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Thoughts on the Software Industry

32 points by thesephist

by efitz

0 subcomment

I thought this was an interesting read.
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.

by bruce511

7 subcomments

Since the article jumps around a lot, let me add one more;
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?

by syndicatedjelly

2 subcomments

As someone who does play music, although not professionally, I don't really agree with the analogy that writing code is like playing music.
```
    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'm aware of code katas, but I bet close to 0 of the great programmers regularly spend hours a day just writing loops in C, just to REALLY make it second nature. Yet many great musicians do just that, except with exercises. I've spent months or years straight practicing an extremely easy to understand, but hard to execute riff. The dexterity and muscle memory needed for certain musical patterns on an instrument like guitar or piano can take many, many hours to develop.
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.
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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.