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“And it's the whole industry, from sysadmin level, through ML to front end dev. You sit down for 2 years, boom, you're so outdated, it hurts.” Whole industry is

by fsloth 8y ago

“And it's the whole industry, from sysadmin level, through ML to front end dev. You sit down for 2 years, boom, you're so outdated, it hurts.” Whole industry is bit of an exaggeration. I’m implementing features to a decades old product and a new tech stack that grows on it’s side. QR decomposition and a bit of linear algebra never go out of style. The hype cycle is just a gimmick. You don’t need the latest hotness for it’s own sake. Business users pay for solid products that deliver added value even though they are not utilizing the latest buzzword.

deleted 8y ago
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BigJono 8y ago
Yeah, that's true, but as a peon you're not at the mercy of the business users. Your career tech choices are mostly determined by the horde of technical managers who spend 8 hours a day brushing up on the latest tech and fuck all of it actually coding anything other than a project boilerplate. Whatever they decide they want to use is what 80% of the industry is going to be hiring for. If you're good you can just avoid all that and stick to the other 20%, but that's probably not a great strategy for someone with less experience. That's why I always scoff when some shit new feature gets added to a language or library and the response is always "well you can still use the old stuff". Yeah, maybe if you have your own solo venture, but everyone else has to suffer through it. Even being the lead on a project doesn't spare you from it. If all your devs want to use something new it's probably never a good idea to veto it, unless it's batshit insane.
- learc83 8y ago
  > 80% of the industry is going to be hiring for 80% of the industry is hiring programmers to work on some boring line of business app using Java or whatever language they've been using for the last 10 years.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - CM30 8y ago
    Agreed. It's hard to believe given how much press all the trendy companies and startups get, but an awful lot of the web development world is nowhere near as flashy and modern as people online like to think it is. Makes me want to write an article which basically compares and contrasts: A: What the technical press, Reddit, Hacker News, etc thinks software development and web development is like versus B: What it's like for developers outside of the internet trend bubble
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      To given an example of B, porting a VB.NET application that converts CSV files for their data measurments, done by someone with some VB knowledge thanks to their VBA macros, into C# due to single language policy for internal applications. Migrating an aging custom Web site into a CMS platform like Liferay.
- fsloth 8y ago
  Is the tech industry at large truly that immature? You are describing a slice of the industry as hype and blog driven ADHD thrill seekers - and probably quite accurately - but is that slice really 80%? My own professional experience is from computer graphics and CAD (mobile and desktop) so I've never been directly influenced by the hype machine affecting web development.
  - BigJono 8y ago
    80% might be a bit ambitious, but it's probably not that far off. How much money do you think is in the web industry relative to the more grounded industries you've worked in?

by fsloth 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

BigJono 8y ago

Yeah, that's true, but as a peon you're not at the mercy of the business users. Your career tech choices are mostly determined by the horde of technical managers who spend 8 hours a day brushing up on the latest tech and fuck all of it actually coding anything other than a project boilerplate. Whatever they decide they want to use is what 80% of the industry is going to be hiring for. If you're good you can just avoid all that and stick to the other 20%, but that's probably not a great strategy for someone with less experience. That's why I always scoff when some shit new feature gets added to a language or library and the response is always "well you can still use the old stuff". Yeah, maybe if you have your own solo venture, but everyone else has to suffer through it. Even being the lead on a project doesn't spare you from it. If all your devs want to use something new it's probably never a good idea to veto it, unless it's batshit insane.

learc83 8y ago
> 80% of the industry is going to be hiring for 80% of the industry is hiring programmers to work on some boring line of business app using Java or whatever language they've been using for the last 10 years.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- CM30 8y ago
  Agreed. It's hard to believe given how much press all the trendy companies and startups get, but an awful lot of the web development world is nowhere near as flashy and modern as people online like to think it is. Makes me want to write an article which basically compares and contrasts: A: What the technical press, Reddit, Hacker News, etc thinks software development and web development is like versus B: What it's like for developers outside of the internet trend bubble
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    To given an example of B, porting a VB.NET application that converts CSV files for their data measurments, done by someone with some VB knowledge thanks to their VBA macros, into C# due to single language policy for internal applications. Migrating an aging custom Web site into a CMS platform like Liferay.
fsloth 8y ago
Is the tech industry at large truly that immature? You are describing a slice of the industry as hype and blog driven ADHD thrill seekers - and probably quite accurately - but is that slice really 80%? My own professional experience is from computer graphics and CAD (mobile and desktop) so I've never been directly influenced by the hype machine affecting web development.
- BigJono 8y ago
  80% might be a bit ambitious, but it's probably not that far off. How much money do you think is in the web industry relative to the more grounded industries you've worked in?