5 ms·

Over-sensitive individuals are hard to please and often unhappy. That's more of a personality flaw than a flaw with the current state of software engineering.

by blub 7y ago

Over-sensitive individuals are hard to please and often unhappy. That's more of a personality flaw than a flaw with the current state of software engineering. If there's one thing wrong with our profession is a lack of ethics and accreditation - we're essentially letting random people build critical infrastructure and utilities. We don't have a tooling problem, in fact we have too many tools. I see so many people (especially on HN) fixating on tools, dissecting programming languages, editors and libraries into their most minute parts and then inevitably finding faults in them, disavowing them and swearing that other tools X, Y and Z are purer and worthier. If you want to stop hating software and improve your burn out, stop caring about irrelevant stuff.

vturner 7y ago
Oversensitive? Is the contractor who chooses a Dewalt or Ridgid over a Ryobi for daily work "caring about irrelevant stuff"? A drill is a drill right? Why is it different for us in software?
- lsc 7y ago
  Maybe. (and I thought festool was the new hotness? I thought that at least rigid and ryobi had been devaluing their brand by selling cheap junk under their brand? But I'm solidly in the 'prosumer' and not 'real contractor' end of the market, so not an expert or even close observer, really.) But I think the point OP was making is that contractors have a licensing and training program, and if you hire someone to put a roof on your house, they either have to go through that process or work under someone who went through that process. I mean, choosing the right tool is a small part of that, but someone in the chain of command is gonna have words with you if you bring your Xcelite screwdriver and try to use it on the roofing job. That's not true almost anywhere in software, and that probably makes a big difference. (I mean, not being educated myself, i personally have mixed feelings about licensure. But it's a good discussion to have, and I think that there should be something like the PE for software engineers (and there was, in texas, but it will be discontinued this year. )
- blub 7y ago
  I don't know anything about those brands you mentioned, but a programming language is more complex than most (all?) mechanical tools, it's designed over years and continues to change over decades. It's impossible to do a perfect job under such conditions, and it's anyway impossible to please everyone.
- taneq 7y ago
  Hey I like my Ryobi drill. :(
  - vturner 7y ago
    I love my Ryobi tools too! Just, I've assumed given their price-point, they aren't built for day in and day out needs of a contractor.
kbenson 7y ago
Is that supposed to help someone? I fail to see how telling someone "just ignore the stuff that irks you that you have to spend 40+ hours a week dealing with. You are overly sensitive and your concerns are irrelevant" helps anyone. Even if it was true, it was delivered in such a ham-fisted manner that I can't imagine anyone taking it to heart.
- blub 7y ago
  I sometimes have a tendency to focus only on the negative aspects of some things, while ignoring that all in all, those things are fine. I don't think I'm alone in that, certainly not in our line of work. A call to "snap out of it" seems that it can help in such situations. Python is not a programming language that should make people burn out or angry. Very few languages should be capable of that, so I think this issue goes deeper than just flawed tools. I find that the only way not to go nuts in this profession is to ignore most of it and most of it is really not relevant to building good software. There are just too many tools and always searching for the perfect tool is a recipe for being unhappy.
  - continuational 7y ago
    The programming language is one of the central tools though, the very language in which you express programs. If you don't care about that, caring about "building good software" feels hollow.
    - blub 7y ago
      The key point is that there are many languages that are more than good enough for almost any kind of problem solving. Building good software is firstly about process and skills.
lsc 7y ago
>If there's one thing wrong with our profession is a lack of ethics and accreditation - we're essentially letting random people build critical infrastructure and utilities. https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineering-exam/ https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin... There was a license for a professional software engineer; they're discontinuing it, apparently due to lack of demand. If folks wanted to get a "software people taking the FE" study group together, I'd join up.
- blub 7y ago
  It's a vicious circle. Our industry's working in a survival of the fittest mode, where fitness is almost exclusively measured through profit.
  - lsc 7y ago
    I dunno, man. I own a bunch of stock in BA right now. I bet that the idea of spending twice as much on software engineers and hiring licensed folk to write their software is looking pretty good to Bowing execs right about now, even from a plain profit and loss perspective. (of course, a lot of professional engineers were involved in building that plane... but it's pretty unlikely that there were any PE software engineers involved, just 'cause there aren't many. Would that have helped? maybe, maybe not. to the detail that I've studied (not.. really all that much) it sounds like they made some really basic mistakes, like relying on a sensor that wasn't redundant, and those mistakes should have been caught by the other engineers. I don't know that it was entirely a software engineering problem. ) As software mistakes get more and more costly, it starts making more and more sense for execs to hire people who are properly licensed to supervise the project. (I mean, assuming such people exist, and for software engineering, right now, you could say such people don't exist.)
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  As someone with a P.E. license that spent hundreds of hours studying and had to sit for that excruciating 8-hour exam twice, I don't think even 5% of the software developers in the US could pass an equivalent exam. Granted, I think the sector I took it in has a harder test than some, but it is a weed out test for someone that already took 4 years of Engineering school. Some takeaways from this: 1.) I learned a little bit from studying, but overall even though it was hard, I would've learned a lot more by getting a Master's degree. 2.) The test isn't good at determining if you're good at your job or honestly even minimally competent in your area. For example, even in a specialized field (power systems engineering), there are thousands of diverse jobs (power generation, distribution, electrical contracting, power transmission operations, power transmission planning....etc etc) so the test only had a few questions on my particular area. 3.) There are a lot of amazingly smart people working in software, but the skill range seems to be bigger than in traditional engineering fields where most engineers are fairly similar in skillset (there are some outliers) as they all generally have to pass the same courses if their university is accredited (talking about USA here). In the software world, you have software engineers and computer science doctorates mixed with someone with very little training that is trying to wing it. That means the dataset has a far greater range on skillsets. One employee might have had a class on compilers while another just learned what a for-loop is. In engineering, we generally all show up to the first day of work with the same building blocks (thermo, statics, Dynamics, circuits, differential equations, stats, calculus, basic programming...etc). The only difference between me as a senior engineer and a new hire is 9 years of experience, knowledge of the business and tools and ability to get things done without oversight. It makes a big difference, but I wouldn't expect them to be lacking any of the tools or training that I have picked up (ok...maybe databases). I'm struggling a bit to convey the overall message that software engineering seems a bit different and licensing would therefore need to be different if done. Perhaps you could have licensing for individual subjects? For example, you could pass a basic test on relational databases where you prove you can do basic operations such as select, where clauses, joins, updates, exports...etc. Then you'd have another to prove you were minimally competent in Java? Would that be of any value to an employer? I don't know. I'm guessing someone already does this for Oracle and Java too.
noelwelsh 7y ago
There are objective differences between languages. Examples include performance and compile-time checking. These differences are not irrelevant. Alternatively, if you believe the differences between languages are irrelevant why do you not program everything in assembler?
- blub 7y ago
  Those differences don't matter much when it comes to building software that fulfills specific requirements. I am a big fan of compile-time checking, but there's a lot of good software built without it and sadly there's also a lot of successful slow software. These are disadvantages, not an impassable barrier.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
> If there's one thing wrong with our profession is a lack of ethics and accreditation - we're essentially letting random people build critical infrastructure and utilities. Spot on. Leftpad (and perhaps the whole js ecosystem) are good examples.
KirinDave 7y ago
> Over-sensitive individuals are hard to please and often unhappy. That's more of a personality flaw than a flaw with the current state of software engineering. Ah yes. Just remove the part of myself that got me into software as a child, and proceed robotically. Why didn't I think of that?

