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Engineers who find a stable technology boring after a few years probably lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough. It's a form of ADHD. After almost a de

by hliyan 6y ago

Engineers who find a stable technology boring after a few years probably lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough. It's a form of ADHD. After almost a decade, I still find lots of interesting ways to write plain vanilla JS code that makes developer's jobs easier in lots of interesting ways. Before that, I spent a full decade writing C++ using nothing but a restricted set of in-house libraries. I don't recall ever being bored because I always felt like a carpenter: have a problem? You have the tools to build more tools to make your life easier. I experimented with event driven models vs. streams vs. queues, doing complex calculations by spreading them across the nodes of a tree, developing unit and API test tools (C++ had none, many years ago). Today, architecture feels more like technology shopping than tinkering.

allan_s 6y ago
I totally agree with you, I've been writing professionally php and python, vanilla js/react and postgresql for a good decade now and I'm still learning exciting new things in these technology. (Note on the side I've made weekend projects in Rust, tested Cassandra, Kafka) I think one should have a toolbox with proven tools that should be default tools, while keeping an hygiene of testing new tools so that when the day arise that either the "new tool" survive the test of time, or you encounter a problematic that is really solvable only with that new tech, you can make an exception.
- hliyan 6y ago
  I do the same thing. I write at least a hello world project in most new tech that comes my way. Sometimes I find some of them interesting and use them in production maybe a year or two later. But definitely not as soon as I learn them!
phabora 6y ago
To be fair C++ seems like a very non-boring technology. In the “may you lead an interesting life” sense.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  JS script too. I've never been bored by JS because there were always multiple clever ways to do things, and I had to figure the way that was sufficiently clever to make my and my teammates lives easier, but not so clever it made our lives harder. Java is boring because invariably I spend all that time trying to figure out the one way to make things work, given that the thing I need to do involves a library that abstracts everything multiple levels deep and all I have are API Javadocs that describe how various abstractions get created via constructors and factories that take -other- abstractions, that have no meaning whatsoever to me and my problem domain. Which means I spend hours to figure out how to do the simplest things, and I'm mentally unstimulated the entire time.
  - oblio 6y ago
    You're missing his point (and joke) completely. "May you live an interesting life" is a curse, as interesting lives are usually full of hardships. He's saying that C++ is non boring, I assume because it's full of footguns.
    - lostcolony 6y ago
      No, I'm not. I'm familiar with the curse (it's referenced extensively, and even influences the title, of Pratchett's "Interesting Times"). I'm even making a similar statement with my comments on JS; hence why "too clever" is a bad thing.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
That all may be true, but that's unfortunately the state of the market. If you want to keep developers, you need to be cognizant of this fact and adjust accordingly. "Today, architecture feels more like technology shopping than tinkering." That's because most web development jobs are maintaining glorified CRUD applications. Real actual software engineering jobs are hard to find, and don't pay as well as web development (or it's open source software that doesn't pay).
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I write mostly HTML 3.2 (with progressive enhancement additions on top for newer browsers) and I'm still finding new things to do with it after 20+ years.
bluemetal 6y ago
FYI using the terms ADHD/ADD when not talking about the actual disorder is often offensive to people who have ADHD. It fails to acknowledge that the condition is more complicated than just getting bored quickly, especially when your statement can be interpreted as implying that people with ADHD "lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough". Things are hard enough for people with ADHD without trivialising/generalising/moralising their problems.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  Not to mention most people with ADHD are very curious. In fact, we have a tendency to hyperfocus on things that interest us.

by hliyan 6y ago

allan_s 6y ago

I totally agree with you, I've been writing professionally php and python, vanilla js/react and postgresql for a good decade now and I'm still learning exciting new things in these technology. (Note on the side I've made weekend projects in Rust, tested Cassandra, Kafka) I think one should have a toolbox with proven tools that should be default tools, while keeping an hygiene of testing new tools so that when the day arise that either the "new tool" survive the test of time, or you encounter a problematic that is really solvable only with that new tech, you can make an exception.

hliyan 6y ago
I do the same thing. I write at least a hello world project in most new tech that comes my way. Sometimes I find some of them interesting and use them in production maybe a year or two later. But definitely not as soon as I learn them!

phabora 6y ago

To be fair C++ seems like a very non-boring technology. In the “may you lead an interesting life” sense.

lostcolony 6y ago
JS script too. I've never been bored by JS because there were always multiple clever ways to do things, and I had to figure the way that was sufficiently clever to make my and my teammates lives easier, but not so clever it made our lives harder. Java is boring because invariably I spend all that time trying to figure out the one way to make things work, given that the thing I need to do involves a library that abstracts everything multiple levels deep and all I have are API Javadocs that describe how various abstractions get created via constructors and factories that take -other- abstractions, that have no meaning whatsoever to me and my problem domain. Which means I spend hours to figure out how to do the simplest things, and I'm mentally unstimulated the entire time.
- oblio 6y ago
  You're missing his point (and joke) completely. "May you live an interesting life" is a curse, as interesting lives are usually full of hardships. He's saying that C++ is non boring, I assume because it's full of footguns.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    No, I'm not. I'm familiar with the curse (it's referenced extensively, and even influences the title, of Pratchett's "Interesting Times"). I'm even making a similar statement with my comments on JS; hence why "too clever" is a bad thing.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

That all may be true, but that's unfortunately the state of the market. If you want to keep developers, you need to be cognizant of this fact and adjust accordingly. "Today, architecture feels more like technology shopping than tinkering." That's because most web development jobs are maintaining glorified CRUD applications. Real actual software engineering jobs are hard to find, and don't pay as well as web development (or it's open source software that doesn't pay).

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I write mostly HTML 3.2 (with progressive enhancement additions on top for newer browsers) and I'm still finding new things to do with it after 20+ years.

bluemetal 6y ago

FYI using the terms ADHD/ADD when not talking about the actual disorder is often offensive to people who have ADHD. It fails to acknowledge that the condition is more complicated than just getting bored quickly, especially when your statement can be interpreted as implying that people with ADHD "lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough". Things are hard enough for people with ADHD without trivialising/generalising/moralising their problems.

schwartzworld 6y ago
Not to mention most people with ADHD are very curious. In fact, we have a tendency to hyperfocus on things that interest us.