8 ms·

I'm in the camp that would answer "yes" to your question. For me, it went like this: - The nerds did their nerd shit in the garage. Nobody saw them. - Then t

by junon 6y ago

I'm in the camp that would answer "yes" to your question. For me, it went like this: - The nerds did their nerd shit in the garage. Nobody saw them. - Then the nerds figured out how to revamp many business processes with computers. - Then those businesses needed more of that, so they started hiring other nerds. - Not too many nerds existed because they're nerds and who wants to be a nerd? So therefore demand was high. What happens to the nerds' salaries when demand is high? Salaries are high. - Now the nerds are making money. Tons of it. People started to notice that the nerds could sit all day and type at a computer (hey I can do that too!) but they make 100k more than I do. - Eager to cash in on that nerd money, I start to google "how to code". Codeacademy, Kahn Academy, Udemy, and a plethora of highly expensive code camps show up. I pick my poison and begin. - A Github profile is set up, my LinkedIn is updated, I have a few webapps under my belt, I'm ready for my interview. - I get a job at Big Tech company as a junior position. A few weeks go by and I'm asked if I could help interview another candidate. Of course, I'm qualified enough right? And the cycle continues. This is how I perceived the shift happen. Code Camps were really detrimental since it became very difficult to vet actual skills vs. ability to pass coding interviews. When I worked at Uber this was a huge deal - a lot of people that had just finished code camps nailed the interviews but only lasted a few months because they had no idea how to actually do anything. Of course it's all very nuanced and this isn't the only thing that happened (making programming "easier" certainly hasn't helped). But this was a large factor.