by blub 7y ago

vturner 7y ago

Oversensitive? Is the contractor who chooses a Dewalt or Ridgid over a Ryobi for daily work "caring about irrelevant stuff"? A drill is a drill right? Why is it different for us in software?

lsc 7y ago
Maybe. (and I thought festool was the new hotness? I thought that at least rigid and ryobi had been devaluing their brand by selling cheap junk under their brand? But I'm solidly in the 'prosumer' and not 'real contractor' end of the market, so not an expert or even close observer, really.) But I think the point OP was making is that contractors have a licensing and training program, and if you hire someone to put a roof on your house, they either have to go through that process or work under someone who went through that process. I mean, choosing the right tool is a small part of that, but someone in the chain of command is gonna have words with you if you bring your Xcelite screwdriver and try to use it on the roofing job. That's not true almost anywhere in software, and that probably makes a big difference. (I mean, not being educated myself, i personally have mixed feelings about licensure. But it's a good discussion to have, and I think that there should be something like the PE for software engineers (and there was, in texas, but it will be discontinued this year. )
blub 7y ago
I don't know anything about those brands you mentioned, but a programming language is more complex than most (all?) mechanical tools, it's designed over years and continues to change over decades. It's impossible to do a perfect job under such conditions, and it's anyway impossible to please everyone.
taneq 7y ago
Hey I like my Ryobi drill. :(
- vturner 7y ago
  I love my Ryobi tools too! Just, I've assumed given their price-point, they aren't built for day in and day out needs of a contractor.

kbenson 7y ago

Is that supposed to help someone? I fail to see how telling someone "just ignore the stuff that irks you that you have to spend 40+ hours a week dealing with. You are overly sensitive and your concerns are irrelevant" helps anyone. Even if it was true, it was delivered in such a ham-fisted manner that I can't imagine anyone taking it to heart.

