6 ms·

"You're not cooking meals, you're solving problems"

crimsonalucard 7y ago
There's a real lack of humility among our industry, especially in the AI space. Literally you can google "AI solves world peace" or "AI solves COVID-19" and you'll hit an article. We also call ourselves ninjas when most of us are just building hugely complex infrastructure behind what is ultimately just a CRUD website.
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago
  That lack of humility also exists in other industries. You can Google "healthcare saves lives" and hit many articles
  - fooker 7y ago
    Healthcare saves lives --- by definition.
  - ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
    I’m gonna steal this for a comic I’m working on verbatim.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    Plumbers and custodians also save lives through sanitation. But when you google "Plumbers save lives" you get nothing. I myself have had my cancer personally cured by AI and machine learning, but does the electrician who provided power to the computer get any credit? No, and that is a huge discrimination problem.
- quonn 7y ago
  This classification of applications as CRUD or not CRUD is not helpful. It‘s like thinking about software as just IO or as just some sort of transformation or even as just some sort of function. It says nothing about the complexity and very little about the structure of the problem at hand.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    Maybe a better way to put it is: that the end result is just a website where data is moved around and/or some calculations are done. The whole infrastructure/architecture thing are just strategies on where to place data, how to move data, when to do calculation in the name of mitigating load or making future changes easier. Ultimately, the end result is we're just building interactive documents. "Interactive document maker" or "Dynamic form writer" is a more humble term than "Problem solver" or "Coding Ninja" because that's literally all we're doing.
    - quonn 7y ago
      It doesn‘t matter if the output is a „document“ or if it runs in a browser. And more so with SPAs. These are not more like documents than any desktop application twenty years ago. And of course software development is about solving problems. And of course it‘s not just about where to place data.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  The downvotes are really telling. Don't point out the hubris on HN.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    It's hovering and oscillating around zero. Id say it's a 50/50 thing.
- CodiePetersen 7y ago
  I completely agree with you. Really getting sick and tired of the tech industry thinking they are better than everyone else because they can program. Very egotistical culture. Down to even morals. I had one guy comment to me "Hard to believe someone in the tech industry believes such things." But I think it is mostly just American programmers. Or maybe just big city programmers. I've had the opportunity to work with people in Spain, The UK, and Prague, others remotely as well, but I haven't seen the level of ego in those guys as I have seen in Americans. It's part of the reason I loathe the idea of hiring developers from America. EVERYOTHER industry is perfectly fine with criticizing or reanalyzing the work of others either underneath their authority or about their competitors. I'm sure even some of these programmers have even said "OMG this caffe macchiato is crap. I'm never drinking from this place again." But nope, don't criticize programmers or ask them to redo work. It's just so rude. But it is probably the fact that companies like Google literally put slides and children's toys in their offices for their apparently adult programmers to enjoy. An artifact of programmer scarcity I'd imagine.
bsdubernerd 7y ago
By extension (and legitimate curiosity), who _isn't_ solving an actual problem in his day job? I can think of many classes of artists, but cannot put a blank statement for _all_ of them.
- lioeters 7y ago
  Some artists, I believe, are playing the game of creating and solving problems - where they make up the rules so that interesting problems can arise. J.S. Bach and his canons for example. It may also be joked that some politicians aren't solving actual problems (but creating new ones) in their day job.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    Some politicians do solve problems sometimes; it's the bulk of the massive bureaucracy in government that doesn't solve problems, other than feeding itself and ensuring its own propagation.
    - salawat 7y ago
      Honestly, you really can't separate the two. Half the bureaucracy is the direct result of political action, and each political action further constrains the ability to quickly mobilize further political actions due to the necessity of conflict resolution. It would be more accurate to say some politicians solve problems for some time; after which their solution becomes someone else's problem.
  - js8 7y ago
    > It may also be joked that some politicians aren't solving actual problems (but creating new ones) in their day job. By creating problems, they solve a problem of a lack of suitable problems. Thus creating the much needed liquidity in the free market of problems.
- frez1 7y ago
  The idea is to keep your mind clear on what the priority is. If you didn't write many lines of code but still solved problems, you did your job. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but it helps in prioritization
SCdF 7y ago
You're missing the point. The goal of cooking meals is to have a meal at the end. Because people need to eat. The food is the solution to the problem you have. People don't consume software, slurping up lines of code like ramen. Having a steaming bowl of software is not the end goal. The end goal is to solve some _other_ problem which may or may not, once you dig into it, require writing software, and if it does then still: more software doesn't mean more food.
- globular-toast 7y ago
  I think you're missing the point. Humans can live perfectly well eating raw food. But we don't because it's not nice.
- uncletaco 7y ago
  > humans don't consume software what even is gaming
- darepublic 7y ago
  The prevention of starvation is the problem which currently requires food but in the future may not (photosynthesis, man machine merger etc)
- jackcviers3 7y ago
  You are missing the point. As is almost everyone else who says this stuff. Most of us get paid to write software other people have requested in order to solve their problems. Every problem software solves can be solved by a sea of pencil pushers or factory line workers or human calculators or office clerks with filing cabinets or telephone switchboard operators or typists. The world used to run that way. It no longer does because it is extremely cheap to program a computer to do repetitive actions. Compared to previous real-estate and labor-pool costs, paying even a thousand programmers to automate work done by people is incredibly inexpensive. The problem is already solved. Your job is to translate the solution into a well-specified, easy to manipulate series of steps for a computer to execute that can be operated in production as cheaply as possible. You are literally the last step in the race to the bottom. You are literally payed to solve the problems of translating flexible human activities into code. That's the problem you are solving. If someone asks you to program something that they don't already know how to do, then you are solving three problems - what to do, how to do it, and whether or not it is cheaper to do in software, which it ALMOST ALWAYS IS. You should be being paid three salaries - one as a business executive, one as a business analyst, and one as a software engineer. The people pushing you to "solve problems, not code," are people pushing you to do more work in one job role to keep them from paying three people for those jobs. As a software engineer, you should be able to assume by the time something hits your task queue that others have decided that it will be cheaper to use software to solve the problem, they were competent in that assessment, and you can start executing. As a consultant, I frequently take on all those roles for a client. But they pay me as a consultant to do those three roles. Remember that as an employee, in an extremely in-demand field, with specialized expertise compared to the rest of the work pool, you are a sole proprietorship trading time for resources. If that trade is lopsided, you need to push back and negotiate higher pay and a promotion. Don't give away work responsibilities for free because of culture hero points.
cja 7y ago
Better: You're not cooking meals, you provide good food.
wpietri 7y ago
This is also important to keep in mind, although I'd phrase it as, "You're feeding people." Or more specifically, "You're trying to make people healthy and happy." I mean, think of all the mediocre, industrial-grade food you've eaten over the years. School lunches, maybe. Low-grade franchise food. Whatever's in the vending machine. How many people involved in making that are focused on the experience of the person eating the food? As opposed to maximizing revenue, or just doing whatever the manager says, keeping their head down, and getting out at quitting time? Or let's think of all the food we've eaten that was made to please the cook, not the eater. A friend has an aunt that every year sends a giant box of absolutely terrible Christmas cookies. They're like iced cardboard. The important thing to the aunt is feeling like a big giver, not the experience of the eater. Or on the other end, consider fancy chefs who make tell-me-I'm-clever food, where the presentation is dramatic, but the actual taste is not so great. Every time I cook for others, I see it as an opportunity to really see the person, to find the best intersection between my skills versus their desires and needs. And it's the same for software.
- tcgv 7y ago
  Never thought this way about food preparation, and the different motivations people have for doing it, not always prioritizing the "eater". Nice comment!
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
You are missing the point completely.