rramadass 6y ago
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry ! This is so true. Too many people with not enough background/experience, the dumbing down of programming to appeal to the masses (hey, just use this framework and call this api), the explosion in complexity of everything because apparently all solutions have be at Google scale, babel of languages/tools etc. etc. The joy of understanding/mastery/comprehension is gone.
- junon 6y ago
  The last sentence is especially true. I hate writing code most days, now. There's nothing interesting about the problems most companies are trying to solve, for example.
- aprdm 6y ago
  > The joy of understanding/mastery/comprehension is gone. Yes, and is also not rewarded. Deeply understanding a problem has much less career value than job hopping + leet code practice. We're creating a generation of senior developers who do not understand problems deeply. (And are also "senior" within 1-2 years...)
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    How else will you be a staff software engineer in 4 years?
yumraj 6y ago
Yes, absolutely that is one, probably major factor. But that those people could even get there and do that was caused by the rise of frameworks and GC languages. A person no longer needed to: 1. understand how things worked, in many cases you could just do some tutorials and start producing things that kinda worked but underneath were a pile of garbage 2. No longer needed to worry about memory or optimization so wrote more pile of garbage I'm not saying we want to go back there, but if everyone had to write C, C++, Rust, or one of the functional languages: 1. We'd have a lot fewer people in the industry 2. Overall quality of code would be higher, though I'm sure more C/C++ would have led to more memory and security issues also or perhaps not..
- ronaldj 6y ago
  When I was a younger developer I used to believe things like this. There are tons of roles and different levels to fill. People come from all sorts of backgrounds. You shouldn't discount folks for following a different path. A passionate and curious developer can learn C, C++, Rust if/when they need to. I would also argue that in the front end world frameworks have vastly improved code quality and developer experience. 10 years ago every team had their own homegrown build system, there were no libraries for type checking, you had write code or conditionals for the lowest version browser you support. Oh and app structure? Every team did something different. Compare that to now: We have a handful of large open source build systems, so if you jump teams/projects there is consistency. We have things like TypeScript and Flow. We have Babel, which can transpile modern JavaScript in to older versions of the language, so you can support older browsers without even thinking about it. Finally, we have frameworks like React and Vue, which enforce a component based architecture. This is great because you can jump between different projects and for the most part will find code organized in the same way. All of this is amazing.
  - junon 6y ago
    I've been in the Node.js world for 10, and web dev world for almost 20, years now. There are now hundreds of build systems, most of which copy the other ones but still aren't compatible with each other. There are hundreds of frameworks spewing out security issues all over the ecosystem. React and Vue don't enforce anything and certainly aren't the most stable of the selection of frameworks that exist. At least for React, a significant amount of money was dumped into it by a large, privacy invading and unethical corporation, which ultimately made it "popular". Facebook used it so it MUST be good, right? None of it is amazing; it's quite sad. The fact that we're locked into a small set of browsers, none of which can be reproduced or hacked on in any meaningful way aside from those dedicated to them. The fact we can't create our own browsers without wading through an ocean of specs. It's ludicrous. How anyone can say "it's amazing" in a positive connotation astounds me.
potta_coffee 6y ago
How is it that the smartest and most effective programmer that I've worked with was a boot camp grad? How is it that I've worked with programmers that have master's degrees from reputable universities that simply can't code? I think it's true that salaries definitely have had an effect, but there's also the fact that the industry has grown exponentially, and the employees have to come from somewhere. Make the pool bigger and you're going to have more bad programmers among the good ones. Currently I'm working with a team and it's a mixed bag, some of the guys are good and some are terrible but they're all well-educated.
- taf2 6y ago
  So in the late 90s in computer science 90% id say where their just to cash in.. code camp or university the idea that a lot of people enter a field when the gold is plentiful is not new... the only thing I think that is true is there is no good code or bad code there is only code...
muzani 6y ago
I taught for code camps. I think there's truth to this. Teaching programming is a lot like math. Ideally, you teach them how to follow things logically. But due to time constraints, you just give them a bunch of exercises, especially the ones that help them land jobs. Today it's probably harder to land a job than do the job, so why not optimize for that? It's hard to be able to code, so why not teach them to code and hope the passion clicks once they can build things? But I suppose it doesn't work that way. These guys were not meant to shortcut people who have a Masters and get into Uber. It's surprising that my average 2-3 month bootcamp student makes a higher income than someone with an actual degree. I'd love to find a way to fix this, but I don't have the resources to, and most people who do don't want to give up the money.
- asdjlkadsjklads 6y ago
  heh, makes me want to go to a code camp now. I've got ~7 years professional(?), ~11 years hobby, experience at two medium sized companies. Spent my years reinventing a ton of things, and know a fair amount of oddities on how to get things done. Combine that with a passion for idiomatic, standards, maintainable code and .. i think i'd be a decent hire. (Primary experience through the years in: Rust (current), Go, Python, JavaScript(Node/etc). Yet. I don't think i'd pass a single interview. I really need to learn the fundamentals i need for those interviews. Feels like a liability at this point.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Nobody that hired me has ever been dissapointed by what they got, but there’s a ton of people that never hired me because I can’t tell them whether something is O(n) or O(n*n), just ‘faster’ and ‘slower’. Who the hell cares what it’s called as long as it’s the fastest it’s ever going to be. > Do you have options other than caching? Yes, but who cares since they’re all worse (for your wallet and for speed). I may still be a bit salty.
    - croo 6y ago
      Not wanting to rub salt to your wound but there is a difference between able to tell if a car went fast or slow, or definitely slower than the speed limit, or exactly 58.4km/h.
DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
I wrote an article collecting some of my thoughts on this topic a while ago: https://dev.to/darkwiiplayer/a-rant-on-change-and-the-good-old-times-k00 https://dev.to/darkwiiplayer/a-rant-on-change-and-the-good-o... In it I also complain quite a bit about the cultural shift away from "building cool stuff" to "top 10 JavaScript interview questions to memorise for 2021".

by junon 6y ago

rramadass 6y ago

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry ! This is so true. Too many people with not enough background/experience, the dumbing down of programming to appeal to the masses (hey, just use this framework and call this api), the explosion in complexity of everything because apparently all solutions have be at Google scale, babel of languages/tools etc. etc. The joy of understanding/mastery/comprehension is gone.

junon 6y ago
The last sentence is especially true. I hate writing code most days, now. There's nothing interesting about the problems most companies are trying to solve, for example.
aprdm 6y ago
> The joy of understanding/mastery/comprehension is gone. Yes, and is also not rewarded. Deeply understanding a problem has much less career value than job hopping + leet code practice. We're creating a generation of senior developers who do not understand problems deeply. (And are also "senior" within 1-2 years...)
- Aeolun 6y ago
  How else will you be a staff software engineer in 4 years?

yumraj 6y ago

Yes, absolutely that is one, probably major factor. But that those people could even get there and do that was caused by the rise of frameworks and GC languages. A person no longer needed to: 1. understand how things worked, in many cases you could just do some tutorials and start producing things that kinda worked but underneath were a pile of garbage 2. No longer needed to worry about memory or optimization so wrote more pile of garbage I'm not saying we want to go back there, but if everyone had to write C, C++, Rust, or one of the functional languages: 1. We'd have a lot fewer people in the industry 2. Overall quality of code would be higher, though I'm sure more C/C++ would have led to more memory and security issues also or perhaps not..

