As someone who recently quit your question sounds like you just returned from a re-education camp. I'm neither depressed nor have I found working on a development team to be fulfilling in years. Well, ever since I figured out the whole thing was about making myself an obedient tool for someone else.
I don't have any advice for you to get back into programming. I doubt sitting in a chair in a silent room doing what someone else tells you all day is going to help your depression.
You could roll your own fairly easily with qt webkit and a mere smidgen of c++. But it'd probably be similar yo puppeteer. Maybe you can save some time by not creating a new instance of puppeteer for each image.
I hate how knowledge matters less than social standing. I could read ten programming books and work hard at improving myself as a programmer but it wouldn't ever matter. The only thing that matters is the heirarchy on the team. Plus it's a pyramid. Fight it out at the bottom until a hand reaches down to you from above and pulls you into a senior dev or management position. No thanks. I hated having some other person tell me what my skill level and self worth were. I know my skill level and self worth and rarely as a developer did I ever get to live up to my potential because either I was in a feature factory or I was on a project with constraints that forced me to write terrible code. I hated looking through other people's god awful code and being judged because I had a hard time understanding it. Like they always measured and judged me with the wrong metrics. I hated going into meetings and being an expert (or at least best in the room) on some topic and having other people not listen to me. I hated not being listened to when I was trying to improve code or feature quality. I hated code reviews where the only point was to make the reviewer feel like he'd accomplished something by forcing me to make some inconsequential change. I hated the little bs politics people play about what comes back as a bug. I hated not being respected as a human but just being the stupid programmer who turns all of our genius ideas into reality. I hated not being able to use my own brain eight hours a day because I was renting it to someone else. I hated two hours a day in rush hour traffic. I hated sitting inside in a dead quiet room on a beautiful day. Perhaps more than anything I just hated working in a terrible code base.
If you wait until you're financially ready you might be missing out. Part of dropping the golden handcuffs for me was living with less. I wasn't living sustainability anyways and it was better I dealt with it before I got too old and found myself unable to deal with the change.
I don't know exactly. I'm just going to try it and see what works. If it fails I'll just try another idea. The basics steps I imagine are:
- getting local supporters. This will be useful for bootstrapping the Kickstarter
- gorilla marketing. Basically just think of how to promote the product in low cost high impact ways.
- traditional marketing like google and facebook. Maybe a couple expirements and demographic research before going all in on a campaign
- do the Kickstarter. It'll be a modest Kickstarter. My goal at this phase is to have a successful Kickstarter, not to make money.
- if Kickstarter succeeds fulfill the orders
- Turn it into a business or maybe just a passive income. All I'll have to do is order more boards and cases if orders for the product come in. Plus, the patent itself will be worth something.
What do you think? Does it sound doable? Too shy for Kickstarter? That seems like too small of a thing to hold you back.
I quit a couple weeks ago. I've been a developer for about ten years and I could probably do a lot of different types of development jobs if I really wanted. These last three years though I just loath working on development teams. I decided if this next programming job didn't work out I should quit programming. ...thats was TWO jobs ago, lol.
After that I took a break and lived day to day. I worked pretty much all day and night for months and it felt so much better than working in tech. For example, I would flip cars by buying broken ones and fixing them, I built a table and sold it at a flea market, I drove for Lyft, I drove for Doordash (which by the way was great for getting me out to see new places since I'm a bit of a loner. I'm serious, it was good for my mental health). I started work on a patent for an invention I intend to sell. I learned how to use Blender to create 3D models so I could 3D print a case for the afformentioned invention. All while being high as a kite whenever I wanted (and it was safe, of course).
So when this last job didn't work out I wasn't nearly as afraid. You know, I've basically been pretending anyways. Like that meme of the dog in the house on fire. But being a programmer and making more money doesn't magically make me happier.
Right now I'm flipping cars again. After I flip a few I'll drive for Lyft. My long term goal, the only one that matters, the only one that is going to get me into the life I want, is completely unchanged. In fact, hustling like this lets me optimize for bootstrapping a business with my invention. I'm not afraid of failing. Ill get up and try again. There's no point in pretending anymore. I want a better life than this. Programming is not going to get me there.