blub 7y ago
I sometimes have a tendency to focus only on the negative aspects of some things, while ignoring that all in all, those things are fine. I don't think I'm alone in that, certainly not in our line of work. A call to "snap out of it" seems that it can help in such situations. Python is not a programming language that should make people burn out or angry. Very few languages should be capable of that, so I think this issue goes deeper than just flawed tools. I find that the only way not to go nuts in this profession is to ignore most of it and most of it is really not relevant to building good software. There are just too many tools and always searching for the perfect tool is a recipe for being unhappy.
- continuational 7y ago
  The programming language is one of the central tools though, the very language in which you express programs. If you don't care about that, caring about "building good software" feels hollow.
  - blub 7y ago
    The key point is that there are many languages that are more than good enough for almost any kind of problem solving. Building good software is firstly about process and skills.

lsc 7y ago

>If there's one thing wrong with our profession is a lack of ethics and accreditation - we're essentially letting random people build critical infrastructure and utilities. https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineering-exam/ https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin... There was a license for a professional software engineer; they're discontinuing it, apparently due to lack of demand. If folks wanted to get a "software people taking the FE" study group together, I'd join up.

blub 7y ago
It's a vicious circle. Our industry's working in a survival of the fittest mode, where fitness is almost exclusively measured through profit.
- lsc 7y ago
  I dunno, man. I own a bunch of stock in BA right now. I bet that the idea of spending twice as much on software engineers and hiring licensed folk to write their software is looking pretty good to Bowing execs right about now, even from a plain profit and loss perspective. (of course, a lot of professional engineers were involved in building that plane... but it's pretty unlikely that there were any PE software engineers involved, just 'cause there aren't many. Would that have helped? maybe, maybe not. to the detail that I've studied (not.. really all that much) it sounds like they made some really basic mistakes, like relying on a sensor that wasn't redundant, and those mistakes should have been caught by the other engineers. I don't know that it was entirely a software engineering problem. ) As software mistakes get more and more costly, it starts making more and more sense for execs to hire people who are properly licensed to supervise the project. (I mean, assuming such people exist, and for software engineering, right now, you could say such people don't exist.)
6thaccount2 7y ago
As someone with a P.E. license that spent hundreds of hours studying and had to sit for that excruciating 8-hour exam twice, I don't think even 5% of the software developers in the US could pass an equivalent exam. Granted, I think the sector I took it in has a harder test than some, but it is a weed out test for someone that already took 4 years of Engineering school. Some takeaways from this: 1.) I learned a little bit from studying, but overall even though it was hard, I would've learned a lot more by getting a Master's degree. 2.) The test isn't good at determining if you're good at your job or honestly even minimally competent in your area. For example, even in a specialized field (power systems engineering), there are thousands of diverse jobs (power generation, distribution, electrical contracting, power transmission operations, power transmission planning....etc etc) so the test only had a few questions on my particular area. 3.) There are a lot of amazingly smart people working in software, but the skill range seems to be bigger than in traditional engineering fields where most engineers are fairly similar in skillset (there are some outliers) as they all generally have to pass the same courses if their university is accredited (talking about USA here). In the software world, you have software engineers and computer science doctorates mixed with someone with very little training that is trying to wing it. That means the dataset has a far greater range on skillsets. One employee might have had a class on compilers while another just learned what a for-loop is. In engineering, we generally all show up to the first day of work with the same building blocks (thermo, statics, Dynamics, circuits, differential equations, stats, calculus, basic programming...etc). The only difference between me as a senior engineer and a new hire is 9 years of experience, knowledge of the business and tools and ability to get things done without oversight. It makes a big difference, but I wouldn't expect them to be lacking any of the tools or training that I have picked up (ok...maybe databases). I'm struggling a bit to convey the overall message that software engineering seems a bit different and licensing would therefore need to be different if done. Perhaps you could have licensing for individual subjects? For example, you could pass a basic test on relational databases where you prove you can do basic operations such as select, where clauses, joins, updates, exports...etc. Then you'd have another to prove you were minimally competent in Java? Would that be of any value to an employer? I don't know. I'm guessing someone already does this for Oracle and Java too.

noelwelsh 7y ago

There are objective differences between languages. Examples include performance and compile-time checking. These differences are not irrelevant. Alternatively, if you believe the differences between languages are irrelevant why do you not program everything in assembler?

blub 7y ago
Those differences don't matter much when it comes to building software that fulfills specific requirements. I am a big fan of compile-time checking, but there's a lot of good software built without it and sadly there's also a lot of successful slow software. These are disadvantages, not an impassable barrier.

eeZah7Ux 7y ago

> If there's one thing wrong with our profession is a lack of ethics and accreditation - we're essentially letting random people build critical infrastructure and utilities. Spot on. Leftpad (and perhaps the whole js ecosystem) are good examples.

KirinDave 7y ago

> Over-sensitive individuals are hard to please and often unhappy. That's more of a personality flaw than a flaw with the current state of software engineering. Ah yes. Just remove the part of myself that got me into software as a child, and proceed robotically. Why didn't I think of that?