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Google “Programming ruined my life” or a variation thereof. There are 3 things to keep ahead of: 1) Programming is a sedentary job, if you don’t take care of y

Google “Programming ruined my life” or a variation thereof. There are 3 things to keep ahead of: 1) Programming is a sedentary job, if you don’t take care of yourself (some sport, weight lifting, something keeping you active) you will feel physical strains over time. 2) Burnout is a possibility, I’ve seen programmers that had burnout, not self diagnosed but actual burnout. It was not pretty. Ever since I try to watch out for my mental healthy. It is easy to be put under enough pressure to break or even put yourself under that pressure (imposter syndrome …) 3) General negativity and naysaying. Part of the job is finding problems, debugging and generally poking holes in ideas so you don’t waste a lot of time implementing stuff that is impossible to begin with. Don’t let this become a part of you, don’t even let this take over in your job. It will rob you of the joy of programming. That is what I gather from articles I’ve read over time and from myself. I am not aware of any research, just anecdotal evidence.

newsbinator 5y ago
Number 3 (general negativity and naysaying) is horrible and pervasive. It takes a concerted daily effort not to fall too far into it.
- adoga 5y ago
  Any tips on how to improve? I've noticed myself really shrinking into a negative attitude lately -- not sure how to prevent myself from becoming the stereotypical jaded senior engineer (I do certainly feel like I have quite a bit management-wise to be jaded about though, which is part of the problem).
  - sdeep27 5y ago
    Explore environments where it's hard for you to be jaded/cynical. Nature or being around kids (volunteering to teach them how to code is one idea) immediately come to mind.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Also, excercise the ability to just not say anything. By all means, don't bury your head in the sand. But some things aren't productive to talk about. Functionally, you get the same results whether or not you slight that other team / manager / process in a conversation. Everything is always broken. But we get to choose if we only have conversations complaining about broken things.
  - specialist 5y ago
    > Any tips on how to improve? How you talk changes how you think. Ages ago, desperate to stop being angry, and completely out of any other ideas, I decided "Fine, I'll just fake being happy, positive." Shockingly, after about 3 years, what started out as mostly sarcastic, actually mostly worked. From my reading since, I stumbled onto techniques known to academics, practitioners. To get a sense of the mechanics, imagine having the habit of swearing all the time, and wanting to stop. Habits can be replaced, not unlearned. So I literally scripted responses, practiced saying them, tried to use the new script in place of my old script, and caught myself when I goofed. Both in my head (internal dialog) and interacting with others. It got easier over time. Backsliding is super easy. Even now, decades later. You can't dwell on that. Just acknowledge it and get back to the program. (Get back on the horse.) It helps to have "positive" people in your life that you don't want to disappoint. For instance, I'm mostly able to avoid trolling here on HN because I really value u/dang's approval and efforts and it'd kinda hurts me emotionally to disappoint him. Find people IRL to serve in that role. And avoid other people displaying the habits you're trying to not do yourself. Forgive yourself. Choose to become the best version of yourself. Be kind to yourself. Good luck.
    - newsbinator 5y ago
      Could you suggest some common negative expressions to map to more positive ones? It'd be great if we could put together a list/gist.
      - specialist 5y ago
