Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
Software engineers seem to have a natural progression.
They go from inexperienced, to mid-level, to over-expe...
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I am often baffled by how hard it is for people (online) to understand irony.
Good read! Thanks for posting. And, I might clarify: This is not meant to be ironic :)
You have being lucky, I've heard some of the articles arguments in some workplaces and in a non-ironic tone. The non opinion and losing time refactoring are common, getting stuck with old tech too. Big picture too, is not unusual to see marketing people making promises without taking advice from IT and then IT trying to cram messy code, refactoring is not even in the horizon. And the boss/leader difference is not as universally understood as we would like. Many programmers living in captivity in closets near the boiler room.
Its hard without visual and audio cues!
after 10min of news is really hard to know if something said is ironic, we'll have to develope some kind of irony flag system, maybe a beacon.
I completely disagree to this thought "good programmers shouldn't question what they are doing. Instead, they should just put their heads down and code no matter the request"
In order to create a great product, every members in the team need to know what they're building and why they're building it. Developers might have different takes on things and possibly lead to better features. We can't just be a monkey coder and do what needs to be done.
You must have missed the #satire :) and the final p.s.
It is useful in another 50 percent cases to leave
tldr;because I also was wondering what the stupid things were written until I read the last part of the post[edit]: The person who think in that way must be some hipster business analyst and data scientist mix personality who thinks who knows the code because of some data science that he/she does on some framework and he/she thinks knows business.
I want to ask that person have you ever tried to maintain software for 20 years? Have you ever tried to send patches to your 10 years older code and fix something or add feature on it?
This design docs, clean coding matter a lot at that point. If your goal only deliver little small tiny project, just keep going what you are doing but this software industry needs more well written, robust products not the apps which crash all the time and cannot be supported in 2 years
I will add it here :Edit: Have you finished reading the entire article! Congrats. I am adding in this piece to save some people time. For those of you that are passionate about programming, your blood is probably boiling right now. You probably read every sentence of this piece and assumed some arrogant young programmer wrote this piece...because let's be honest...we all know at least one programmer who actually thinks like this. This piece was meant to be satire. So I do hope you enjoyed it.
Did you happen to get to the end ;)
I didn’t, I did right now. I found it stupid beginning and cut reading in the middle sorry for that. You were not serious and my comment will goes to somebody who is seriously think in that way😂
Hahaha, I wrote from the perspective a more jr. developer who might lack the experience to understand why things are the way they are in the software. I did know it would cause a little bit of anger but hoped it would bring some humor as well :).
Wow.. you really know me.. :P
Nice article. Enjoyed reading it. I have to rethink few of my behaviour. specially about documentation part. Being a freelancer for so long, When I finally got a job, It is hard for me to work with team not because of people, but because I have to work with outdated technology, There are red tapes if you want to upgrade a library, and when I use ES6, rest of guys think I am showing off. Most irritating thing was that while rest of team completed their code before time, I am stuck with mental loop of micro-optimization. I was hired because of my broad programming knowledge, from Mobile, to web, to desktop, But my team are better at doing a "job".
That is a common struggle. Getting things done, vs constantly optimizing and improving. I think most programmers mentality is if it isn't broke, don't fix it or improve it.
I think the "Complexity" comic strip is the reason many of us work late at night, we are not night owls, we are "don't f·(#ing interrupt me owls". I'm pretty chill about almost anything but when I'm just about to solve all worlds problems and you can almost see the answer and someone interrupts me just to tell me that I seem space out. Then murder doesn't seem such a bad idea. I think it should be allowed in court. "But judge, I was about to have the greatest idea ever, in the zone, and he interrupted me to tell me I seem spaced out", "ohh, ok, that's fine then, you can go home"
Oh dear...murder XP!
I nearly had a heart attack. This completely went over my head and I took it literally. I was like... "This guys is cheering on 'code monkeys' and shaming problem solvers. What is this even?" and then you explained it was satire and I sighed a deep sigh of relief. Good writing. Thanks for the rollorcoaster ride of thoughts and emotions. I try to be open with everything I read but, I was like "What? How? Why? Is it possible I'm wrong about this? No, there's no way."
I liked this post when I began reading it. I disliked this post, midway. And liked it again after reading the PS.
I must admit I wasn't getting the irony until I read the PS. 😁
"I must admit I wasn't getting the irony until I read the PS" me too, I guess that's a sign of the state of things :D it would be almost a rulebook in many workplaces
Haha, glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, this put a smile on my face. Sadly, not everyone understands satire.
Dear reader, if you don't know what a satire is, please search for a definition. We, humans, are not yet walking encyclopedias. But we're getting close thanks to always being online, always connected to internet, capable of quickly finding shallow layer of information on anything. The sad part is we've lost the ability to appreciate the complexity of a topic by digging deeper. At least this is what I find missing rather frequently in myself. As I dig deeper and learn more on a topic, and then review an old movie, for example, I find just how much I've missed, and most of it is good, deep stuff, lots of food for thought. Sadly, we only live do long, so learning the full depth of even a single topic is frequently out of question even if you dedicate your entire life to it (and I'm a type of person who loves to dig a little deeper, and wider, and around, and then I dig into psychology and philosophy of the author whose works I'm studying... It's a never ending process).
If you read the entire comment - thanks! Hopefully it gives you something to think about :)
Have a nice day!
Haha,this is funny! You have me fool up until the end. Thanks, this is entertaining.
Thank you for your kind words!
Managers that didn't come from the developer's pool all think like that, even if they say they don't. And if you're an ex developer made manager you spend all too much time convincing your business clients they are not hiring a virtual code for money electric screwdriver.
Believe me. I'm an engineer, made manager. Gave up humanity after some four years. Won't have children for fear they won't come out as engineers.
Nice article! Parts of the article actually reminded of some a product owner types as well i.e "Our job as programmers is to make it happen, not to figure out whether what we could do is worth doing or how it fits into company strategy"
Wow, I was really taking this seriously until I read the p.s....Moreover, I don't have experience in a professional environment so I can't tell (ノ﹏ヽ)
The struggle....
Love it!!
Thank you!
Thanks for the final clarification, saved me from having diabetes haha
I wanted to avoid too much anger XP
This almost got me. I had to say "Software cleaning is software engineering of course" out loud before I figured the humour
I tried to put in some lines like that, that I hoped would make the humor stand out a little more.
Many people tend not to read the tags apparently :D
Great post, thanks!
I wish there was an official humor tag!
I'm glad you explained at the end that this is satire
Didn't want too many angry responses
if($this->restClient){
// Why?
// What was wrong with
// isset($_GET['restClient'])
}
// Answer: This Omelet is the result of broken and heated egg.
I think this was boring because over-engineering does happen so I was expecting to read a satire about that