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> Programming is no longer a community. It's a competition. Programming is no longer an engineering job. It's no longer a form of art. It's this race to the bo

> Programming is no longer a community. It's a competition. Programming is no longer an engineering job. It's no longer a form of art. It's this race to the bottom where you have to mindlessly glue together as many libraries as it would take to write as little of your own code as possible, treating said libraries as black boxes.

dylan604 6y ago
I don't write software that is used by the masses, so I have the luxury of not needing maximum compatibility. If it works on the machines the company needs, then it's good enough. I get that some of the heavy weight libraries offer not only the speed of immediate working availability with "battle" tested compatibility (thinking web/javascript libraries specifically). However, I like learning. I like understanding why things work, or more importantly why something didn't work. If that means I have to re-learn something others already know, then so be it (that's what learning is).
robgibbons 6y ago
I think this is a great misunderstanding. One of the greatest contributions from Unix is the idea of programs that act as composable building blocks. You shouldn't need to reinvent every wheel to get your job done.
- grishka 6y ago
  I mean, operating systems are remarkable pieces of engineering. Mostly. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those cases when people pile 5 layers of abstraction just so they don't have to learn something, but get done with the job a little bit quicker. They don't try to understand neither the inner workings of these layers nor the CPU/memory/storage cost. If it means you write fewer code, it goes into your project. Thus you end up with "desktop apps" that are websites, with all the amazements (/s) of the modern web development, packaged with an insanely complex thing that a web browser is — just so the bullshit unrealistic "business requirements" are met. Or laggy, bloated mobile apps that get updated every week with no discernible changes. These just scream that the people behind them have no clue what they're doing.
  - s17n 6y ago
    > These just scream that the people behind them have no clue what they're doing. Or maybe they know exactly what they are doing, but what they are doing isn't what you think they are doing. I'm pretty sure nobody at Slack regrets using electron.
    - grishka 6y ago
      > Or maybe they know exactly what they are doing, but what they are doing isn't what you think they are doing. They're fixing bugs in an app that is 10 screens of lists. How does someone who knows what they're doing make this many bugs this subtle in such an app? I have no idea. > I'm pretty sure nobody at Slack regrets using electron. I'm pretty sure nobody at Slack cares. They do whatever their managers tell them to.
      - s17n 6y ago
        > How does someone who knows what they're doing make this many bugs this subtle in such an app? What they're doing is building a successful product and company. Code quality is probably not very important to this goal.
      - BoorishBears 6y ago
        I always imagine people like this in a situation like: what if a business need comes across for a desktop, a website, mobile apps, fully responsive, theme-able, animated. You have 1 week. I'm not big on web technology du jour so despite my years of experience not sure I can... but I bet you a random bootcamp graduate who couldn't tell you what a TCP packet is could do it! And there's the fact they don't know how TCP works and their solution takes 100x the RAM to do a simple task than a native app apparently isn't stopping similar apps from doing X million AAR... It's hyperbole, but in the opposite way of "it's just 10 lists". These programs you see don't exist in a vacuum. The requirements you see before your eyes are the tip of the iceberg.
        grishka 6y ago
infogulch 6y ago
APIs codify the concept of "Standing on the shoulders of giants", but substitute "giants" for "$X". The social consequences of that substitution are still being worked out today.
ben_e 6y ago
This is so cynical, yeah plenty of people have jobs that look like this, but if you look hard enough, there are tons of corners of the internet where people (communities!) are doing weird and fun things with code.
dehrmann 6y ago
Gluing together libraries means I can build something bigger. You could also say the same thing 30 years ago about people using the C standard library instead of implementing their or strncmp in assembly.

dylan604 6y ago

I don't write software that is used by the masses, so I have the luxury of not needing maximum compatibility. If it works on the machines the company needs, then it's good enough. I get that some of the heavy weight libraries offer not only the speed of immediate working availability with "battle" tested compatibility (thinking web/javascript libraries specifically). However, I like learning. I like understanding why things work, or more importantly why something didn't work. If that means I have to re-learn something others already know, then so be it (that's what learning is).

robgibbons 6y ago

I think this is a great misunderstanding. One of the greatest contributions from Unix is the idea of programs that act as composable building blocks. You shouldn't need to reinvent every wheel to get your job done.

grishka 6y ago
I mean, operating systems are remarkable pieces of engineering. Mostly. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those cases when people pile 5 layers of abstraction just so they don't have to learn something, but get done with the job a little bit quicker. They don't try to understand neither the inner workings of these layers nor the CPU/memory/storage cost. If it means you write fewer code, it goes into your project. Thus you end up with "desktop apps" that are websites, with all the amazements (/s) of the modern web development, packaged with an insanely complex thing that a web browser is — just so the bullshit unrealistic "business requirements" are met. Or laggy, bloated mobile apps that get updated every week with no discernible changes. These just scream that the people behind them have no clue what they're doing.
- s17n 6y ago
  > These just scream that the people behind them have no clue what they're doing. Or maybe they know exactly what they are doing, but what they are doing isn't what you think they are doing. I'm pretty sure nobody at Slack regrets using electron.
  - grishka 6y ago
    > Or maybe they know exactly what they are doing, but what they are doing isn't what you think they are doing. They're fixing bugs in an app that is 10 screens of lists. How does someone who knows what they're doing make this many bugs this subtle in such an app? I have no idea. > I'm pretty sure nobody at Slack regrets using electron. I'm pretty sure nobody at Slack cares. They do whatever their managers tell them to.
    - s17n 6y ago
      > How does someone who knows what they're doing make this many bugs this subtle in such an app? What they're doing is building a successful product and company. Code quality is probably not very important to this goal.
    - BoorishBears 6y ago
      I always imagine people like this in a situation like: what if a business need comes across for a desktop, a website, mobile apps, fully responsive, theme-able, animated. You have 1 week. I'm not big on web technology du jour so despite my years of experience not sure I can... but I bet you a random bootcamp graduate who couldn't tell you what a TCP packet is could do it! And there's the fact they don't know how TCP works and their solution takes 100x the RAM to do a simple task than a native app apparently isn't stopping similar apps from doing X million AAR... It's hyperbole, but in the opposite way of "it's just 10 lists". These programs you see don't exist in a vacuum. The requirements you see before your eyes are the tip of the iceberg.
      - grishka 6y ago

infogulch 6y ago

APIs codify the concept of "Standing on the shoulders of giants", but substitute "giants" for "$X". The social consequences of that substitution are still being worked out today.

ben_e 6y ago

This is so cynical, yeah plenty of people have jobs that look like this, but if you look hard enough, there are tons of corners of the internet where people (communities!) are doing weird and fun things with code.

dehrmann 6y ago

Gluing together libraries means I can build something bigger. You could also say the same thing 30 years ago about people using the C standard library instead of implementing their or strncmp in assembly.