3 ms·
Do you ever have an existential crisis while you’re making something? “Will this object outlive me?” As a software engineer I have to admit… I’m envious.
by 5mv2 4y ago
Do you ever have an existential crisis while you’re making something?
“Will this object outlive me?”
As a software engineer I have to admit… I’m envious.
- langsoul-com 4y agoSoftware these days don't even survive past npm update :(
- marginalia_nu 4y agoYou should get into enterprise Java. Too inscrutable to change, to complex to replace. Every now and then they try, manage to replace 4% of the functionality whatever platform or design pattern is popular at the time before running out of budget, and now the system is an even more byzantine Cronenberg. I hear, every once in a while you can spot a rare IllegalStateException("Killll mmeeeee...."); being thrown in the logs.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoIs this about having kids?
- Brajeshwar 4y agoHaa! Yes, these days one has to be prepared. Nope, this is not about kids. This is about tools, intricacies of the tools, appreciation of beauty, beauty in the details, etc.
- danuker 4y agoEnvious? I am aware we will all die, and I am proud to leave a mark on humankind.
- dirtyid 4y agoBright side is your mistakes probably don't haunt you as regularly or as long. Like say poor design detail on a building that will outlive you, that you see everyday on your commute, or when you look out your living room window.
- rroot 4y agoLooking though 3 year old code... Lord Gsus, who wrote this s*it?! Then in git log... really?! Me? Did I write this?
- aliqot 4y agoGit blame was a trick :/
- blacksmith_tb 4y agoOh for sure, I am on a team that's been working on the same app for a decade now, which is soon to be retired. It's done hundreds of mil in business, but soon all those years of time we put into it will disappear. If we'd just met up every day in a field and piled rocks up, after 10yr we'd have a huge stone wall (no millions, though).
- tootie 4y agoI've always said that our software is like a Tibetan sand painting. You may as well imagine yourself wiping it completely off the table the minute you look away.
- dsubburam 4y agoIn some philosophies, being envious about art objects' durability vs. a software library's use-life makes for a category error. Art objects are defined as having value in themselves, that we look at for their own sake (~form), rather than for what they can do for us (~function). For software libraries, this is mostly flipped. The metric of concern there, I might submit, is how many people have been helped by it and the downstream effects of that help (maybe it helped someone get a job, which then helped them get a house, and raise a family, etc...). Not the library's longevity per se, but the effects' longevity...