3 ms·

How on earth is programming not competitive? Coming up with the wrong data model can result in millions of dollars in technical debt, a failure to fully realize

How on earth is programming not competitive? Coming up with the wrong data model can result in millions of dollars in technical debt, a failure to fully realize a product, or certainly allow a competitor to win out. Bad programmers can structure a product so poorly that it is simply unpleasant to work on, and you won't be able to hire or retain engineers. I think moreso than most careers, a single software engineer is capable of a tremendous amount of good or harm.

laughinghan 8y ago
Yeah but no one's goal should be to overtake the current best programmer in the world in whatever ranking. Your goal should be to excel at solving the problems you're facing. A spouse is capable of a tremendous amount of good or harm, but that doesn't mean marriage is a competition.
jakobegger 8y ago
Nobody cares if you wrote the best code in the world if the business model doesn't work out. I once did some consulting work for a popular technology startup. I was appalled when I saw the hacks they used to get their stuff working. But their marketing was perfect and all the devs raved about how performant and nice to work with their product was. But when you looked at the internal code it was clear that a lot of it was written by clueless programmers who did whatever they wanted to get it somehow working. They used the worst hacks to get around the fact that the original product wasn't really built for the area they pivoted into. That taught me a valuable lesson: everything I thought was important about building a good tech product is irrelevant. As long as it kinda works, you just need someone to sell the thing.
skrebbel 8y ago
None of what you just described defines "competitive". A situation is competitive where one's gain is, another's loss. There's no such dynamic at play when programming, except maybe career advancement in big organizations. When I write better code today than I did yesterday, you, my teammate, will be happier, not sadder.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  All of the things mentioned are ways that bad programming can "allow a competitor to win out". Programming is competitive because markets are competitive. Now, markets aren't always zero-sum. But they are often competitive. > When I write better code today than I did yesterday, you, my teammate, will be happier, not sadder. That's also true in football...

laughinghan 8y ago

Yeah but no one's goal should be to overtake the current best programmer in the world in whatever ranking. Your goal should be to excel at solving the problems you're facing. A spouse is capable of a tremendous amount of good or harm, but that doesn't mean marriage is a competition.

jakobegger 8y ago

Nobody cares if you wrote the best code in the world if the business model doesn't work out. I once did some consulting work for a popular technology startup. I was appalled when I saw the hacks they used to get their stuff working. But their marketing was perfect and all the devs raved about how performant and nice to work with their product was. But when you looked at the internal code it was clear that a lot of it was written by clueless programmers who did whatever they wanted to get it somehow working. They used the worst hacks to get around the fact that the original product wasn't really built for the area they pivoted into. That taught me a valuable lesson: everything I thought was important about building a good tech product is irrelevant. As long as it kinda works, you just need someone to sell the thing.

skrebbel 8y ago

None of what you just described defines "competitive". A situation is competitive where one's gain is, another's loss. There's no such dynamic at play when programming, except maybe career advancement in big organizations. When I write better code today than I did yesterday, you, my teammate, will be happier, not sadder.

throwawayjava 8y ago
All of the things mentioned are ways that bad programming can "allow a competitor to win out". Programming is competitive because markets are competitive. Now, markets aren't always zero-sum. But they are often competitive. > When I write better code today than I did yesterday, you, my teammate, will be happier, not sadder. That's also true in football...