interviewing with. Every low-level manager at my last workplace had a programming background, and they absolutely did have the ability to validate a programmer's skill during the hiring process.
sidlls 9y ago
Yes. That's why data structures and algorithms are front-and-center at these interviews. They don't actually care about engineering ability. It's all about ego, trivia, and who can fart out product faster.
dep_b 9y ago
People care about the problems you solve. So if your GitHub seems to represent a well executed solution to a real problem then probably people often aren't going to read into your code. I've seen plenty of repo's that I actually use that scare me to death when I dive into them. But so many people actually use it that still most bugs have been ironed out. Often it's more about being the first to solve a problem that many people have, the perseverance to really finish it, polish the README, respond to people with questions and suggestions and the ability to get those people to know about it.

humanrebar 9y ago

Yeah. Code is the product. It's like saying, "we don't sell ingredients, we sell meals".

cubano 9y ago
So not really, right? Code is just symbols on a screen. It's the abstractions that count.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Code is how we realize abstractions. They complement each other. The point is that the code is a key part of the product, so saying it's an afterthought is to misunderstand the product.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    I think the context matters here. The underlying point is not to be taken so literally. It means don't prematurely optimize your code until you have a functional, enjoyable piece of software. Then sure, work on maintainability and improved performance.
dsacco 9y ago
...which is true. Restaurants sell meals, not ingredients. Chefs don't give you ingredients to eat, they craft the base ingredients into something worth selling, preferably with a good experience. I get your point, but that analogy has backfired on your point. I'd rather cook something that tastes really good using whatever ingredients are around and then improve the ingredients (among other things) later on.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  The meal is made up of the ingredients. You can't make a good meal from spoiled meat. Restaurants sell meals. Because of that, they have to pay attention to their ingredients. At least to make sure they won't make anyone sick. And, if they are making a premium product, they need high quality ingredients to make a high quality product. You can't just replace the fresh mozzarella with Kraft singles and still sell pizzas for a premium price.
  - oliv__ 9y ago
    Fast food begs to differ: you can make some pretty tasty stuff with terrible terrible ingredients. It's tasty alright... Just don't expect to wake up feeling great the next morning.
    - quesera 9y ago
      That's true, but fast food ingredients are not substandard ordinary ingredients. Fast food ingredients are highly tuned and customized products -- they're just not optimized for traditional notions of quality or nutrition.
isaac_is_goat 9y ago
Code is not the product. Code is part of the assembly line that becomes the product. An innefficient/bad quality assembly process will result in a sub-par product. Developers don't build the product, they build the assembly line.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

Here's a really simple project for this kind of stuff if anyone is stuck on ideas: - Make a website that accepts some form values - After submitted, send an email to someone Congratulations, you now have an exciting SaaS solution built with love using modern web technologies that can be hosted on any cloud provider or on-prem infrastructure and scales extremely well for businesses and companies which can save them thousands of dollars and reduce printing and faxing overhead. If you're having some trouble, try to get a 4 year CS degree and several internships.

eterm 9y ago
You jest, but it's clear you've not tried to make that product, as it is much harder than it sounds if you count "make it past their spam filter" as delivering email.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  I've made that product. I've had 10 customers ask me for that product with a straight face. The spam filter isn't a concern if it's an intranet product -- at worst, it's a support call which leads to some instructions on the page. It still saves them from buying some amount of printer toner and using fax lines. Everything else there is true to some degree, which captures the spirit of writing resumes. (IMO the biggest concern is security but frameworks handle a lot of that out of the box) And that's still not the point -- the point is that a Github profile may becoming a checkbox for the hiring filter that few scrutinizes. They are using weak hiring signals and I will absolutely punish them by bypassing it with as little effort as possible for not doing their homework while making me jump through interviewing hoops.
  - VLM 9y ago
    "It still saves them" I've done the same, its a classic corporate warfare tactic, there exists an agreed on paper form to standardize the demarcation point between two warring internal groups (and all internal groups are at war because of stack ranked management reviews, formal or otherwise...), someone on the home team was manual data entering that paper form into "something" now you can push that labor cost onto the other side who now do the manual data entry for the home team. For bonus points toss each data entry into a database and provide some manner of weekly reporting via web or email cron job, maybe some dynamic error checking at data entry time. Classic weapon of internal politics. I've made a lot of money off this, historically. There's a whole universe of MBA companies out there that see computers abstractly as mere fancy electric typewriters, merely a modern Linotype machine, its just a modern mimeograph nothing more, a way to format manual data entry for other humans to read and manually data enter in something else. Computers that don't compute or have flowcharts, merely manual human I/O devices. Adding the slightest bit of automation can blow the minds of business people. Beware of the inner product effect. A simple web form that emails the ticketing system in restricted cases can eliminate enormous amounts of manual data re-entry if it happens enough, but trying to turn it into a generalized tool will merely result in a "simple web form" that becomes more complicated than the ticketing system everyone was avoiding because it was too complicated for end users. Don't write a feature complete 100% wrapper for JIRA with the expectation it'll be simpler, thats not going to turn out well. Of course in corporate warfare sometimes punishing the other internal department is more important than making things simpler and faster for all, and if it gets your team out of the data entry task and puts them on the data entry task, well, the guy on your team who signs your paychecks is going to be happy with you.

ntnn 9y ago

> So is everyone only hiring programmers who write code which can be sloppy and full of technical debt and impossible maintain, as long as the product works okay for now? The result is the only thing the customer and upper management sees. Doesn't matter if it will explode in a few months at best, right then and there it generates revenue and visibility.

FRex 9y ago

I can't be absolutely sure but I think my code and online participation (totally unrelated, not even same programming language, domain, etc.) helped me in the end. It shows I have MY (as opposed to 'uni forced me') foot in the door and proves (along with a certificate) that I know English really well. There are many people who just coast through their CS degree on medium grades but still have basic problems with git, bash, English, etc.

jorgemf 9y ago

They care about the money the code/product generate. If it doesn't generate money nobody cares how good it is, when it generates money them you can care about good code and improving things.

reboog711 9y ago

> So is everyone only hiring programmers who write code which can be sloppy and full of technical debt and impossible maintain, as long as the product works okay for now? My experience says yes. The people hiring programmers usually have no ability to validate a programmer's skill. The only thing they care about is a working application that solves a business problem. The bulk of code I come across as a consultant is "sloppy and full of technical debt". There are various reasons for it, not all of them reflect on the programmer.

orange_bear 9y ago
This completely depends on who you are interviewing with. Every low-level manager at my last workplace had a programming background, and they absolutely did have the ability to validate a programmer's skill during the hiring process.

sidlls 9y ago

Yes. That's why data structures and algorithms are front-and-center at these interviews. They don't actually care about engineering ability. It's all about ego, trivia, and who can fart out product faster.

dep_b 9y ago

People care about the problems you solve. So if your GitHub seems to represent a well executed solution to a real problem then probably people often aren't going to read into your code. I've seen plenty of repo's that I actually use that scare me to death when I dive into them. But so many people actually use it that still most bugs have been ironed out. Often it's more about being the first to solve a problem that many people have, the perseverance to really finish it, polish the README, respond to people with questions and suggestions and the ability to get those people to know about it.