5 ms·

Why making money with programming makes you feel dirty?

sp332 16y ago
If I already have a full-time job, and I just want to hack around as a hobby in my spare time, I don't want the language features and runtime to be tied up in the same (probably more) red tape and politicking I have to deal with at my day job. I just want to relax and hack, and if there's money involved, that's a lot less likely to be enjoyable.
- bruceboughton 16y ago
  The reality is that any reasonably complex endeavour will suffer from this, OSS languages included.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  Then make it enjoyable: the last bit of code I hacked was "for profit" but I told the guy who wanted it to just pay me with a bottle of Patron. He gets the code he wants, I get drunk on good tequila. What's not to love :-)
  - mahmud 16y ago
    How well do you code? I know of a few startups that will happily send you to AA.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
      Ha! Thanks, that made my morning :-) Seriously though, he was willing to pay me, but I wasn't comfortable taking money for something I had zero experience with (this was my first time using a Web API). And I could tell he didn't want to feel like he was ripping me off by getting my work (all 45 minutes of it) for free, so we met in the middle and both parties were happy.
mahmud 16y ago
It was Microsoft's answer to Java, with hindsight 20/20. I wanted to see their take on portable bytecode, JIT techniques, security, distributed computing, performance, etc. Nearly everybody there was burned by MS's short attention span when it comes to system libraries (OLE, COM, DCOM, DCOM+ for one, and the mess that is data-access libraries, OLE-DB,MDAC, ODBC, ADO, Jet, etc.) We wanted closure, at least I knew I did. Was barely 20 and had my first serious application. Hundreds of MFC files, elaborate Win32 API integration, MS Office integration and a whole lotta crap. They fucked me over seriously bad, and I have already sunk in a year and a half of my time, skipping classes just to make it. Everytime I implemented a subsystem a new memo would come out on MSDN Magazine telling me to use a component bundled with Office for that, or tie my app into the latest IE release, or "just" use ActiveX. I fucking wanted an answer. Instead, the fat guy they paid to talk to us said we could all get highly paying jobs if we only learned this new, new thing. I left that mess for good. First to Perl, then Lisp. Never going back to the API carrots on a stick thing.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Part of the "Microsoft Tax" is that there is always a new new thing - when it comes to Microsoft selling products their biggest competitor is installed versions of their existing products not other vendors.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- konad 16y ago
  Yep. That's why I bailed back in '99. You needed an MSDN subscription just so your apps could tread water. Phone rings "Hi, we upgraded our NT server and now your software is broken". Many hours later "Oh MS changed the DB connection pooling to OFF" Me: Hmm, this Personal Home Page things looks ok, I'll give that a try. And as horrible as PHP is, it behaves itself.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    I don't see how this is any worse than trying to keep up with the latest version of some OSS library. Whether it's MS that's revving or open-source developers, changes happen, and if it's a breaking change in a shared library, sometimes you get hurt. Just yesterday there was a "goodbye python" article posted here, that blamed the fact that so many Linux installations have old installations of python, and so many things are broken when modules in the installation get updates.
marknutter 16y ago
For the same reason selling your body for money might make you feel dirty.

sp332 16y ago

If I already have a full-time job, and I just want to hack around as a hobby in my spare time, I don't want the language features and runtime to be tied up in the same (probably more) red tape and politicking I have to deal with at my day job. I just want to relax and hack, and if there's money involved, that's a lot less likely to be enjoyable.

bruceboughton 16y ago
The reality is that any reasonably complex endeavour will suffer from this, OSS languages included.
HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
Then make it enjoyable: the last bit of code I hacked was "for profit" but I told the guy who wanted it to just pay me with a bottle of Patron. He gets the code he wants, I get drunk on good tequila. What's not to love :-)
- mahmud 16y ago
  How well do you code? I know of a few startups that will happily send you to AA.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
    Ha! Thanks, that made my morning :-) Seriously though, he was willing to pay me, but I wasn't comfortable taking money for something I had zero experience with (this was my first time using a Web API). And I could tell he didn't want to feel like he was ripping me off by getting my work (all 45 minutes of it) for free, so we met in the middle and both parties were happy.

mahmud 16y ago

It was Microsoft's answer to Java, with hindsight 20/20. I wanted to see their take on portable bytecode, JIT techniques, security, distributed computing, performance, etc. Nearly everybody there was burned by MS's short attention span when it comes to system libraries (OLE, COM, DCOM, DCOM+ for one, and the mess that is data-access libraries, OLE-DB,MDAC, ODBC, ADO, Jet, etc.) We wanted closure, at least I knew I did. Was barely 20 and had my first serious application. Hundreds of MFC files, elaborate Win32 API integration, MS Office integration and a whole lotta crap. They fucked me over seriously bad, and I have already sunk in a year and a half of my time, skipping classes just to make it. Everytime I implemented a subsystem a new memo would come out on MSDN Magazine telling me to use a component bundled with Office for that, or tie my app into the latest IE release, or "just" use ActiveX. I fucking wanted an answer. Instead, the fat guy they paid to talk to us said we could all get highly paying jobs if we only learned this new, new thing. I left that mess for good. First to Perl, then Lisp. Never going back to the API carrots on a stick thing.

arethuza 16y ago
Part of the "Microsoft Tax" is that there is always a new new thing - when it comes to Microsoft selling products their biggest competitor is installed versions of their existing products not other vendors.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
konad 16y ago
Yep. That's why I bailed back in '99. You needed an MSDN subscription just so your apps could tread water. Phone rings "Hi, we upgraded our NT server and now your software is broken". Many hours later "Oh MS changed the DB connection pooling to OFF" Me: Hmm, this Personal Home Page things looks ok, I'll give that a try. And as horrible as PHP is, it behaves itself.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  I don't see how this is any worse than trying to keep up with the latest version of some OSS library. Whether it's MS that's revving or open-source developers, changes happen, and if it's a breaking change in a shared library, sometimes you get hurt. Just yesterday there was a "goodbye python" article posted here, that blamed the fact that so many Linux installations have old installations of python, and so many things are broken when modules in the installation get updates.

marknutter 16y ago

For the same reason selling your body for money might make you feel dirty.