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Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



i guess you're lucky - most code i deal with isn't interesting or difficult (unless you're switching frameworks/languages/etc)

that sounds snarky but it's not intended that way! it's legit lucky if you have a job that is continuously interesting

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Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.


Achmed Jones posted:

i guess you're lucky - most code i deal with isn't interesting or difficult (unless you're switching frameworks/languages/etc)

that sounds snarky but it's not intended that way! it's legit lucky if you have a job that is continuously interesting

No, I mean that the act of programming itself is what I enjoy, regardless of what the code is.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



well that's cool, keep on truckin!

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


Slinging business code for the past decade has sucked a ton and the only highlights were when I ran into difficult bugs or performance issues in production, yeah. In the grand scheme of things my life has been cushy as hell and, 'ugh i'm being paid exorbitantly to deal with this boring logic' is something that's pretty lovely to bitch about so i largely don't. Now that I'm ascending above 'hands on keyboard' roles I'm actually working on personal projects again, something I haven't really done since college, and I'm rekindling my passion in it.

If you want to get paid it's a good gig. Don't expect it to be rewarding though. It isn't

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

PIZZA.BAT posted:


If you want to get paid it's a good gig. Don't expect it to be rewarding though. It isn't

Yeah this is what I keep trying to remind myself, but I don’t have any plans of moving away from an IC role… I also try and remember a lot of people go into work and don’t get to exercise any sort of problem solving; so that would be even more miserable

Still, it’s not fun and I’ve been grappling with the idea that the remainder of my career will be like this

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015
Coding I enjoy: technically challenging or solving a real world need (no, maximizing ads or money extracted from poor people is not a real world need).

Coding I don't enjoy: implementing a workaround for a workaround of a workaround because everything is utter poo poo.

Sadly one of these is lot more common

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Xarn posted:

Coding I enjoy: technically challenging or solving a real world need (no, maximizing ads or money extracted from poor people is not a real world need).

Coding I don't enjoy: implementing a workaround for a workaround of a workaround because everything is utter poo poo.

Sadly one of these is lot more common

the solution to this terrible systemic issue is forcing refractors everywhere you go (if at all possible)

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.


champagne posting posted:

the solution to this terrible systemic issue is forcing refractors everywhere you go (if at all possible)

have your workaround be the refactor

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015

champagne posting posted:

the solution to this terrible systemic issue is forcing refractors everywhere you go (if at all possible)

Cool, I'll somehow force Samsung not to break Android APIs in 5 different ways across 8 phone models.

Any minute now :v:

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Xarn posted:

Cool, I'll somehow force Samsung not to break Android APIs in 5 different ways across 8 phone models.

Any minute now :v:

:rip:

Mantle
May 15, 2004

I quit being a lawyer because it was non challenging and now I am a puter toucher. I also like the micro challenge of writing code. The worst parts of the job are having to interface with systems you don't control, like with Workday's API. Otherwise find a company that cares about writing good code and it's all good.

Plorkyeran
Mar 22, 2007

To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed
trying to fix the root cause of problems even when it takes ten times as long as the workaround would have taken is much more satisfying and long-term better for your career since it means you're learning more. obviously that's not always possible though.

Joe Chip
Jan 4, 2014

Plorkyeran posted:

trying to fix the root cause of problems even when it takes ten times as long as the workaround would have taken is much more satisfying and long-term better for your career since it means you're learning more. obviously that's not always possible though.

the problem with this ime is management. i can come up with a good long term fix and say "this will take 6-12 months from 3 people but we never have to worry about it again" and when they ask for alternatives i say we can make a hacky bullshit fix that works for now in 1 week and they always pick the latter, even when i patiently explain that we will be having this conversation again in 3 months

Plorkyeran
Mar 22, 2007

To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed
do your best to not tell them about the one week option if you think it’s important enough

Joe Chip
Jan 4, 2014
yeah i need to learn to keep my mouth shut

Joe Chip fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Oct 4, 2021

ADINSX
Sep 9, 2003

Wanna run with my crew huh? Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

Plorkyeran posted:

do your best to not tell them about the one week option if you think it’s important enough

If you don’t another coworker will and they’ll get praised for their clever problem solving etc

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
1 week of programmer-time every 3 months is a pretty good deal compared to 154 weeks of programmer-time to fix it for all time*

* only for the foreseeable future

like, you're talking over 30 years for that "permanent" fix to pay off. who's going to give a poo poo 30 years from now? if i'm deciding where to allocate headcount i'm definitely thinking that this boondoggle isn't it.

if you want to do a long term fix that's gonna take several people the better part of a year, it's gotta promise to eliminate way more toil than just one programmer-week every three months

Joe Chip
Jan 4, 2014
except when hacks stop working and you have no alternative but to do the fix you should have done 6 months ago. hacks and workarounds will work up to a point but unless you plan on rewriting every two years you will face problems that could have been better solved earlier on

Pythagoras a trois
Feb 19, 2004

I have a lot of points to make and I will make them later.
None of these arguments will go over well in an interview.

Unrelated, I enjoyed this cynical but ultimately true-ringing advice: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

Joe Chip
Jan 4, 2014
i can give you a real world example: 6 months ago i asked if we could rewrite our job scheduler because i saw it was a mess and would hinder us. this past weekend i had to be on call 24/7 because that scheduler couldn't handle the load for the exact reason i brought up. now we have to rewrite the scheduler anyway because there is no alternative. we hacked it this weekend and it works for now but it will fail again very soon

Pythagoras a trois
Feb 19, 2004

I have a lot of points to make and I will make them later.
YOU CAN'T HACK THE RESCHEDULER! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

Joe Chip
Jan 4, 2014
one important point i left out: having to babysit this trash software that should have been fixed months ago has solidified my desire to leave this job. sure you can argue that a one week fix 4 times a year is worth it from a dollar perspective but if your devs have to pull long nights to support it they will (and should) quit

Pythagoras a trois
Feb 19, 2004

I have a lot of points to make and I will make them later.
Every time my last job pissed me off I responded to one linked in recruiter. It was very cathartic.

