Learning for the sake of learning, being able to be picky about what to learn, feeling like a god by creating your own worlds, trial and error… these are all traits of programming. On the other hand, software engineering is about sprints, useless deadlines, using the wrong tool for the job, writing code to increase shareholders value, high-performing-team obsession, useless C-level execs, broken tech interviews…

Two different worlds.

That's how you learn programming. It's not a bad idea, but at least for me software development is more about long term issues coming up, team communication, features that create short term value but long term problems. How to organize big piles of code.

A lot of abstractions don't make any sense in a 2-3 days project and you are better of hacking away a script than looking into "properly" modelling things.

My impression is always that as a junior you learn how to do stuff. Then you learn to do complicated stuff. And becoming a senior you learn how not to do complicated stuff.

This takes some of the fun out of it as well. Deploying a feature that is simple and that just works without any issues does not create nearly as much excitement as "saving the company" with a big hack and high risk deployments, although it is much better to not have to "save the company" in the first place.

Key takeaways:

1. Spending a career building computer software around others who build software, influences your worldview.

2. Programming is a skill (like any kind of craftsmanship or performance art); you learn by doing, not just by reading.

    You don’t expect to learn how to play the piano by reading a book, but you might expect to pick up a programming language or concept because you read about it. Really, it doesn’t work that way. You have to read it, and then use it and practice it and make a hundred mistakes, and then you’ll gain the skill to use that concept more correctly over time. 

I just don't know of anything even remotely similar to this in programming. Learning how to type fast is the closest analogy I can think of, but being good at typing is almost entirely unrelated to being a good programmer. It would be like a pianist not being able to play chords, yet still being considered a (technically) good pianist.

---

If one develops a good technical understanding of their programming language, and reads a lot of code, they could produce some quite good code in that language on their first try. In this case, it would help to have a very solid technical understanding of first principles as well. Asa result, I really think programmers with very strong discrete math skills, for example, can pick up any idea in programming.

Software is an amazing passion, but a terrible job.

Imagine you love music, play the piano for hours every day, then once you grow up someone pays you a huge salary just to play. You're in heaven.

Now imagine someone who loves classical music, but can't play. You see the fortunes being made by piano players, so you decide to learn. Which takes years of doing tedious stuff like learning scales. Then you get a job playing hip-hop (a music style you abhore) for a band you don't like... Then you discover the business crap of "music business".

Programming is the same. If you love it, it's fantastic. But to those in it for the salary it's a mind-numbing hunt for tiny bugs, days spent searching for a missing comma, wading through the same old crud, doing the same task over and over, locked to a desk, dealing with sub-par teammates, inflexible management, projects that get canceled, crunch time, stupid users (and I can go on.)

The passionate thrive because the joy dwarfs the pain. (Also, because they tend to be -very- good so can largely ignore the bullshit. They're paid well doing something they'd do for free.

As a -job- though, every part of it is objectively terrible. From the interview to the firing. (Go on, write a job description of what you do all day. Now consider that description in light of someone who doesn't actually -like- programming...it's terrible right?)

Naturally there's good money in it. If it's not your passion, then by all means, do it for the money. Find your joy elsewhere, that's OK, but do find it. Because without that joy elsewhere, what good is all the money in the world?

Conversely, reality slowly changes to be easier to model in software. When Computer says no, a user adapts.

It's also one of the least meritocratic industries in existence because most big companies have monopolies and can afford to be extremely inefficient when it comes to software development. The bar is mediocre. You just need to rehearse your leetcode to pass the interview; beyond that, you just need to be very good in a tiny area. You will be so highly specialized in the minutiae of your role that basically you will be useless as a software developer. You better hope there exists an equivalent role in a different large company if you want to have any leverage at all in the market. Startups or any business which relies on efficiency and actual skills will not have any use for you...

Still, the biggest problem is just how easy it is for incompetent people to bullshit their way out of anything and the metrics that are used to measure performance are so objectively horrible that it would be better if no metrics existed.

I've been in this industry for over 15 years. Not sheltered by big tech. Careful what company you join because working for the wrong company can be literal hell on earth.

It is clear to me that this industry is still very new and almost nobody knows what they're doing. Most people who lead this industry are not equipped to do so. They just got lucky and now set the rules which are essentially arbitrary and change all the time because they suck.

It's not like Law or Medicine; these industries have existed in various forms for thousands of years and there is a lot of philosophy behind those. It's relatively easy to figure out who is a good lawyer or a good doctor. With software development, it's extremely difficult for people to do because there are many aspects to consider and almost nobody understands which ones are actually important.

Imagine being a really good surgeon with years of experience and a 100% success rate on your surgeries but the hospital fires you because one of your colleagues was jealous and filed a fraudulent complaint claiming that you don't hold your scalpel in the approved way. Without metrics to accurately measure individual performance, everything becomes political hearsay. It becomes all about stupid immaterial things and all the important stuff is ignored.

I hope this saves some people from suffering. I would not recommend this industry if you enjoy coding. There is a non-trivial chance that you will be a life of pain. Especially if you are skilled.

I have met some top engineers who were so bright, passionate and were pioneers in their area and ended up miserable and brought to the edge of insanity. If you don't have deep social connections to this industry or intelligence agencies or other entities that can give you an insider's edge, stay away.

There are many stories about software devs who ended up retiring from Microsoft or other to be goose farmers or similar. These people are not eccentric; they are rational... And these are the lucky ones.

You don't want to know what happens to those who got trapped in this industry, got their passion for coding completely beaten out of them and can't find any off-ramp.