        Ya. Now that you point it out, that's a glaring omission. It was a great deal of effort to monitor myself, flag the negative stuff, dig down to determine my actual root goal, and then figure out some kind of alternate positive framing. Complimentary to this was learning that all negatives can be stated as a positive. (Something I got from an in-house corporate communications seminar, if you can believe that.) My go to example from parenting is to say "Please walk" instead of "Don't run!". It was super effective! (Transformed my parenting. Used my son as my guinea pig. I hadn't yet learned about positive reinforcement, which is really too bad.) So. I'll start journaling expressions, as I remember them. Thanks.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    A second pass of criticality on your own prediction can be helpful, especially if you can trick your mind into not re-using the identical logic and "facts" (heuristics upon premises, etc) when making the initial judgement.
- jackcosgrove 5y ago
  At a lot of workplaces (mostly old-line industrial companies), programmers are the bottleneck because there aren't enough of them. This can lead to feelings of being used because seemingly everyone needs you to do something for them. This can trigger a generally sour outlook. I don't think there's a solution for the first problem, but you can change your outlook and see the constant work as job and career security. Also it's good to remember that the people with lots of downtime or makework at their job aren't necessarily shirking; they just don't have the tools to move forward without you.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  It's a fantastic way to get top comments here though.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
4) Damage to your fingers, wrists, and eyes. (Yeah, I know, the people with physical jobs that destroy their bodies are breaking out the world's smallest violin...) At a minimum, carpal tunnel can be considered neurological.
- anchpop 5y ago
  I’m 21 and my carpal tunnel was already getting quite bad. What fixed it for me was to use this keyboard [0] (with the stand to lift up the front) and this mouse [1]. I’ve tried a bunch of ergonomic keyboards and mice, some very expensive, and these are by far the best I’ve tried. The keyboard has the annoying quirk that it’s permanently paired to the dongle it comes with, so don’t lose it or you’re buying a new keyboard. The mouse is awesome though. Battery charges with USB-C and everything. Basically a huge issue is that a normal keyboard and mouse force you to completely pronate your arms. That puts stress on your joints and isn’t healthy to do for an extended time (the bones in your arm are not a rigid system and actually move independently as you rotate them). The keyboard and mouse I recommend reduce significantly the amount of pronation required. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business-5KV-00001/dp/B00CYX26BC/ https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rechargeable/dp/B07FNJB8TT/ https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rech...
api 5y ago
A student once asked me an interesting question: "what are the occupational hazards of this career?" Most people naively assume there are not any. I told them poor health due to a sedentary lifestyle, depression, and social isolation.
- swader999 5y ago
  A lot disparage this career for "you sit in front of a computer all day" but fail to realize that this is the way a lot of other work has gone towards.
- kace91 5y ago
  To be fair, I'd say those are "things this job doesn't provide" vs just harm. Some people get their daily dose of excercise, social interaction and dopamine hits from their work. In our field, we don't, so we need to find complementary activities for that.
kace91 5y ago
> 3) General negativity and naysaying. I am guilty of this, and I've never thought about it as a problem, just as how my mind is wired. That comment was a bit of an epiphany for me so thanks!
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  Something I discovered as a reviewer was the importance of reigning in my own negativity tendency, i.e. to pick holes in things. If I reviewed something that I didn't personally like, but which would in fact still work, I learned to decide whether or not it was worth mentioning it or not. That way I wouldn't overload the reviewee with a mass of criticism, and the things that would genuinely need changing weren't hidden in a flood of picky little points.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  One thing that works for me is trying to push this problem-finding routine into general curiosity about the world around me... I never expected to get into gardening but I started learning more about the plants and weeds growing in my little yard, and one thing lead to another. I've also started keeping track of the birds.
