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Zevi Reinitz -
Thomas Bnt β -
dev.to staff -
dev.to staff -
Oldest comments (64)
The most obvious one but still worth mentioning: That the job is to develop software, rather than to help humans solve a meaningful problem in the world.
(Both the business side and the engineering side of a company can be biased towards thinking this way, to everyone's detriment.)
I remember overhearing a joke between interns,
"Just do what the product designer says and no one gets hurt."
lmao
good joke - the product designers should be "asking" not telling programmers what to do!
Since when we programmers know what to do for the customers?
It's a reality we fall in rabbit holes all the time and we forget that at the end it's all about the user and the usage.
Reality is, 90% of people have no idea what to do for customers, including customers, programmers, founders, project managers.
Only experience can teach that, and very often people dont learn on failures for a long time.
Well, experience certainly helps.
But the speed at which we gain experience is pretty much directly tied to our willingness to listen, learn, and communicate effectively with the people around us, whether that is customers, coworkers, or business leaders.
As developers we have a lot of direct ways of improving our ability to communicate and learn from the people we're working with and for, as well as plenty of opportunities to get support where needed to get better at those things. But developing a human-centric rather than tech-centric mindset is a key starting point for those who want to head down that road.
that probably wasn't a joke.
...Yeah, you're right.
Edited: my original comments where because I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. Turns out we're both on the same side. π€¦ββοΈ
This is a post about what common falsehoods exist among software developers.
The common misconception is that a tech-centric focus is normal and reasonable for software developers.
I am saying that this is a bad thing, and that software developers should instead see themselves as people who first and foremost are human problem solvers, and that software just happens to be the toolset we use to help others.
Ah yes, so we're on the same side, sorry. The double negative confused me.
Writing fancy code is a good idea.
Clever code is almost always harder to understand.
And yet most juniors or atleast I did, started out like Ash Cetchem, wanted to be a PokΓ©mon, I mean developer master and be the best there ever was. How nieve I was. π€£
Trying to prove your worth by doing something difficult to understand is an inevitable stage of most developers. It isn't until you tey to figure out somebody else's clever code that you realize that maintainability is so important.
Writing fancy and complex code is easy. Writing simple understandable code is harder
That the increased salary is worth anything you give up or endure ... in my short time as a dev, I've realized that balance and mental health are every bit as important as the paycheck.
girrrrllll you are spot on!
Once you have the paycheck :)
That job titles matter very much. Roles and responsibilities matter a lot more. The expectations of a "senior software engineer" at one company may have very little in common with the expectations of a role with that same title somewhere else.
I don't know the titles of most of the people I work with on a daily basis, and it doesn't impact our ability to collaborate. Hell, I don't even know the title of my manager. I've only found titles to matter when advertising a rough skill+experience level to other people, or when setting goals with my manager to "rise" within a hierarchically structured employment scheme.
pro-tip: if you really need a job title for marketing purposes, you can create a startup "Uber for flying fish". Fill the paperwork, incorporate in Delaware, there are people that can explain how to do it. No need to find paying customers.
Instantly you can call yourself CTO or whatever else you wish.
Not a new idea, mind you, this is what a lot of people are already doing on LinkedIn
When I attend a conference or other community event, I often give myself a different title depending on what I'm working on that day/week/month π
My official corporate title is meaningless to me and everyone else I work with.
That even if you love coding/creating software the job will always be fun. No matter how much you love something, if you are forced to do it to make a living there will be times when you are like "DAMN IT IM DONE!". At least occasionally :P
True, there are times where I felt like that. Maybe because I had a challenging task or because my boss just decided to change the entire design of the godda...
Sorry I got angry.
That you ALWAYS have to be ahead of the curve in terms of latest languages, frameworks, processes, methodologies etc.
Personally I think the blog posting masses, with their "You absolutely must adopt this latest, greatest framework today!"-esque articles that seem to appear through the various technology/software development related channels all the time can add a huge burden to people in an environment where things like mental health and impostor syndrome are often talked about at length already.
It's almost like, at times, we are our worst enemies?
I couldnβt agree with this more! I think itβs important for all developers, junior to senior, to not get lost in the sauce of the industries flavour of the week. Have faith in your own skill, and adopt different technologies that have a positive impact in the context of your work, not just because an article online told you to!
I do agree to, I think that it is not about what you know, but about what you can learn. Languages and frameworks sprout everyday faster than you can read, but the ability that you can learn a given language or framework in a short period is, as I think, more imporant
Exactly, and having the knowledge to understand and reason why one technology is better suited to the task than another :)
"20 Frameworks you need to try in 2020"!!!!!!
Month later
"12 Frameworks you will love"
...
"Best 10 frameworks to jumpstart your career"
I stopped even reading those titles till the end, complete waste of time and content is usually so bad, you could literally read only names, open their websites and get better information within less time than read the post itself. But hey, people click those clickbaity things, they get engagement for years, so this has to be what people want, right?
"Incredible javascript tricks - backend developers hate him" - book by me, coming this year for only $99.97.
I hate such titles as well, even more the actual content which just lists some stuff. Still, gave in and wrote one myself to see how it would perform, it actually performed quite good in views and likes, which was disappointing personally since such posts didn't take much time or effort to write, whereas there are many other posts which I spent quite a lot of time and effort and still didn't do as well as the click baity ones. I guess its still ok to make titles catchy as long as the content inside has quality. Unfortunately we don't live in a fair world.
We are a super inclusive tech company and want to have female developers, but we just can't find them. Where are they hiding? it must be a pipeline issue or something unrelated to us.
You have to be great with maths to be a developer.
try audio programming :)
Hahaha game AI development :)
could work as well ππ
I guess that depends. If you have to write algorithms, signal processing and so on it would help greatly to be good at Math. If you are doing web apps or generic applications it might not matter much.
Which is why it's a common falsehood that gives people the perception of it.
To me, if you are inventing or dealing with the deep tech with the bleeding age technology. It's a yes if not it's a hell no.
Then again I'm biased since I had suffered greatly in classes for my university during algorithm classes or anything maths-related modules in school while I was growing up.
You know how to install printers
Genius IQ Score
That you should have a solution for every problem.
Not having enough time for my girlfriend and pursuing other non tech related things. If you want to stay on top in the Software Development you need to give up a lot of time that you can use for other things. Its rewarding anyway.
That you spend all day typing.
Good developers spend most of their day figuring out how best to solve a problem, and then only type as much as they need to.
That everyone in programming is a genius. Some people are just great abstract thinkers.
that you know every programming language off the top of your head.
that you can fix their phone.
that you're a gamer
You don't need to interact with people. Such a lie. We talk to people constantly, communication is almost as important as writing code.
Hahaha totally agree with that
I would say that in most companies, good communication is more important than writing good code. As long as your code does what it needs to do and is maintenable you've done a great job writing the code.
The key there is writing code that does what it needs to do. You can only figure that out with good communication. Even if you write the cleanest, most beautiful code in the world if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do then it's all for naught.