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...do you seriously not know how to evaluate 3rd party libraries? I can help you if you want, but honestly if this is a challenge for you, I'd be worried about

...do you seriously not know how to evaluate 3rd party libraries? I can help you if you want, but honestly if this is a challenge for you, I'd be worried about whether or not this is the right career for you. Engineers get shit done, first and foremost. If that's not your primary concern, you're going to spend a lot of time frustrated by your bosses priorities and confused about why your peers value things you don't.

WJW 5y ago
This goes back to the discussion we had on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29998868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29998868, about whether sofware developers are really engineers or not. If you think "getting shit done" is the only or even the primary concern for an engineer, I think it is best if you stay in software (and please far away from any safety critical code).
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  I will not hire anyone to my software teams who thinks their job is to create art for its own sake. If you can’t tie your work back to creating value, you have no place on my teams, and that includes wasting time rebuilding worse versions of libraries that already exist.
  - WJW 5y ago
    It's pretty sure that I wouldn't want to hire someone as argumentative as you either, but I don't see how we went from "Don't think about how a library works - until you have to" (which I still think is hilariously circular and not very useful) to accusing each other of rebuilding worse versions of libraries just because. In fact, a few comments up we touched on having actual facts as the basis for decisions so how you interpreted that as "art for it's own sake" is a mystery to me. In any case, have a good evening good sir and all the best in your software engineering endeavors.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      Heh, if you think this is argumentative, you probably wouldn't fit on any healthy software team that actually tries to work together.
      - ameliaquining 5y ago
        I work on a healthy software team that successfully works together and it's nowhere near this acrimonious.
        TameAntelope 5y ago
        What's interesting about this comment is that more or less entirely disproves itself.
        ameliaquining 5y ago
        I mean, I'm not at work right now. My interactions with my coworkers aren't like this.
        TameAntelope 5y ago
        That’s unlikely. You are yourself all the time, and either you act this way all the time, or you don’t feel safe to be yourself on your work team, which indicates an unhealthy team environment. Unless you’re saying you’re uncharacteristically acrimonious on HN, which would itself be an even odder choice…
- kortilla 5y ago
  > and please far away from any safety critical code To a rough approximation nobody in the software engineering industry works on safety critical code. It comes with an onerous set of restrictions and criteria to do it well, including fully analyzing all of your dependencies for runtime behavior, etc. If you think applying that to the vast majority of software engineering makes any sense, you’re going to fail hard. It’s no different than applying the rigor that goes into engineering a fan blade on a GE90 to a toilet flush handle on a household toilet.
  - ShroudedNight 5y ago
    I would frame what you describe as Safety Critical Code™, and agree with your assessment that very few work on such things. I expect a lot more of us work on safety critical code that doesn't fall into the first category. Stuff that we rely on to produce results in a reliably timely matter whose failure results in material degredation of someone's quality of life. As an example: The Alexa communication infrastructure has been used to save lives, but Alexa devices are not "Life Saving" or "Medical" devices. I believe we spurn the duty of disciplined engineering at our peril.

WJW 5y ago

This goes back to the discussion we had on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29998868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29998868, about whether sofware developers are really engineers or not. If you think "getting shit done" is the only or even the primary concern for an engineer, I think it is best if you stay in software (and please far away from any safety critical code).

TameAntelope 5y ago
I will not hire anyone to my software teams who thinks their job is to create art for its own sake. If you can’t tie your work back to creating value, you have no place on my teams, and that includes wasting time rebuilding worse versions of libraries that already exist.
- WJW 5y ago
  It's pretty sure that I wouldn't want to hire someone as argumentative as you either, but I don't see how we went from "Don't think about how a library works - until you have to" (which I still think is hilariously circular and not very useful) to accusing each other of rebuilding worse versions of libraries just because. In fact, a few comments up we touched on having actual facts as the basis for decisions so how you interpreted that as "art for it's own sake" is a mystery to me. In any case, have a good evening good sir and all the best in your software engineering endeavors.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Heh, if you think this is argumentative, you probably wouldn't fit on any healthy software team that actually tries to work together.
    - ameliaquining 5y ago
      I work on a healthy software team that successfully works together and it's nowhere near this acrimonious.
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        What's interesting about this comment is that more or less entirely disproves itself.
        ameliaquining 5y ago
        I mean, I'm not at work right now. My interactions with my coworkers aren't like this.
        TameAntelope 5y ago
        That’s unlikely. You are yourself all the time, and either you act this way all the time, or you don’t feel safe to be yourself on your work team, which indicates an unhealthy team environment. Unless you’re saying you’re uncharacteristically acrimonious on HN, which would itself be an even odder choice…
kortilla 5y ago
> and please far away from any safety critical code To a rough approximation nobody in the software engineering industry works on safety critical code. It comes with an onerous set of restrictions and criteria to do it well, including fully analyzing all of your dependencies for runtime behavior, etc. If you think applying that to the vast majority of software engineering makes any sense, you’re going to fail hard. It’s no different than applying the rigor that goes into engineering a fan blade on a GE90 to a toilet flush handle on a household toilet.
- ShroudedNight 5y ago
  I would frame what you describe as Safety Critical Code™, and agree with your assessment that very few work on such things. I expect a lot more of us work on safety critical code that doesn't fall into the first category. Stuff that we rely on to produce results in a reliably timely matter whose failure results in material degredation of someone's quality of life. As an example: The Alexa communication infrastructure has been used to save lives, but Alexa devices are not "Life Saving" or "Medical" devices. I believe we spurn the duty of disciplined engineering at our peril.