NetOpWibby 5y ago
Number 3 is killer. I’m in a private Slack with a bunch of white designers and boy are they negative. ANYTHING gets released and they hear about it? Teardowns that’ll make iFixit’s head spin! I take a leave of absence when the force is strong.
- junon 5y ago
  Curious, what does the designers being white have to do with anything? Are designers of other ethnicities immune to this?
  - throwaway743 5y ago
    Could have meant "whiney" and got auto corrected? Idk but yeah if mentioning ethnicity was the intention, it's a ridiculous statement
    - NetOpWibby 5y ago
      Yes, autocorrect but weird how that still fits. I’ll keep the typo for transparency.
      - junon 5y ago
        > but weird how that still fits Not really though.
        pickledish 5y ago
        I think they just meant that all the designers on the team happen to be white, so even with the typo, the statement is still technically correct.
        NetOpWibby 5y ago
        Yup, this exactly.
  - 5y ago
junon 5y ago
#3 is the worst. It's not even contained to my job - it's a huge hindrance in life in general.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Seriously. It's like you're constantly looking for logical reasons why something will fail. Gotta figure out how to stop it.
hsuduebc2 5y ago
Third point actually sums up your whole post. Are there any positives?
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> Are there any positives? Have you ever enjoyed solving a puzzle or solving a problem? We do that daily, even if we didn't decide which puzzles to solve. Do you find satisfaction in fixing things or making them better? How about designing or building things from scratch? Do you find that rewarding? Flexible schedule? Remote work? Higher pay than XXX? I think the point is that there are downsides people often overlook, not that there aren't any upsides.
wibagusto 5y ago
Being sedentary or burnt out could happen in any industry so I’d argue those need to be categorized more specifically. Perhaps: Language fatigue, zealotry in discussions (e.g the more one deals with logic, the more one thinks their way/language is the best), pace of evolution (keeping up with new trends is sometimes pointless effort because it’s a rehash of yesteryear—e.g markdown when asciidoc/html is good enough). Sedentary can be expanded to hyper focus on solving a problem leads to self neglect. Programming can be an isolated behavior. I’d recommend social coding and attending hackathons and meetups. I’d like to add positive notes: programming has helped me reason about the world effectively. For instance, data organization, parallel work (applied to people as well as machines), iteration methodology (agile mindset can be applied to real projects like home renovations), problem solving ability (how to isolate issues and reduce a problem into something solvable).
aspaviento 5y ago
4) You can't stop noticing how poorly optimized many of the things in life are.
- hsuduebc2 5y ago
  Omg exactly this.
MrQuincle 5y ago
About 3. One of the coolest attitudes I saw was from someone (autistic, but that doesn't matter) who approached every problem as something to love, to cherish, to appreciate. Now I'm reading a book about the early days in Bell labs. I feel through the pages how much fun they had with finding issues, finding things to improve, finding out the future. I think there's so much to gain if you can find a positive approach to problems. Also in real life!
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  That book sounds interesting! Could you share a link?
  - lioeters 5y ago
    Maybe this one: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory
    - MrQuincle 5y ago
      Yes, this one!
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      Thanks!
  - anchpop 5y ago
    Probably not the same book, but the guy who developed Hamming codes (his name was Hamming obviously) wrote a stupendous book that talks a lot about his time at Bell called The Art and Science of Doing Engineering
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      Well it looks like I've now got two "stupendous" books to read :-)

