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Programming is kind of joke these days. Each time a new "hotness" language, framework, pattern, or dev/devops process comes out you have a rush of professional

Programming is kind of joke these days. Each time a new "hotness" language, framework, pattern, or dev/devops process comes out you have a rush of professional gurus working hard to build their business (e.g., speaking fees/books/blogging/training) by teaching that this is the new true way. In the late 90's I began to notice how the new kids kept advocating for the newest so-called best practices to do things that the bad-old practices could handle just fine. Seeing the writing on the wall, I dipped out of the game a few years later. Unfortunately, the unhelpful tech churn has worsened. Similarly, the quality of the product produced has worsened, or at best, not improved. Note, hyper-scale advertisement services, global human tracking, and digital Skinner boxes are not an improvement to anything. Meanwhile 50 year-old programmers with deep general development knowledge cannot find jobs. I guess it is easier for young founders to justify using frothy tech if there are fewer old-timers around to suggest otherwise. edit-to-add: /get-off-my-lawn

zozbot123 8y ago
There's a lot of BS, but there are some real improvements as well. Many innovations that are considered best practices today actually came out in the 1990s. The Java programming language became incredibly popular, being a machine-independent, memory-safe language and system that could deal out-of-the-box with concurrency and networking-- The Go of its day, to some extent (and indeed it had a whole lot in common with Go's predecessors, Alef and Limbo). Functional programming was popularized around that time. The C++ standard introduced us to the notion of zero-overhead abstractions combined with strong static checking, which Rust is refining today. And of course, the Web became widespread around that time, as well. Whatever you might think about "hyper-scale advertisement services, global human tracking, and digital Skinner boxes", Amazon first became prominent in the dotcom era, and it's quite massive today.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  I have been reacquainting myself with some so-called best practices as I muddle through my recent side-projects. While some newer languages are interesting, the dev stacks today are a mess. Also, While we have safe pointers and GC everywhere, the lack of technical discipline/professionalism in the industry is worse than ever. I recognize that the C-suite and VCs share in the blame for this, but devs are the ones building things and evangelizing the newest-hotness that comes onto the scene. But I do have to remind myself that compared to traditional engineering tracks, software engineering is still in its infancy. /get-off-my-lawn
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    > ...the lack of technical discipline/professionalism in the industry is worse than ever. What concerns me quite a bit is the overt opposition we're now seeing to professionalism in the industry. The whole 'post-meritocracy' shtick, regardless of the best intention of the "useful innocents" who came up with that particular phrasing, is really a way of saying: "Professionalism? What professionalism? There's no such thing, we know better than that! Brogrammers r00lz FTW!" Again, this is clearly not what the proponents were seeking-- but in some sense, it's what the phrase actually means, out there in the real world.
    - pnw_hazor 8y ago
      Two week release cycles mean you never have to stand behind your work. /salty I will shut up and go back to building this Android app I am working on -- what a horror-show of a platform.
romeisendcoming 8y ago
caught the tiger by the tail on this one. Brilliant reduction and post mortem btw.

zozbot123 8y ago

There's a lot of BS, but there are some real improvements as well. Many innovations that are considered best practices today actually came out in the 1990s. The Java programming language became incredibly popular, being a machine-independent, memory-safe language and system that could deal out-of-the-box with concurrency and networking-- The Go of its day, to some extent (and indeed it had a whole lot in common with Go's predecessors, Alef and Limbo). Functional programming was popularized around that time. The C++ standard introduced us to the notion of zero-overhead abstractions combined with strong static checking, which Rust is refining today. And of course, the Web became widespread around that time, as well. Whatever you might think about "hyper-scale advertisement services, global human tracking, and digital Skinner boxes", Amazon first became prominent in the dotcom era, and it's quite massive today.

pnw_hazor 8y ago
I have been reacquainting myself with some so-called best practices as I muddle through my recent side-projects. While some newer languages are interesting, the dev stacks today are a mess. Also, While we have safe pointers and GC everywhere, the lack of technical discipline/professionalism in the industry is worse than ever. I recognize that the C-suite and VCs share in the blame for this, but devs are the ones building things and evangelizing the newest-hotness that comes onto the scene. But I do have to remind myself that compared to traditional engineering tracks, software engineering is still in its infancy. /get-off-my-lawn
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > ...the lack of technical discipline/professionalism in the industry is worse than ever. What concerns me quite a bit is the overt opposition we're now seeing to professionalism in the industry. The whole 'post-meritocracy' shtick, regardless of the best intention of the "useful innocents" who came up with that particular phrasing, is really a way of saying: "Professionalism? What professionalism? There's no such thing, we know better than that! Brogrammers r00lz FTW!" Again, this is clearly not what the proponents were seeking-- but in some sense, it's what the phrase actually means, out there in the real world.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Two week release cycles mean you never have to stand behind your work. /salty I will shut up and go back to building this Android app I am working on -- what a horror-show of a platform.

romeisendcoming 8y ago

caught the tiger by the tail on this one. Brilliant reduction and post mortem btw.