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I love programming but I hate the programming industry (www.deathbyabstraction.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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I don't entirely subscribe to the first paragraph – I've never worked at a place so dear to me that spurred me to spend time thinking about its architecture (beyond the usual rants). Other than that, spot on

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[–] 1 point 2 years ago (5 children)

I believe the author got the wrong job position. If your job title is something like 'software developer', yeah you are measured by the amount of lines of code. You should aim for a senior role such as 'system architect' or 'technical lead', then you have some kind of guidelines from the sales side of business, and your job is to turn them into requirements and produce the final product, and you choose the tech stack and other details that are inconsequential for sales bug will get the programmers flinging keyboards.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I disagree, because it's my current job. Writing code is fun when on personal projects, but at work it's just a slog. And it's mostly a slog because management "just wants stuff done". And of course it's with the demand "no bugs" aka "we want perfect systems from faulty beings".

    I also find it wrong to measure by "lines of code". That's nearly the most simplistic and addle-brained measure one could assign to software developers. If there are actual software developers out there who believe in that sort of KPI, I sure don't want to be on the same team as them.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    That's exactly the difference. The business needs to sell shit, so your management needs you to get the shit done, just good enough quality to sell it, because otherwise you're burning them money in salary.

    Take any of your hobby projects, and ask yourself - 'How do I sell this thing?'. You'll arrive at all the same problems you are seeing in your company. Good managers will explain this and let developers make their own decisions and take part in business processes, bad managers will just dictate which buttons you need to press on your keyboard.

    Lines of code is a really ancient metric for managers who are totally ignorant of technology, I was just putting it here for emphasis.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I agree.

    One can't claim to love programming while calling the act of writing code being a code monkey. Whatever they actually love about the process may not exist in the industry.

    I would suggest they explore alternative roles and perhaps alternative industries. They sound like they are new to the industry so their ability to land a senior role is likely to lead to different disappointments.

    The best way to do something, often isn't the best way to implement something. That's why this is a senior role. The author does not appear to understand this concept and will be horribly disappointed when their perfect architecture is ignored by the realities of development.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    This description is so foreign to me. I guess you're talking about big [software] companies?

    Nobody in my company, a software development company, measures by lines of code. We bring value through the software we develop and the collaborations we do.

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