Iftheshoefits

16 ms·

91.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
How is that even possible? Are you sure they weren't just having (to be crude) a brain fart? Some of these stories about super experienced ("10+ years") developers not being able to answer the most basic of basic syntax or &q
92.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Web development's difficulty is a shallow complexity that doesn't require (deep) problem solving ability so much as it requires a willingness to tolerate tedium. The kicker is that, in my opinion, almost all of the complexity in w
93.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
It makes him the kind of low-level or middle-manager that certain companies love. His purpose isn't to support his subordinate employees in their work, it's to make sure the company pays as little as possible for as much work as p
94.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
I'm not sure companies view it that way, and especially not companies like Facebook, whose product is the people who use their apps. As long as the person demonstrates he will use the product in spite of his problems with it, his opini
95.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
This is true at most employers, and is one of the biggest contributors to churn and the lower-than-it-should-be pay in our industry. Companies whose offer includes (implicit or explicit) statements about how cool the projects are are peddli
96.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
How about if a person who develops software for a loving agrees that it seems more and more like a game. Words and phrases like "our stack", "you need X years of Y language," or "we need a Z language dev" and s
97.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
I don't know about other applied fields but I was referring to the field of math itself with that remark.
98.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Math is certainly required to understand the theory and to synthesize experimental observations into a working model, but I wouldn't put it at more than 50-60%. Most of the math is fairly basic relatively speaking, even at the highest
99.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Where is your evidence that pay is "set by a giant, uncoordinated, massively competitive process?" Pay is set by a variety of factors that generally favor the wealthy and connected, usually in such a way that workers rarely benefi
100.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Software engineers as a rule are grossly underpaid relative to the actual value they provide, whether they are employed at Google or Web Body Shop X in Podunk Midwest Town Y. Collusion of this sort is deleterious on the whole precisely beca
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by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Absolutely. People, and especially a very large fraction of people in the software industry, are loathe to think that anything other than ability and pure reason factor into, well, anything. Maybe I've just had some poor experiences bu
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by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
What makes you think from an organizational perspective that there is a difference between them? It is far more likely that the engineers are viewed as having similar fungibility as the janitors than management is viewed as having similar f
103.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Your employees had the choice between drab isolating cubicles bathed in depressing internal lighting and something else , which they eventually chose. I think maybe you should reconsider what that means. Perhaps your engineers weren't
104.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Not one single thing in your comment is factually correct. In fact, both points are demonstrably the opposite of the truth. Apple is not perfect. It is very good at marketing, very good at aesthetic design, decent to good at acquiring margi
105.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
It's the way that law is structured in many states, if not all, actually. In some states (and this includes CA), employers are actually entitled to withhold pay to exempt employees under certain circumstances (e.g. with respect to part
106.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Your situation is absolutely far, far outside the norm, even (especially?) in the software industry.
107.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
I've only left a job because of the boss one time. The other times were mainly because I was either unhappy with my role in the company or to pursue other career opportunities that presented better/more diverse challenges and supe
108.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Engineers undercut each other all the time, implicitly, by going for the "do what you love and be paid for it!" nonsense companies throw, by feverishly working on unsupported open source projects for notoriety or to participate in
109.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
> So many companies are making big bucks off Ruby, yet so little are willing to fork out a bit of money and time to make Ruby better. < And why would/should they when there are quite literally dozens (or possibly hundreds or even
110.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
You're correct, of course, and I should probably have not used that loaded term.
111.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
I've encountered each of these myths "in the wild," and I dare say you'll see them thrown up repeatedly here on HN in various contexts. The third item on that list especially is something you can almost certainly see eve
112.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Depends on what you mean by "important." You noted yourself that "life got easier" once the language you used introduced generics. Generics can drastically reduce the time required to implement features because less time
113.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
The best, strongest interpretation of PG's essay merits far less charity than even exists in this thread. There is barely anything of substance in the whole piece, and the parts that are substantive are just so far out of line with t
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by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
> Unlike Musk's HyperLoop, the barrier for software is not materials and resources, it's simply minds. If you're working on a crappy, bloated codebase it's because some business person likely accurately assumes that a
115.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
People can disagree with PG (and you) and also be intelligent. For example, me. PG is partially wrong, objectively. About the only thing his essay has correct is that there exists intelligent, very good programmers outside the US. The collu
116.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
0) technologies evolve over time. JSON-over-HTTP will be supplanted by something, eventually, which almost certainly will also be something that acts to commoditize labor 1) Not me, the market. I think it is silly, too.
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by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
You are correct, but missing a larger point: the ecosystem backing JSON-over-HTTP is large and expansive, and as a result development for apps built on that technology has effectively been commoditized.
118.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Tim Cook was lying. That doesn't mean people who engage in work to support scientific and technological advancement (rather then mere iteration) are also lying.
119.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
That's an implicit point of using the heuristic. It's a kind of dog whistle in the context of ageism in the tech industry.
120.
by Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Well, "a lot of software engineering roles" have requirements and knowledge expectations that are far out of line with what the job actually requires. There are some "fundamental algorithms, including things like DFS and Dijk

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