5 ms·

I'm sorry, I simply cannot buy this idea that any kind of coding can't be made out to be fascinating. I was asked today what about working with websites I foun

I'm sorry, I simply cannot buy this idea that any kind of coding can't be made out to be fascinating. I was asked today what about working with websites I found so fulfilling. The reason boils down to the fact that, more than any other domain out there, I feel like I'm working directly with the future. I'm working directly at the intersection of technology and business, driving real value for real people. Anybody who is making a website for dev money is doing this. It's just way too expensive to waste money on something that's not. I feel like if you consider your job as 'just gluing', you're missing out on something amazing. Friday we were having a team discussion about data modeling and how we wanted to structure a particular concept. When does it become worthwhile to introduce another database to accommodate a new data flow? What precisely is the criteria you use for determining when to denormalize? Our Postgres database worked just fine with little consideration towards perf, until we needed to use analytics. Now all of a sudden all those joins matters. How do you work effectively with designers to produce a great-looking, functional website at the speed that a media company wants to work at? The whole team has had to really level up their CSS knowledge and code organization because things change really really fast. Layout goes from being a chore to a matter of fair urgency that you get right the first time and fast. Say you don't work for a fast-paced media company. Great, now you have tons of spare cycles to devote towards maintainability and code quality. Just how far can you golf your job down to? At my last job I was touching a code editor twice a week. I refuse to buy into the mentality that says that any programming job can be meaningless. There's always something neat you can be doing there.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
I agree that anything can be made fun if you try hard enough. It's a kind of mental hack. Some people are better at it than others. I'm very happy that you feel passionate about your work. I envy that. This comment is not an attempt at making you less passionate; I'm trying to point out differences in perspective. One phenomenon I observed is that people who just learned programming are fascinated by everything. People on their first or second job. People just learning their first or second programming language. They're so full of enthusiasm. I envy them. For me, that moment was many years ago, way before I was able to join the job market. Because of that, I sometimes think that there's a disadvantage to learning to program before adulthood - your first jobs won't be as exciting. You've already seen 90% of the problems you're about to face, and your attention is thus focused not on the technical aspects, but on the fact that you have this problem in the first place, likely for no good reason. > The reason boils down to the fact that, more than any other domain out there, I feel like I'm working directly with the future. I'm working directly at the intersection of technology and business, driving real value for real people. Yeah, for me - and many others - that "future" is a disastrous dystopia, a perversion of what computing could be, a land of corporate riches, total surveillance and great waste of resources, instead of the promised efficiency and empowerment of individuals. The web of today - from the tech stack to dev communities to popular business models - is a tragic reminder of how "worse is better" can be taken to an extreme, resulting in all the compute being mostly wasted on software bloat and glitter. Consider e.g. Moore's law, and then consider that the software of today doesn't usually offer new user-facing features that are actually useful (i.e. not glitter) over the software from 15 years ago. Sure, most of it is the same old thing but networked!, but that's arguably more of a business model change than something meaningful to end users. And the web is unfortunately driving all that bloat, glitter and user-hostile business practices. Yes, I very much don't like the cloud. > (...) driving real value for real people. Anybody who is making a website for dev money is doing this. I question the "real value for real people" part of this. In fact, I believe it would be better for everyone if a lot of those web jobs were not done at all. After all, the dominant model of the web is to waste people's time (result of optimization for engagement) while making money off advertising (i.e. wasting more time), plus building surveillance infrastructure to make extra buck off data collection. I do not subscribe to the view that just because some money changes hands, it's automatically a good thing. But then, maybe I'm just burned out. I've noticed I've become increasingly depressed about this industry, and the typical jobs that are available.
- analognoise 8y ago
  You are not burnt out, you are 100% correct. Combine that with the fact that web chumps think they're 'inventing' when they're solving problems that were solved decades ago, only worse, and most of them don't have the historical background, education, or even interest to know what mistakes they're making. They think its "leveling up" to solve an already solved problem, but in web format, while wasting everyone's time with ads, tracking, gimmicks, for money. You are not burnt out, or wrong. The web used to be better; computing used to be better. Windows is now a service, and Linux still can't drive graphics card without nonfree drivers. We failed, but I think there might be a chance to fix things. We need to out together a cohesive document that explains why modern computing needs a serious overhaul, and a plan to get there. The computer should be fast; UI should be appealing, but minimal. It should be understandable and open down to RTL of the processor. The core should be aggressively minimal, and fully understandable. Networks with no central auth should be at least an option (preferably a local mesh). It should be cheap. I'm thinking like a modern DOS, but for RISCV, fully implemented on an FPGA (goal of course to move to custom silicon for performance improvements later).
  - 2038AD 8y ago
    >Linux still can't drive graphics card without nonfree drivers It can https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_device_driver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...
    - carbolymer 8y ago
      Yeah, that's exaggerated. What author probably meant, that proprietary drivers give some features, which won't work with open source drivers. For example, better results in 3D acceleration. In my case, I was unable to configure properly multi-display with 4 screens and HDMI audio without nvidia proprietary drivers.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > We need to out together a cohesive document that explains why modern computing needs a serious overhaul, and a plan to get there. The computer should be fast; UI should be appealing, but minimal. It should be understandable and open down to RTL of the processor. The core should be aggressively minimal, and fully understandable. Networks with no central auth should be at least an option (preferably a local mesh). It should be cheap. Agree on all those goals. Over the years, I've seen some essays and comments scattered all over the web containing those ideas; it would be great to collate all of those thoughts somewhere.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