newsbinator 5y ago

Number 3 (general negativity and naysaying) is horrible and pervasive. It takes a concerted daily effort not to fall too far into it.

adoga 5y ago
Any tips on how to improve? I've noticed myself really shrinking into a negative attitude lately -- not sure how to prevent myself from becoming the stereotypical jaded senior engineer (I do certainly feel like I have quite a bit management-wise to be jaded about though, which is part of the problem).
- sdeep27 5y ago
  Explore environments where it's hard for you to be jaded/cynical. Nature or being around kids (volunteering to teach them how to code is one idea) immediately come to mind.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Also, excercise the ability to just not say anything. By all means, don't bury your head in the sand. But some things aren't productive to talk about. Functionally, you get the same results whether or not you slight that other team / manager / process in a conversation. Everything is always broken. But we get to choose if we only have conversations complaining about broken things.
- specialist 5y ago
  > Any tips on how to improve? How you talk changes how you think. Ages ago, desperate to stop being angry, and completely out of any other ideas, I decided "Fine, I'll just fake being happy, positive." Shockingly, after about 3 years, what started out as mostly sarcastic, actually mostly worked. From my reading since, I stumbled onto techniques known to academics, practitioners. To get a sense of the mechanics, imagine having the habit of swearing all the time, and wanting to stop. Habits can be replaced, not unlearned. So I literally scripted responses, practiced saying them, tried to use the new script in place of my old script, and caught myself when I goofed. Both in my head (internal dialog) and interacting with others. It got easier over time. Backsliding is super easy. Even now, decades later. You can't dwell on that. Just acknowledge it and get back to the program. (Get back on the horse.) It helps to have "positive" people in your life that you don't want to disappoint. For instance, I'm mostly able to avoid trolling here on HN because I really value u/dang's approval and efforts and it'd kinda hurts me emotionally to disappoint him. Find people IRL to serve in that role. And avoid other people displaying the habits you're trying to not do yourself. Forgive yourself. Choose to become the best version of yourself. Be kind to yourself. Good luck.
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    Could you suggest some common negative expressions to map to more positive ones? It'd be great if we could put together a list/gist.
    - specialist 5y ago
      Ya. Now that you point it out, that's a glaring omission. It was a great deal of effort to monitor myself, flag the negative stuff, dig down to determine my actual root goal, and then figure out some kind of alternate positive framing. Complimentary to this was learning that all negatives can be stated as a positive. (Something I got from an in-house corporate communications seminar, if you can believe that.) My go to example from parenting is to say "Please walk" instead of "Don't run!". It was super effective! (Transformed my parenting. Used my son as my guinea pig. I hadn't yet learned about positive reinforcement, which is really too bad.) So. I'll start journaling expressions, as I remember them. Thanks.
- mistermann 5y ago
  A second pass of criticality on your own prediction can be helpful, especially if you can trick your mind into not re-using the identical logic and "facts" (heuristics upon premises, etc) when making the initial judgement.
jackcosgrove 5y ago
At a lot of workplaces (mostly old-line industrial companies), programmers are the bottleneck because there aren't enough of them. This can lead to feelings of being used because seemingly everyone needs you to do something for them. This can trigger a generally sour outlook. I don't think there's a solution for the first problem, but you can change your outlook and see the constant work as job and career security. Also it's good to remember that the people with lots of downtime or makework at their job aren't necessarily shirking; they just don't have the tools to move forward without you.
aaron-santos 5y ago
It's a fantastic way to get top comments here though.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

4) Damage to your fingers, wrists, and eyes. (Yeah, I know, the people with physical jobs that destroy their bodies are breaking out the world's smallest violin...) At a minimum, carpal tunnel can be considered neurological.

anchpop 5y ago
I’m 21 and my carpal tunnel was already getting quite bad. What fixed it for me was to use this keyboard [0] (with the stand to lift up the front) and this mouse [1]. I’ve tried a bunch of ergonomic keyboards and mice, some very expensive, and these are by far the best I’ve tried. The keyboard has the annoying quirk that it’s permanently paired to the dongle it comes with, so don’t lose it or you’re buying a new keyboard. The mouse is awesome though. Battery charges with USB-C and everything. Basically a huge issue is that a normal keyboard and mouse force you to completely pronate your arms. That puts stress on your joints and isn’t healthy to do for an extended time (the bones in your arm are not a rigid system and actually move independently as you rotate them). The keyboard and mouse I recommend reduce significantly the amount of pronation required. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business-5KV-00001/dp/B00CYX26BC/ https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rechargeable/dp/B07FNJB8TT/ https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rech...

api 5y ago

A student once asked me an interesting question: "what are the occupational hazards of this career?" Most people naively assume there are not any. I told them poor health due to a sedentary lifestyle, depression, and social isolation.

swader999 5y ago
A lot disparage this career for "you sit in front of a computer all day" but fail to realize that this is the way a lot of other work has gone towards.
kace91 5y ago
To be fair, I'd say those are "things this job doesn't provide" vs just harm. Some people get their daily dose of excercise, social interaction and dopamine hits from their work. In our field, we don't, so we need to find complementary activities for that.

kace91 5y ago

> 3) General negativity and naysaying. I am guilty of this, and I've never thought about it as a problem, just as how my mind is wired. That comment was a bit of an epiphany for me so thanks!