ronaldj 6y ago
When I was a younger developer I used to believe things like this. There are tons of roles and different levels to fill. People come from all sorts of backgrounds. You shouldn't discount folks for following a different path. A passionate and curious developer can learn C, C++, Rust if/when they need to. I would also argue that in the front end world frameworks have vastly improved code quality and developer experience. 10 years ago every team had their own homegrown build system, there were no libraries for type checking, you had write code or conditionals for the lowest version browser you support. Oh and app structure? Every team did something different. Compare that to now: We have a handful of large open source build systems, so if you jump teams/projects there is consistency. We have things like TypeScript and Flow. We have Babel, which can transpile modern JavaScript in to older versions of the language, so you can support older browsers without even thinking about it. Finally, we have frameworks like React and Vue, which enforce a component based architecture. This is great because you can jump between different projects and for the most part will find code organized in the same way. All of this is amazing.
- junon 6y ago
  I've been in the Node.js world for 10, and web dev world for almost 20, years now. There are now hundreds of build systems, most of which copy the other ones but still aren't compatible with each other. There are hundreds of frameworks spewing out security issues all over the ecosystem. React and Vue don't enforce anything and certainly aren't the most stable of the selection of frameworks that exist. At least for React, a significant amount of money was dumped into it by a large, privacy invading and unethical corporation, which ultimately made it "popular". Facebook used it so it MUST be good, right? None of it is amazing; it's quite sad. The fact that we're locked into a small set of browsers, none of which can be reproduced or hacked on in any meaningful way aside from those dedicated to them. The fact we can't create our own browsers without wading through an ocean of specs. It's ludicrous. How anyone can say "it's amazing" in a positive connotation astounds me.

potta_coffee 6y ago

How is it that the smartest and most effective programmer that I've worked with was a boot camp grad? How is it that I've worked with programmers that have master's degrees from reputable universities that simply can't code? I think it's true that salaries definitely have had an effect, but there's also the fact that the industry has grown exponentially, and the employees have to come from somewhere. Make the pool bigger and you're going to have more bad programmers among the good ones. Currently I'm working with a team and it's a mixed bag, some of the guys are good and some are terrible but they're all well-educated.

taf2 6y ago
So in the late 90s in computer science 90% id say where their just to cash in.. code camp or university the idea that a lot of people enter a field when the gold is plentiful is not new... the only thing I think that is true is there is no good code or bad code there is only code...

muzani 6y ago

I taught for code camps. I think there's truth to this. Teaching programming is a lot like math. Ideally, you teach them how to follow things logically. But due to time constraints, you just give them a bunch of exercises, especially the ones that help them land jobs. Today it's probably harder to land a job than do the job, so why not optimize for that? It's hard to be able to code, so why not teach them to code and hope the passion clicks once they can build things? But I suppose it doesn't work that way. These guys were not meant to shortcut people who have a Masters and get into Uber. It's surprising that my average 2-3 month bootcamp student makes a higher income than someone with an actual degree. I'd love to find a way to fix this, but I don't have the resources to, and most people who do don't want to give up the money.

asdjlkadsjklads 6y ago
heh, makes me want to go to a code camp now. I've got ~7 years professional(?), ~11 years hobby, experience at two medium sized companies. Spent my years reinventing a ton of things, and know a fair amount of oddities on how to get things done. Combine that with a passion for idiomatic, standards, maintainable code and .. i think i'd be a decent hire. (Primary experience through the years in: Rust (current), Go, Python, JavaScript(Node/etc). Yet. I don't think i'd pass a single interview. I really need to learn the fundamentals i need for those interviews. Feels like a liability at this point.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Nobody that hired me has ever been dissapointed by what they got, but there’s a ton of people that never hired me because I can’t tell them whether something is O(n) or O(n*n), just ‘faster’ and ‘slower’. Who the hell cares what it’s called as long as it’s the fastest it’s ever going to be. > Do you have options other than caching? Yes, but who cares since they’re all worse (for your wallet and for speed). I may still be a bit salty.
  - croo 6y ago
    Not wanting to rub salt to your wound but there is a difference between able to tell if a car went fast or slow, or definitely slower than the speed limit, or exactly 58.4km/h.

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago

I wrote an article collecting some of my thoughts on this topic a while ago: https://dev.to/darkwiiplayer/a-rant-on-change-and-the-good-old-times-k00 https://dev.to/darkwiiplayer/a-rant-on-change-and-the-good-o... In it I also complain quite a bit about the cultural shift away from "building cool stuff" to "top 10 JavaScript interview questions to memorise for 2021".