I agree that anything can be made fun if you try hard enough. It's a kind of mental hack. Some people are better at it than others. I'm very happy that you feel passionate about your work. I envy that. This comment is not an attempt at making you less passionate; I'm trying to point out differences in perspective. One phenomenon I observed is that people who just learned programming are fascinated by everything. People on their first or second job. People just learning their first or second programming language. They're so full of enthusiasm. I envy them. For me, that moment was many years ago, way before I was able to join the job market. Because of that, I sometimes think that there's a disadvantage to learning to program before adulthood - your first jobs won't be as exciting. You've already seen 90% of the problems you're about to face, and your attention is thus focused not on the technical aspects, but on the fact that you have this problem in the first place, likely for no good reason. > The reason boils down to the fact that, more than any other domain out there, I feel like I'm working directly with the future. I'm working directly at the intersection of technology and business, driving real value for real people. Yeah, for me - and many others - that "future" is a disastrous dystopia, a perversion of what computing could be, a land of corporate riches, total surveillance and great waste of resources, instead of the promised efficiency and empowerment of individuals. The web of today - from the tech stack to dev communities to popular business models - is a tragic reminder of how "worse is better" can be taken to an extreme, resulting in all the compute being mostly wasted on software bloat and glitter. Consider e.g. Moore's law, and then consider that the software of today doesn't usually offer new user-facing features that are actually useful (i.e. not glitter) over the software from 15 years ago. Sure, most of it is the same old thing but networked!, but that's arguably more of a business model change than something meaningful to end users. And the web is unfortunately driving all that bloat, glitter and user-hostile business practices. Yes, I very much don't like the cloud. > (...) driving real value for real people. Anybody who is making a website for dev money is doing this. I question the "real value for real people" part of this. In fact, I believe it would be better for everyone if a lot of those web jobs were not done at all. After all, the dominant model of the web is to waste people's time (result of optimization for engagement) while making money off advertising (i.e. wasting more time), plus building surveillance infrastructure to make extra buck off data collection. I do not subscribe to the view that just because some money changes hands, it's automatically a good thing. But then, maybe I'm just burned out. I've noticed I've become increasingly depressed about this industry, and the typical jobs that are available.

analognoise 8y ago
You are not burnt out, you are 100% correct. Combine that with the fact that web chumps think they're 'inventing' when they're solving problems that were solved decades ago, only worse, and most of them don't have the historical background, education, or even interest to know what mistakes they're making. They think its "leveling up" to solve an already solved problem, but in web format, while wasting everyone's time with ads, tracking, gimmicks, for money. You are not burnt out, or wrong. The web used to be better; computing used to be better. Windows is now a service, and Linux still can't drive graphics card without nonfree drivers. We failed, but I think there might be a chance to fix things. We need to out together a cohesive document that explains why modern computing needs a serious overhaul, and a plan to get there. The computer should be fast; UI should be appealing, but minimal. It should be understandable and open down to RTL of the processor. The core should be aggressively minimal, and fully understandable. Networks with no central auth should be at least an option (preferably a local mesh). It should be cheap. I'm thinking like a modern DOS, but for RISCV, fully implemented on an FPGA (goal of course to move to custom silicon for performance improvements later).
- 2038AD 8y ago
  >Linux still can't drive graphics card without nonfree drivers It can https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_device_driver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...
  - carbolymer 8y ago
    Yeah, that's exaggerated. What author probably meant, that proprietary drivers give some features, which won't work with open source drivers. For example, better results in 3D acceleration. In my case, I was unable to configure properly multi-display with 4 screens and HDMI audio without nvidia proprietary drivers.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > We need to out together a cohesive document that explains why modern computing needs a serious overhaul, and a plan to get there. The computer should be fast; UI should be appealing, but minimal. It should be understandable and open down to RTL of the processor. The core should be aggressively minimal, and fully understandable. Networks with no central auth should be at least an option (preferably a local mesh). It should be cheap. Agree on all those goals. Over the years, I've seen some essays and comments scattered all over the web containing those ideas; it would be great to collate all of those thoughts somewhere.