Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of programming?
1 comments
I've been programming professionally for a little over 20 years (and programming in general since I was 8 years old, on a Commodore 64). Over the years, my desire to program has only increased, and my projects have become more ambitious. However, my tolerance to bad software has diminished significantly.
Software just doesn't seem to work anymore. It seems that every time I try some new piece of software, I'm one of the few unlucky ones who gets the "Error: friprack has no strubnozzle" error message, have to dig through dozens of pages of forum posts leading to "never mind, solved it" messages with no further explanation, and finally figuring out that it's a missing dot in the configuration file, so that I can move ahead one more millimeter to the "Error: unknown domain", and the cycle continues. This happens in both hardware and software, and it sucks the life out of any project you might be working on.
Software is terrible. Testing is terrible. U/X is even worse, and yak shaving de rigueur. The problem, unfortunately, is that too many non-craftsmen are in the arena now, with more piling in as they smell the money.
It used to be so difficult to find information (trying to find the right books at your crappy local library, figuring out how to use a modem, trying to find BBSes to call that weren't long distance, etc) that only the most dedicated practitioners could succeed. Nowadays, anyone can publish an npm module full of edge cases and security holes, which then gets subsumed into all sorts of mega-frameworks until the whole thing blows up as malicious actors move in.
So do I still love programming? Absolutely! I just don't trust other peoples' code anymore. Maybe it's time for craftsman guilds...
Software just doesn't seem to work anymore. It seems that every time I try some new piece of software, I'm one of the few unlucky ones who gets the "Error: friprack has no strubnozzle" error message, have to dig through dozens of pages of forum posts leading to "never mind, solved it" messages with no further explanation, and finally figuring out that it's a missing dot in the configuration file, so that I can move ahead one more millimeter to the "Error: unknown domain", and the cycle continues. This happens in both hardware and software, and it sucks the life out of any project you might be working on.
Software is terrible. Testing is terrible. U/X is even worse, and yak shaving de rigueur. The problem, unfortunately, is that too many non-craftsmen are in the arena now, with more piling in as they smell the money.
It used to be so difficult to find information (trying to find the right books at your crappy local library, figuring out how to use a modem, trying to find BBSes to call that weren't long distance, etc) that only the most dedicated practitioners could succeed. Nowadays, anyone can publish an npm module full of edge cases and security holes, which then gets subsumed into all sorts of mega-frameworks until the whole thing blows up as malicious actors move in.
So do I still love programming? Absolutely! I just don't trust other peoples' code anymore. Maybe it's time for craftsman guilds...
I've been programming professionally for eight years. I just have so little interest in doing anything with computers anymore. For me programming has become a continuous stream of problems. For example, if you try to install software A you'll run directly into something like "error 12394: can't read stream. blah blah blah" and then you have to Google that and eventually find out it's because SQLite isn't installed or it is but it's global. You know, stuff like that. Maybe you get a mystery error that you just have to Google your way through and by the end you've tried so many things you don't even know if it was JUST the last thing that fixed it. Stuff like that.
But maybe what I find the most frustrating is the subjective nature of what "good" means. Like it's all in head-space. You can write something absolutely brilliant and no one has any idea unless you sell it to them and at that point it's just about selling it to them. For example, I've been doing woodworking as a hobby and with that there is a physical object that people can see. If you don't do your cuts right it's obvious. People can see. Your work speaks for itself.
I could go on but basically, programming has changed for me. I used to feel being good meant knowing the most and at some point the people who knew nothing changed what the important things to know were and it's been backwards ever since. I'm just tired of sitting behind a computer screen all day. All day! I swear I'd rather plow fields but that pays like $4/hr.
Anyone else feel like this? Just looking to see what like minded people have to say about this. Thanks.