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I'm 27, used to be in tech like the biggest nerd of them all. But not anymore, frankly I'm tired of all of the changes that happened in the industry - it's not

I'm 27, used to be in tech like the biggest nerd of them all. But not anymore, frankly I'm tired of all of the changes that happened in the industry - it's not that I'm tired of learning but it's that the changes lack substance. Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. I'm reminded by a writing blog, like writers of popular fiction, programmers aren't creating technology anymore but we are simply selling a idea (e.g., Martha Stewart for home furnishings flash sales sites, fear of missing out for Facebook/Instagram, diversion or outlet for teenage aggression/frustration for iPhone games) that validates a user's idea that is wrapped around technology. Hence, tech trends surrounds consumer tech instead of system programming now and new web frameworks sprouts by the day that emphasize shaving the man-hours of a routine set of mundane tasks down by a fraction of an hour for the benefit of the agile burn-down chart. This is not meant to be depressing nor cynical comment but a liberating one for me. Too often, I or I have witnessed a lot of my mostly younger peers try to reconcile the art and commerce, or to put in blunt way, have our cake and eat it too. I see that as a cowardice or indecisive but perhaps necessary stage in one's journey of growth, not to commit yourself and not to express your personal values through the imperfect tradeoff's and limited circumstances of a finite professional life - but be swayed by the arbitrary trinkets that one's professional guild assigns and equating its idea of worth to your self worth. VB/Pythonistas/Rails/Node.js I've seen them come and go like names on the Billboards charts moving to VH1's "Behind the Music/Where are They Now?". I'm convinced now that you have two routes in this business, 1) make your programming craft secondary to the development of your domain expertise, so learn finance, SEO or sales whatever is the main objective of your business, 2) make your programming craft your domain business and work at companies where their business is the software.

eru 12y ago
> Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Perhaps you should look into Haskell, Clojure or Erlang for a change?
- doktrin 12y ago
  In the context of web applications, what do Haskell or Clojure bring to the table that makes them worth the learning curve?
  - eru 12y ago
    In the context of noname123's post they bring interesting learning to the table: they are not more of the same with renamed keywords. To quote, > [...] it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Haskell _is_ digging deeper into the discipline. I am sure one can make good arguments for some of the Haskell and Clojure frameworks for web applications. Alas, I am not qualified. I only used Haskell professionally for embedded development, and for rapid desktop application development, but I've never done web development seriously. In any case, the Haskell answer for web development will probably include what all Haskell advocacy ever includes: purity and the strong static typing.
    - chrisdew 12y ago
      How do you Haskell on embedded systems? Are you talking about baremetal with 1-32K SRAM?
      - eru 12y ago
        No, not nearly that baremetal. I was talking about control processes running in dom0 of xen. They are embedded in the sense that there are `no user serviceable parts'. (I just looked up embedded software on Wikipedia; it seems like the traditional use of the term is very different to how I used it here. Please pardon the confusion.)
      - sanderjd 12y ago
        To take this thread yet further into self-parody, you might like Rust; it borrows some interesting stuff from Haskell (or really, the ML family), but is actively targeting embedded systems. Edit: Also, I have heard that Ocaml can be made to work pretty nicely in an embedded environment.
matwood 12y ago
I reminded a co-worker last week as he was figuring out whether to use Grunt or Gulp - Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing. - Quoted from Halt and Catch Fire. Photography has its own version of the same quote. Amateurs worry about equipment, Professionals worry about time, Masters worry about light. User do not care about the technology used, they care about results.
- noname123 12y ago
  Same thing bro with musicians, "Amateurs are gear-heads, pro's worry about techniques, and masters tries to listen to the sound"; traders/gamblers, "Amateurs focus on their winning, pro's worry about preserving their capital and masters worry about executing their performance where losing and winning money is only a side effect," and ad infinitum.
  - eru 12y ago
    And in war, strategy, logistics, capability.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    Reminds me of the Freaks and Geeks episode where he goes to a drumming audition and gets made fun of a bit for his enormous kit before completely bombing.
xorcist 12y ago
They may come and go in the small bubble of blogs you read, but the real world works very differently. Heck, I work with Perl on a regular basis. Not for some amateur web pages but for real, important, back end stuff. What matters is that the code is solid, not how many new blogs are started on the subject. Remember that the ones who get things done in the world does not blog about it. No blogs chronicled how they chose dynamic frameworks for the first version of Google. Because they didn't. They whipped out their editor and compiler and went to work.
- agentultra 12y ago
  > Remember that the ones who get things done in the world does not blog about it. Perhaps not necessarily true. I don't blog as often as I used to but I still get things done. The act of writing helps to strengthen and reinforce good ideas and train one to recognize them in the future. Publicly or privately matters little... but some of us do "blog."
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    I think your parent's language was a bit inflammatory, but I like the reminder that not everybody doing interesting things is blogging and tweeting about it. Lots of people just work.