Also, I did eventually find a new job, so that is a plus

AWWNAW
Dec 30, 2008

fourwood posted:

yeah this, i got bad news for you on the fresh challenge of dev work over time

I’ve been doing biz software for twenty years now. the first time I got tired of it I switched to functional programming. that kept me busy for another decade or so. now I’m tired again

are there any worker owned coops or the like for dev companies? I’ve meet good people I’d like to work with again and we all hate our corporate jobs

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

AWWNAW posted:


are there any worker owned coops or the like for dev companies? I’ve meet good people I’d like to work with again and we all hate our corporate jobs

I've yet to encounter one, but have had several colleagues talk about how nice it would be to have one. Build it and they will come I suppose.

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015

Plorkyeran posted:

trying to fix the root cause of problems even when it takes ten times as long as the workaround would have taken is much more satisfying and long-term better for your career since it means you're learning more. obviously that's not always possible though.

Strongly agree, and in the 5 months I've been at new place I made our CMake much saner through proper targets and linkage setting, fixed hosed up visibility on our dynamic libraries, moved us from building from apt packages to vcpkg, and lot of other poo poo.

But the things I can't fix are reeeeealy annoying.

cheese eats mouse
Jul 6, 2007

A real Portlander now

echinopsis posted:

just as an example : I directly see the impact of how lovely software that GPs use creates errors in the prescriptions I see on the daily. it’s obvious that almost all the errors come down to poor UI/UX in the software (not because the doctors are poo poo)

i'm ux person who has worked in healthcare tech and now in food tech ama

most of your time will be spent working as a team of one bashing your brains against people who don't know what ux is, like bad ux and want to implement it, like good ux but don't want to pay for it.

cheese eats mouse
Jul 6, 2007

A real Portlander now
i don't work for uber eats, door dash or grubhub or any of the others btw just to clarify tyvm

barkbell
Apr 14, 2006

woof
no one listens to the ux folks

MononcQc
May 29, 2007

maybe they could structure their discourse in a way that is more user friendly and will naturally be followed

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

I have purposely avoided working on any medical ux in my whole career because it would be too depressing and stressful

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
everyone at work gets pissed off at the doctors loving up prescriptions (it happens all the time) but it's so obvious to me that it's their lovely software lol

well, I mean doctors could proof read their poo poo before they sign it, but thats too much to ask for

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

epic software has probably killed as many people as covid but apparently it’s thoroughly unfixable

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.


echinopsis posted:

everyone at work gets pissed off at the doctors loving up prescriptions (it happens all the time) but it's so obvious to me that it's their lovely software lol

well, I mean doctors could proof read their poo poo before they sign it, but thats too much to ask for

I try to read my doctor's prescriptions after he signs them, but I can't read his handwriting

Munkeymon
Aug 14, 2003

Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.



qirex posted:

I have purposely avoided working on any medical ux in my whole career because it would be too depressing and stressful

hey buck up - I'm sure your designs aren't that bad

DELETE CASCADE
Oct 25, 2017

i haven't washed my penis since i jerked it to a phtotograph of george w. bush in 2003

echinopsis posted:

everyone at work gets pissed off at the doctors loving up prescriptions (it happens all the time) but it's so obvious to me that it's their lovely software lol

well, I mean doctors could proof read their poo poo before they sign it, but thats too much to ask for

ten thousand oxycontin dictated but not read

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
it’s always stupid poo poo like the doctors prescribed 1 single tablet


or sometimes a person is out of sync so they ask the dr to do just a single month rx of candesartan to get them back in line which is fine but then they get their 3 month rxs but the dr copied the last ones and the last candesartan was one month not three so the patient gets a rx for 3 months of everything except one month of this one thing

which is a bunch more work to fix especially now we have e-prescribing so a dr can’t just annotate or verbally fix

the software could easily inform the dr they’re prescribing inconsistent amounts but . nah . just leave it for the pharmacist to pick it up, or worse, the patient

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
also lol unlike our pharmacy software which works kind of like a subscription, where all of us are on the same version, doctors surgeries don’t want to pay to upgrade so heaps of them are left on old versions, even if the company fixes the problems the doctors might stick on the old one :argh:

idk why doctors surgeries are so cheap. theres this way the surgeries can order drugs for free, paid for by the state. but not everything. they were asking about something to help a patients emergency constipation. it was going to cost $7. they didn’t go ahead

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

echinopsis posted:

it’s always stupid poo poo like the doctors prescribed 1 single tablet


or sometimes a person is out of sync so they ask the dr to do just a single month rx of candesartan to get them back in line which is fine but then they get their 3 month rxs but the dr copied the last ones and the last candesartan was one month not three so the patient gets a rx for 3 months of everything except one month of this one thing

which is a bunch more work to fix especially now we have e-prescribing so a dr can’t just annotate or verbally fix

the software could easily inform the dr they’re prescribing inconsistent amounts but . nah . just leave it for the pharmacist to pick it up, or worse, the patient

this is a prime opportunity to get some work done on your ux/ui portfolio

get on whatever ui design program people use and redesign the interface. then put them side by side and shop yourself around

go go echi

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echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
drat .. I do have a billion and one ideas to improve the pharmacy software I am exceptionally familiar with and they’re all related to making it more user friendly … appreciate the support.

looking at ui/ux isn’t just the latest idea i’ve had, it’s made me realise it’s something i’ve unconsciously been working on for decades.
thanks for the encouragement

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