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this is a terrible post on several levels. first none of the apps are magical, they are all sites that are fun. Time wasters as some people may call it. Ther

this is a terrible post on several levels. first none of the apps are magical, they are all sites that are fun. Time wasters as some people may call it. There is a huge difference between apps for productivity and having fun. In the end being productive is not always fun. Claiming some languages are not geeky enough is super ignorant. As long as the person is coding out of some level of enjoyment is all that matters. Figuring out how to scale is an amazing challenge.. its not super fun and its not something not all people may find enjoyable, but its something that people in Enterprise have to deal with. Hacking on kernel code to make something run more efficiently is not a "Superstar" activity that will be enjoyed by millions of users like Facebook but someone has to do it. Every day there are millions of businesses that rely on these day coders to help run businesses more efficiently. Not everyone wants to work in a start up and dedicate 12 hours of their days to a company that may never come to fruition. When you get out in the real world as a coder.. everyone will pitch you their billion dollar ideas and after the 3rd or 4th time of dedication long days and weekends and only reaching failure.. one of these desk jobs feels good. Sorry but this post is pure ignorance.

floppydisk 15y ago
I'm down for hacking on kernel code and learning the guts of an OS! I do think the grandparent has a valid point though. Most enterprise corporations do treat IT / development as plug and play instead of "engineers." I think enterprise coding would be fascinating, but they are stuck in a language and platform rut (PHP/Java/C# and something else whose name escapes me) and don't let the engineers explore other solutions to problems outside of those silos. Some of the enterprise challenges -- scaling for instance -- are quite fascinating problems that only show up in large software projects, but to solve them one finds oneself limited to cobbling together a solution from previous solutions built on top of older solutions using the same software stack + updates. Creativity and a willingness to think outside the box is lacking in some of the larger organizations and after 20+ years of doing the same thing on almost the same platform has managed to help push geeks into the corporate IT stereotypes. As you point out, not everyone wants to work at a startup and might enjoy the stability of a regular job. I might be one of those people, don't know yet. What I do know, is I would like to exercise some creativity and find newer and more updated ways of doing things instead of rehashing the same code in the same software stack day in and day out. But that's just me.
- deleted 15y ago
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- primitur 15y ago
  In the end, its the hardware that counts. As in, the real physical hardware. A number like "how many active installations of hardware X", which represents actual real-life users in realtime, is a very important thing for an application developer to keep track of .. if you've got one machine that is serving 10,000 people over lunch-time, something, then you better know how that machine is working. If the lawn-humping teenage generation of programmers aren't being taught one thing, its that hardware in use is all that matters. Count that as your primary professional consideration, and things go very well from there, usually. If students were coming away from US Computer education establishments with very strong hardware capabilities and focuses, rather than 'doctrine and taxonomy' as a focus, there would be a positive change in the industry. Many 'old school' programmers got that way because they had to build their own hardware; if you are a Java coder, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't also know how to wire up a chip. Its totally arbitrary.

floppydisk 15y ago

I'm down for hacking on kernel code and learning the guts of an OS! I do think the grandparent has a valid point though. Most enterprise corporations do treat IT / development as plug and play instead of "engineers." I think enterprise coding would be fascinating, but they are stuck in a language and platform rut (PHP/Java/C# and something else whose name escapes me) and don't let the engineers explore other solutions to problems outside of those silos. Some of the enterprise challenges -- scaling for instance -- are quite fascinating problems that only show up in large software projects, but to solve them one finds oneself limited to cobbling together a solution from previous solutions built on top of older solutions using the same software stack + updates. Creativity and a willingness to think outside the box is lacking in some of the larger organizations and after 20+ years of doing the same thing on almost the same platform has managed to help push geeks into the corporate IT stereotypes. As you point out, not everyone wants to work at a startup and might enjoy the stability of a regular job. I might be one of those people, don't know yet. What I do know, is I would like to exercise some creativity and find newer and more updated ways of doing things instead of rehashing the same code in the same software stack day in and day out. But that's just me.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
primitur 15y ago
In the end, its the hardware that counts. As in, the real physical hardware. A number like "how many active installations of hardware X", which represents actual real-life users in realtime, is a very important thing for an application developer to keep track of .. if you've got one machine that is serving 10,000 people over lunch-time, something, then you better know how that machine is working. If the lawn-humping teenage generation of programmers aren't being taught one thing, its that hardware in use is all that matters. Count that as your primary professional consideration, and things go very well from there, usually. If students were coming away from US Computer education establishments with very strong hardware capabilities and focuses, rather than 'doctrine and taxonomy' as a focus, there would be a positive change in the industry. Many 'old school' programmers got that way because they had to build their own hardware; if you are a Java coder, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't also know how to wire up a chip. Its totally arbitrary.