" a good programmer should organize software in such a way that every piece of code has a clear and logical place. The organization should be so intuitive that anyone could build a mental model of the structure and navigate it easily, even without seeing it." sounds like very good advice to me. In the mid to late 1990s I worked somewhere that tried to do this with a big C++ codebase, because we didn't have IDEs (vi wasn't even vim at the time), unless you count emacs which some people were good at, not me at the time. I believe that IDEs are in many ways a backward step ,because they allow people to develop lazy habits and make a hideous sloppy mess of meaninglessly-named spaghetti, knowing that there's autocomplete and advanced search functionality.
To me it seems possible, that seniors will become in even more demand, because learning to become a decent developer is actually harder if you're distracted by leaning on LLMs. Thus, the supply of up-and-coming good new seniors may be throttled. This to me is because LLMs don't abstract code well.
Once upon a time electronics engineers had to know a lot about components. Then along came integrated circuits and they had to know about them, and less about components.
Once upon a time programmers had to know machine code or assembler. I've never had to know about those for my job.
I programmed in C++ for years and had to know plenty about memory. These days I rarely need to as much, but some basic knowledge is needed.
Its fine if a student is learning to code mostly in Python, but a short course in C is probably a good idea even today.
But as for LLMs, you can't say "now I need to know less about this specific thing that's been black-boxed for me" , because it isn't wrapped conveniently like that.
I'm extremely glad that when I was a junior, LLMs weren't around. Really seems like a barrier to learning. Its impossible to understand all the generated code, but also difficult, without significant career experience, to be able to judge what you need to know about, and what you don't. Feel sorry for juniors today to be honest!
This is a feeling I have too. However, compared to Visual Programming it's perhaps harder to dismiss? Visual programming - its pretty obvious you can't effectively or even at all step through a UML diagram with a debugger to find a problem. The code that gets generated from diagrams, with visual programming, is obviously cr*p. So the illusion doesn't last long. Whereas AI - it kind of looks OK, you can indeed debug it, its not necessarily more complex or worse than the hideously over-complex systems human teams create. Especially if the human team is mismanaged e:g original devs left, some got burnt out and became unproductive, others had to cut corners and make tech debt to hit unrealistic deadlines, other bits get outsourced to another country where the devs themselves are great but perhaps there's a language barrier or simply geographical distance means requirements and ___domain understanding got lost somewhere in the mix. So, I suppose I sit on the fence, AI-generated code may be terrible but is it worse than what we were making anyway? ;). In the future there are probably going to be companies run by "unwise people" that generate massive amounts of their codebase then find themselves in a hole when no-one working at the company understands the code at all. (whereas in the past perhaps they could hire back a dev they laid off on large contractor rates of pay to save the day). Seems inevitable one day the news will be of some high profile company failure and/or tanking of stock caused by a company basically not knowing what it was doing due to AI generated code.
I think this is the nature of software dev to a certain extent, and other than organising your git commits and stuff in such a way that makes it easy to backtrack, the standard anti-burnout approach (plenty of exercise, enough vacations etc) applies IMHO
Or maybe no-one wasted time? Sometimes a sensible idea one day, becomes not sensible next day as more info becomes available, then the day after that, further info, or request from the ultimate payer of bills, emerges, meaning the original approach was right. We can't always see what are managers are doing. Sometimes they're getting messed around a lot more than us, thus justifying their extra pay. ;) As others have said, us devs get paid no matter what. I wonder if the OP has kids? Have they ever heard "I want to go to the park. No I don't want to go to the park. Well only if so-and-so is going too. But not if you force me to wear that coat. Hey, can we play a board game? Oh, why didn't you let me go out. That's so unfair" . Work is easy by comparison ;)
To play devil's advocate, is a high stress, pressured, test obsessed selective school, populated by entitled kids with pushy parents, "the right school" for the poor-but-capable-kid..... ;). Will they make friends there and be happy and still want to read for pleasure and be curious about the world outside school? (OK , to be fair you might not want them to go school in a very rough area with drugs and other crime, either)
Then it is wrong school. But the other issue is that you are strongly drawing here on the stereotypes - that this school will be test obsesed, kids in it will be bad entitled kids and you cant make friends with them.
Kids in real world selective schools do form relationships, are curious, interact and like the world outside. Some selective schools are like you describe ... but others are not and kids in them are happy.
The type-A kids are friends with type-A kids, yes. Everyone else is ostracized. That's what gives rise to stories of "entitled, can't be friends with them".