eru 12y ago

> Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Perhaps you should look into Haskell, Clojure or Erlang for a change?

doktrin 12y ago
In the context of web applications, what do Haskell or Clojure bring to the table that makes them worth the learning curve?
- eru 12y ago
  In the context of noname123's post they bring interesting learning to the table: they are not more of the same with renamed keywords. To quote, > [...] it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Haskell _is_ digging deeper into the discipline. I am sure one can make good arguments for some of the Haskell and Clojure frameworks for web applications. Alas, I am not qualified. I only used Haskell professionally for embedded development, and for rapid desktop application development, but I've never done web development seriously. In any case, the Haskell answer for web development will probably include what all Haskell advocacy ever includes: purity and the strong static typing.
  - chrisdew 12y ago
    How do you Haskell on embedded systems? Are you talking about baremetal with 1-32K SRAM?
    - eru 12y ago
      No, not nearly that baremetal. I was talking about control processes running in dom0 of xen. They are embedded in the sense that there are `no user serviceable parts'. (I just looked up embedded software on Wikipedia; it seems like the traditional use of the term is very different to how I used it here. Please pardon the confusion.)
    - sanderjd 12y ago
      To take this thread yet further into self-parody, you might like Rust; it borrows some interesting stuff from Haskell (or really, the ML family), but is actively targeting embedded systems. Edit: Also, I have heard that Ocaml can be made to work pretty nicely in an embedded environment.

matwood 12y ago

I reminded a co-worker last week as he was figuring out whether to use Grunt or Gulp - Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing. - Quoted from Halt and Catch Fire. Photography has its own version of the same quote. Amateurs worry about equipment, Professionals worry about time, Masters worry about light. User do not care about the technology used, they care about results.

noname123 12y ago
Same thing bro with musicians, "Amateurs are gear-heads, pro's worry about techniques, and masters tries to listen to the sound"; traders/gamblers, "Amateurs focus on their winning, pro's worry about preserving their capital and masters worry about executing their performance where losing and winning money is only a side effect," and ad infinitum.
- eru 12y ago
  And in war, strategy, logistics, capability.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Reminds me of the Freaks and Geeks episode where he goes to a drumming audition and gets made fun of a bit for his enormous kit before completely bombing.

xorcist 12y ago

They may come and go in the small bubble of blogs you read, but the real world works very differently. Heck, I work with Perl on a regular basis. Not for some amateur web pages but for real, important, back end stuff. What matters is that the code is solid, not how many new blogs are started on the subject. Remember that the ones who get things done in the world does not blog about it. No blogs chronicled how they chose dynamic frameworks for the first version of Google. Because they didn't. They whipped out their editor and compiler and went to work.

agentultra 12y ago
> Remember that the ones who get things done in the world does not blog about it. Perhaps not necessarily true. I don't blog as often as I used to but I still get things done. The act of writing helps to strengthen and reinforce good ideas and train one to recognize them in the future. Publicly or privately matters little... but some of us do "blog."
- sanderjd 12y ago
  I think your parent's language was a bit inflammatory, but I like the reminder that not everybody doing interesting things is blogging and tweeting about it. Lots of people just work.