There's a real lack of humility among our industry, especially in the AI space. Literally you can google "AI solves world peace" or "AI solves COVID-19" and you'll hit an article. We also call ourselves ninjas when most of us are just building hugely complex infrastructure behind what is ultimately just a CRUD website.

jsjddbbwj 7y ago
That lack of humility also exists in other industries. You can Google "healthcare saves lives" and hit many articles
- fooker 7y ago
  Healthcare saves lives --- by definition.
- ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
  I’m gonna steal this for a comic I’m working on verbatim.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Plumbers and custodians also save lives through sanitation. But when you google "Plumbers save lives" you get nothing. I myself have had my cancer personally cured by AI and machine learning, but does the electrician who provided power to the computer get any credit? No, and that is a huge discrimination problem.
quonn 7y ago
This classification of applications as CRUD or not CRUD is not helpful. It‘s like thinking about software as just IO or as just some sort of transformation or even as just some sort of function. It says nothing about the complexity and very little about the structure of the problem at hand.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Maybe a better way to put it is: that the end result is just a website where data is moved around and/or some calculations are done. The whole infrastructure/architecture thing are just strategies on where to place data, how to move data, when to do calculation in the name of mitigating load or making future changes easier. Ultimately, the end result is we're just building interactive documents. "Interactive document maker" or "Dynamic form writer" is a more humble term than "Problem solver" or "Coding Ninja" because that's literally all we're doing.
  - quonn 7y ago
    It doesn‘t matter if the output is a „document“ or if it runs in a browser. And more so with SPAs. These are not more like documents than any desktop application twenty years ago. And of course software development is about solving problems. And of course it‘s not just about where to place data.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
The downvotes are really telling. Don't point out the hubris on HN.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  It's hovering and oscillating around zero. Id say it's a 50/50 thing.
CodiePetersen 7y ago
I completely agree with you. Really getting sick and tired of the tech industry thinking they are better than everyone else because they can program. Very egotistical culture. Down to even morals. I had one guy comment to me "Hard to believe someone in the tech industry believes such things." But I think it is mostly just American programmers. Or maybe just big city programmers. I've had the opportunity to work with people in Spain, The UK, and Prague, others remotely as well, but I haven't seen the level of ego in those guys as I have seen in Americans. It's part of the reason I loathe the idea of hiring developers from America. EVERYOTHER industry is perfectly fine with criticizing or reanalyzing the work of others either underneath their authority or about their competitors. I'm sure even some of these programmers have even said "OMG this caffe macchiato is crap. I'm never drinking from this place again." But nope, don't criticize programmers or ask them to redo work. It's just so rude. But it is probably the fact that companies like Google literally put slides and children's toys in their offices for their apparently adult programmers to enjoy. An artifact of programmer scarcity I'd imagine.