KineticLensman 5y ago
Something I discovered as a reviewer was the importance of reigning in my own negativity tendency, i.e. to pick holes in things. If I reviewed something that I didn't personally like, but which would in fact still work, I learned to decide whether or not it was worth mentioning it or not. That way I wouldn't overload the reviewee with a mass of criticism, and the things that would genuinely need changing weren't hidden in a flood of picky little points.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
One thing that works for me is trying to push this problem-finding routine into general curiosity about the world around me... I never expected to get into gardening but I started learning more about the plants and weeds growing in my little yard, and one thing lead to another. I've also started keeping track of the birds.

NetOpWibby 5y ago

Number 3 is killer. I’m in a private Slack with a bunch of white designers and boy are they negative. ANYTHING gets released and they hear about it? Teardowns that’ll make iFixit’s head spin! I take a leave of absence when the force is strong.

junon 5y ago
Curious, what does the designers being white have to do with anything? Are designers of other ethnicities immune to this?
- throwaway743 5y ago
  Could have meant "whiney" and got auto corrected? Idk but yeah if mentioning ethnicity was the intention, it's a ridiculous statement
  - NetOpWibby 5y ago
    Yes, autocorrect but weird how that still fits. I’ll keep the typo for transparency.
    - junon 5y ago
      > but weird how that still fits Not really though.
      - pickledish 5y ago
        I think they just meant that all the designers on the team happen to be white, so even with the typo, the statement is still technically correct.
        NetOpWibby 5y ago
        Yup, this exactly.
- 5y ago

junon 5y ago

#3 is the worst. It's not even contained to my job - it's a huge hindrance in life in general.

randomopining 5y ago
Seriously. It's like you're constantly looking for logical reasons why something will fail. Gotta figure out how to stop it.

hsuduebc2 5y ago

Third point actually sums up your whole post. Are there any positives?

phkahler 5y ago
>> Are there any positives? Have you ever enjoyed solving a puzzle or solving a problem? We do that daily, even if we didn't decide which puzzles to solve. Do you find satisfaction in fixing things or making them better? How about designing or building things from scratch? Do you find that rewarding? Flexible schedule? Remote work? Higher pay than XXX? I think the point is that there are downsides people often overlook, not that there aren't any upsides.

wibagusto 5y ago

Being sedentary or burnt out could happen in any industry so I’d argue those need to be categorized more specifically. Perhaps: Language fatigue, zealotry in discussions (e.g the more one deals with logic, the more one thinks their way/language is the best), pace of evolution (keeping up with new trends is sometimes pointless effort because it’s a rehash of yesteryear—e.g markdown when asciidoc/html is good enough). Sedentary can be expanded to hyper focus on solving a problem leads to self neglect. Programming can be an isolated behavior. I’d recommend social coding and attending hackathons and meetups. I’d like to add positive notes: programming has helped me reason about the world effectively. For instance, data organization, parallel work (applied to people as well as machines), iteration methodology (agile mindset can be applied to real projects like home renovations), problem solving ability (how to isolate issues and reduce a problem into something solvable).

aspaviento 5y ago

4) You can't stop noticing how poorly optimized many of the things in life are.

hsuduebc2 5y ago
Omg exactly this.

MrQuincle 5y ago

About 3. One of the coolest attitudes I saw was from someone (autistic, but that doesn't matter) who approached every problem as something to love, to cherish, to appreciate. Now I'm reading a book about the early days in Bell labs. I feel through the pages how much fun they had with finding issues, finding things to improve, finding out the future. I think there's so much to gain if you can find a positive approach to problems. Also in real life!

tailspin2019 5y ago
That book sounds interesting! Could you share a link?
- lioeters 5y ago
  Maybe this one: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory
  - MrQuincle 5y ago
    Yes, this one!
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Thanks!
- anchpop 5y ago
  Probably not the same book, but the guy who developed Hamming codes (his name was Hamming obviously) wrote a stupendous book that talks a lot about his time at Bell called The Art and Science of Doing Engineering
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Well it looks like I've now got two "stupendous" books to read :-)