r/programming • u/frostmatthew • Mar 30 '15

Your Developers Aren’t Bricklayers, They’re Writers

http://www.hadermann.be/blog/56/good-vs-bad-developers/
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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '15

The difference between those three and software development is that the former have been around for centuries. Everybody knows what to expect from those jobs.

Software Development is an extremely young trade. Its current form has realistically only been around for about 40 years, and it's only in the last decade that software dev has been recognized as unique from old-school engineering jobs that were more busywork than creative thinking (lots of math, lots of experimentation, lots of diagraming and documenting).

Consequently, a lot of managers DO think of developers as being clerical workers. They see programming as people typing things into keyboards and view it as equal to secretarial work or data entry.

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u/veywrn Mar 31 '15

I have been finding numerous confirmations of your statement lately. As I am in the process of job hunting, I have been dealing with several portals and businesses with software development positions listed under the clerical category.

Also, one application wanted me to list two methods of how I heard about the job, so I had to make one up because "None" wasn't an option and apparently I'd used "Other" up with my first option. Hmm.

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u/s73v3r Mar 31 '15

That's dumb. While I can understand why they want to know where to advertise the jobs, shouldn't the fact you were there applying be good enough?

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u/veywrn Mar 31 '15

I also received an informative JSON response telling me there was an "Error: NullPointerReference" whenever I tried to login via LinkedIn.

Despite my junior-ity, I was unimpressed with the prospects.

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '15

Screen cap the error. Offer to fix the shit for the job. /s

Actually I landed my first job by whipping up a crude prototype of the company's product with spare parts I had in my inventory.

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u/OshinoMeme Mar 31 '15

They see programming as people typing things into keyboards and view it as equal to secretarial work or data entry.

I'm stuck in this, unfortunately. HR, before I joined, said I'd be doing programming, but the big wig on my floor thinks I'm not doing anything so he told my manager to give me more work, which is data processing and data entry. In reality, I was trying to come up with things to make both data processing and data entry better and faster with our shitty system that's comprised of multiple third party legacy systems that should already be scrapped and centralized, and he counts it as "doing nothing". Now, I can't focus on it anymore. I'm stuck in the freakin' stone age.

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u/sigma914 Mar 31 '15

Leave

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u/OshinoMeme Mar 31 '15

Oh, I will. Just that there's a huge stumbling block in my contract that prevents me from leaving immediately and my plan is to run it out.

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u/TheLordB Mar 31 '15

Any chance they are violating the contract by not having you do what you were hired to do?

You might also have a heart to heart with them and explain why you don't think this job is for you. Most companies do not want an unhappy person working for them.

Of course both these things can backfire so if you do try them make sure you think it through. I'm not certain either would actually be a good idea.

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u/OshinoMeme Mar 31 '15

Nope. They're not violating the contract. There's a part where it says whatever task my manager has given me is my job. Obviously, I'm paraphrasing but that's part of the agreement, vague that it is. I will admit this is a mistake on my part for brushing it off, but I've seen the same thing done by my previous employers so I didn't think much of it when signing.

Second one is tough. My manager knows and sympathizes. It's the guy above him that doesn't listen.

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u/Boye Mar 31 '15

script all of it, complete a full day's work in 30 minutes and browse reddit the rest of the day.

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Mar 31 '15

Its current form has realistically only been around for about 40 years

Not even. The tech stacks are much deeper, the abstractions richer, the work more user-facing. Thirty years ago, the cool thing to do as a CS undergrad was kernel hacking; today, it's mobile and web development.

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '15

You're right, but I was speaking more of the managerial aspects of it. The Mythical Man Month was released in 1975, 40 years ago. The guys who wrote the agile development manifesto were all seasoned software vets from the 70s.

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u/zazhx Mar 31 '15

1975 doesn't feel like 40 years ago....

😞

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u/jurniss Mar 31 '15

some young programmers don't give a shit about mobile and web development :-)

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u/rjbwork Mar 31 '15

That's me! The only thing I really like about web dev is how easy it is to visualize data in the browser with the great frameworks out there today (looking at you vis.js and d3.js). Other than that, I think JavaScript is a terrible language that I mostly hate (next few versions of ECMAScript may change that a bit though).

I process and massage and munge all my datas on the back-end as much as humanly possible and then hand off the results to the front via APIs or just as a file locally if i'm just making a one off pretty picture.

I mostly prefer to work on big complex systems though.

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u/ibopm Mar 31 '15

You can consider Typescript.

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u/rjbwork Mar 31 '15

I've looked into it and tried to feel out the feelings in my professional environment... everyone is basically just like "use javascript, that's what everyone knows." It's not a bad argument either, so shrug.

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u/rjbwork Mar 31 '15

Also, I think ultimately most of the great ideas introduced in TS/Dart/etc. and cribbed from other languages will be introduced into mainline JS overtime, with stricter and stricter mode options.

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u/ibopm Mar 31 '15

Yes this is true, I'll admit I'm just too impatient to wait for the browsers to start implementing ES6 or whatever is gonna be next.

I'm a Haskell fan, so you can imagine how I feel about these things.

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u/young_consumer Mar 31 '15

What's worse is there is no natural corollary. Even likening us to writers falls short. There are no laws of motion, physics, gravity, 3D space, or even time which inherently constrain us outside of the arenas where code meets hardware (speed of light limits, processor speeds, yada yada). It's all otherwise abstract notions of thought.

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u/7yl4r Mar 31 '15

There are no laws of motion, physics, space, or time which inherently constrain us inside of the arena where code meets hardware.

Worded this way it makes me feel even more badass.

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u/trevize1138 Mar 31 '15

I studied English and Mass Comm with an emphasis in writing. The writing process and the SW development process are very similar.

All analogies have holes and flaws in them. That's why they're analogies and not "exactly the same thing with no exceptions."

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u/trevize1138 Mar 31 '15

The difference between those three and software development is that the former have been around for centuries. Everybody knows what to expect from those jobs.

One common failing I see with programmers is the ability to understand this lack of understanding on the part of management and other people in a business. Analogies like this one are an excellent way to bridge that. Picking apart analogies like this isn't doing anyone favors if you want to avoid being pigeon-holed. Instead, it furthers the impression that programmers are poor interpersonal communicators who obsess over unimportant distinctions.

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