You really like leaving in commented code? I used to prefer that too but then at work we had a policy of taking out unused code. I actually think it's cleaner so I've been doing it in my own code and rarely regret deleting something. But when code (my own or someone else's) is more chaotic I do find it to be useful to leave bits and pieces lying around.
One, there is no excuse for garbage code. Deadlines don't cause people to suddenly forget how to code. Perhaps corners get cut and things need to be refactored but if developers are coming and going and saying the code is bad I doubt that's just because of a deadline. That sounds more like a bad developer using a deadline as his excuse.
Two, do you have code reviews? Are you looking at their code? Are they looking at yours? Why would you expect them to write triple A code when they have to use what you say is a garbage code base? Garbage code breeds garbage code. Maybe their arrogance is a way of venting their frustration with being forced to write bad code? Or maybe they're telling the truth but for some reason you interprit it as arrogance?
That's a good point. I left out a concept of constraints. For example, it has to be written in the same language as our other applications. But if it's not different enough from an existing application just copy the existing application and don't call it a greenfield.
Or let someone burn their turn by copying the existing application but making minor tweaks and changes. That could work just as well.
Maybe, but I wish I could do it like an equation. I need x dollars to move this product to the next level. Maybe it would be 50,000. I'm just blind to what that next level looks like.
I already have some horror stories. I tried getting someone on FIVERR to draft the patent. Despite many 5 star reviews it was a bad idea. At best I lost $300.
Anyways for me part of the benefit in taking my time is building out the skillset to do this in general:
- knows how to file patent
- knows how to make case
- knows how to get a case design
- knows how to design the board
- knows how to get the cases and boards manufactured
- general idea of all the prices involved
- how do to Kickstarter marketing
- how to handle the legal side (like an LLC or ...?)
Because you're right I'm just kind of hoping people will like it. But if they don't I'll still then have the skillset to try something new. Plus the more people I ask the more likely someone will demotivate me, or steal my idea, or just leak the concept which would take some shock and awe out of marketing. I'll do more market research when I get closer to launching.
How did you hear about the campaigns that you backed?
1. What was your thing? Did you keep it going after the Kickstarter? If so how's it going?
2. Why do you get most funding at the start and end? I can see at the start because that's where you have to bootstrap it but why the end? Did you apply marketing at an increasing rate or decreasing rate or a constant rate?
3. On selling yourself. I've heard this but idk how to do it. I'm not an expert in the field my product is in. My main motivation is just to make money. So I don't have a compelling story. I'm just a guy with an idea. I was planning on doing a video where I explain where the idea came from but aside from that idk how to interject myself. How did you do it or how do you think someone like myself should?
I thought going underground was the way to go. I wasn't imagining a "pressurized tunnel" but rather a pressurized underground complex filled with tunnels and rooms (minecraft).
But maybe pressurizing an underground complex with walls made out of ...Mars is more difficult than building something on the surface?
Going underground seemed like it had limitless room for easy expansion.
I like the authors suggestion and it does sound better than a dome but living underground seems safer to me.
Let everyone architect but only after they've completed some challenging but reasonable tasks. For example:
- passes multiple choice test about how current code works
- has a professional knowledge of the language they are using (part 2 of the test)
- has read and done a book report on 2-3 design-pattern/architecture books.
Once you do all that you go in the queue. New developers have precedence over seasoned developers. When a new project comes up the developer who gets that greenfield is the first developer in that queue who hasn't had a chance to architect yet.
The main idea is that good developers don't want to be assembly line workers and yet a total lack of autonomy seems to be the norm for (I think) most software developers. So the ability to make technical decisions is a real benefit IMO.
Some other things that might be advantages:
- you now have a team of experts. Good job.
- you can avoid senior devs possessing all of the knowledge of the companies software (because only that select few got to design anything) and then not having an incentive to improve.
- Creating a genuine interest in new code (because you want to see how the new guy did it).
"Everyone is an architect" should be your tag line.
I don't have any advice for you to get back into programming. I doubt sitting in a chair in a silent room doing what someone else tells you all day is going to help your depression.