bsdubernerd 7y ago

By extension (and legitimate curiosity), who _isn't_ solving an actual problem in his day job? I can think of many classes of artists, but cannot put a blank statement for _all_ of them.

lioeters 7y ago
Some artists, I believe, are playing the game of creating and solving problems - where they make up the rules so that interesting problems can arise. J.S. Bach and his canons for example. It may also be joked that some politicians aren't solving actual problems (but creating new ones) in their day job.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Some politicians do solve problems sometimes; it's the bulk of the massive bureaucracy in government that doesn't solve problems, other than feeding itself and ensuring its own propagation.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Honestly, you really can't separate the two. Half the bureaucracy is the direct result of political action, and each political action further constrains the ability to quickly mobilize further political actions due to the necessity of conflict resolution. It would be more accurate to say some politicians solve problems for some time; after which their solution becomes someone else's problem.
- js8 7y ago
  > It may also be joked that some politicians aren't solving actual problems (but creating new ones) in their day job. By creating problems, they solve a problem of a lack of suitable problems. Thus creating the much needed liquidity in the free market of problems.
frez1 7y ago
The idea is to keep your mind clear on what the priority is. If you didn't write many lines of code but still solved problems, you did your job. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but it helps in prioritization

SCdF 7y ago

You're missing the point. The goal of cooking meals is to have a meal at the end. Because people need to eat. The food is the solution to the problem you have. People don't consume software, slurping up lines of code like ramen. Having a steaming bowl of software is not the end goal. The end goal is to solve some _other_ problem which may or may not, once you dig into it, require writing software, and if it does then still: more software doesn't mean more food.

globular-toast 7y ago
I think you're missing the point. Humans can live perfectly well eating raw food. But we don't because it's not nice.
uncletaco 7y ago
> humans don't consume software what even is gaming
darepublic 7y ago
The prevention of starvation is the problem which currently requires food but in the future may not (photosynthesis, man machine merger etc)
jackcviers3 7y ago
You are missing the point. As is almost everyone else who says this stuff. Most of us get paid to write software other people have requested in order to solve their problems. Every problem software solves can be solved by a sea of pencil pushers or factory line workers or human calculators or office clerks with filing cabinets or telephone switchboard operators or typists. The world used to run that way. It no longer does because it is extremely cheap to program a computer to do repetitive actions. Compared to previous real-estate and labor-pool costs, paying even a thousand programmers to automate work done by people is incredibly inexpensive. The problem is already solved. Your job is to translate the solution into a well-specified, easy to manipulate series of steps for a computer to execute that can be operated in production as cheaply as possible. You are literally the last step in the race to the bottom. You are literally payed to solve the problems of translating flexible human activities into code. That's the problem you are solving. If someone asks you to program something that they don't already know how to do, then you are solving three problems - what to do, how to do it, and whether or not it is cheaper to do in software, which it ALMOST ALWAYS IS. You should be being paid three salaries - one as a business executive, one as a business analyst, and one as a software engineer. The people pushing you to "solve problems, not code," are people pushing you to do more work in one job role to keep them from paying three people for those jobs. As a software engineer, you should be able to assume by the time something hits your task queue that others have decided that it will be cheaper to use software to solve the problem, they were competent in that assessment, and you can start executing. As a consultant, I frequently take on all those roles for a client. But they pay me as a consultant to do those three roles. Remember that as an employee, in an extremely in-demand field, with specialized expertise compared to the rest of the work pool, you are a sole proprietorship trading time for resources. If that trade is lopsided, you need to push back and negotiate higher pay and a promotion. Don't give away work responsibilities for free because of culture hero points.

cja 7y ago

Better: You're not cooking meals, you provide good food.

wpietri 7y ago

This is also important to keep in mind, although I'd phrase it as, "You're feeding people." Or more specifically, "You're trying to make people healthy and happy." I mean, think of all the mediocre, industrial-grade food you've eaten over the years. School lunches, maybe. Low-grade franchise food. Whatever's in the vending machine. How many people involved in making that are focused on the experience of the person eating the food? As opposed to maximizing revenue, or just doing whatever the manager says, keeping their head down, and getting out at quitting time? Or let's think of all the food we've eaten that was made to please the cook, not the eater. A friend has an aunt that every year sends a giant box of absolutely terrible Christmas cookies. They're like iced cardboard. The important thing to the aunt is feeling like a big giver, not the experience of the eater. Or on the other end, consider fancy chefs who make tell-me-I'm-clever food, where the presentation is dramatic, but the actual taste is not so great. Every time I cook for others, I see it as an opportunity to really see the person, to find the best intersection between my skills versus their desires and needs. And it's the same for software.

tcgv 7y ago
Never thought this way about food preparation, and the different motivations people have for doing it, not always prioritizing the "eater". Nice comment!

eeZah7Ux 7y ago

You are missing the point completely.