Agree with the above. Seems to me, the many of us "going with the flow" without a thorough long-term plan, are perhaps applying Agile development principles to our "career" (aka series of jobs) , whereas the author is taking the nowadays-apparently-discredited Waterfall approach , where supposedly you can know where you're going to be at date X. Which of course we now know doesn't actually work out in software. And as for careers, even more so. One cannot predict the overall economy, or who one might marry , how many kids one might have, whether everyone is healthy in extended family, what one might feel like doing to be happy later on etc ;)
"others like myself would rather kill themselves than work a 9-5 until they're 60". If its in a corporate hell-hole, I might at times feel like that too. However, not all 9-5s are equal :) Public sector such as govt or academia, or other non-profit, can be fulfilling and not soul-sucking. Or, at some point switch to something only slightly related to tech, such as teaching. People talk about "full fat" FIRE, but thats unrealistic and/or requires some years of miserable sacrifice for most people (being rich before you start, or getting randomly lucky with stocks, doesn't count IMHO). They also talk of "Barista FIRE" - i:e you can't totally retire but can work a supposedly low-stress job (personally, not convinced by it, baristas can still feel "oppressed" at work) . What about the middle road... which is, live frugally (which helps the planet too), over-pay mortgage and avoid other debts, with such an attitude hopefully most techies would by their 40s be able to work in a job with a moderate professional salary, perhaps arguably underpaid for what they do, but, if that's what necessary to be fulfilled at work and not feel like killing oneself, then so be it? ;)
I think you're giving invaluable info here and doing a public service :) Having lived abroad a few years myself, its exciting, wonderful, broadens the mind etc, for a certain amount of time. But trade-offs emerge. Loneliness is a thing. Its difficult to make "new old friends". Well, at least, takes time! Living abroad contributed to my getting married later (back home) and being an older Dad. Marrying someone from a different country has all the issues you allude to. When I returned home I got reverse culture shock, it was tough, things had changed. Thankfully I kept in touch which some great friends, who are still there now. So grateful to them for not forgetting our friendship. I think these issues BTW, apply within one's own country too. In the UK its traditional for middle-class kids to go to another city for university. They often meet a partner there. Then bingo, one or both settle far from where they grew up. So friends and family are hours away. Now with increased costs , more people are studying nearer home cos they can't afford that. This is often reported as a bad thing but I wonder if being forced to study nearer home therefore meet a partner from nearer, may lead to higher ultimate happiness. When our kids grow up, I 100% wouldn't wanna "clip their wings" or be selfish. But, also kind of hope they don't permanently move far away. But if their true loves come from other countries, well, that's destiny I guess....
> I think these issues BTW, apply within one's own country too. [...] Then bingo, one or both settle far from where they grew up. So friends and family are hours away.
YES, absolutely. It happened to my parents and their siblings as well. And it's not something that people get into with a good understanding of the tradeoffs they are making -- it's easy to fool ourselves thinking that videoconferencing and cheap flights will magically eliminate the problem. It doesn't work like that in practice, and I made that mistake myself.
> I wonder if being forced to study nearer home therefore meet a partner from nearer, may lead to higher ultimate happiness. When our kids grow up, I 100% wouldn't wanna "clip their wings" or be selfish. But, also kind of hope they don't permanently move far away
Yeah, that mirrors my sentiment as well. Raising children while away from your extended family is tough. Rather than spending 10 years with extreme childcare responsibilities, I wish we were closer to family so that we could (a) get some hands-on experience with caretaking before raising our own kids, (b) get a couple of hours a week off from taking care of our own kids, and (c) allowing our parents to spend some quality time with their grandchildren without having to travel across continents with small kids to make it happen.
It would have been a more gentle curve spread over more time, and a chance to spend time with our extended family. Now, I've also heard there's a flip side to that, where people get sick of their relatives being too involved in how to raise their kids, etc. It's all a tradeoff.
Handful of thoughts. :) The best of the 3 above is having a specific skill set. Anything medical - e:g nursing (good one 'cos less time to retrain) is in short supply worldwide and you can get a local job with visa sponsorship many places. As for experimenting with fascism, USA is sadly by no means the only country going that direction, and the USA's political system may be more resilient to such take-overs, guess we will find out... :( Other countries do have the advantage of not having healthcare tied to employer, people work less hours a lot of countries. The USA's mere 2 weeks a year vacation is brutal, no wonder so many people are burned out, but there are ways to get more e:g work for better employers such as public sector, or do short-term contracts.
The US requires 0 days off nationally, not sure where you got 2 weeks. I had a job once where we only got 5 days off but had to be there a year first. It was the best IT job I could get at the time.
Wow that's even worse :( I got the impression at the time I worked there that 2 weeks was standard, at least in tech. Which didn't seem at all generous...
Not a requirement, no, but certainly a selling point when shopping for a new job.
Personally, I am not a fan of the whole PTO system we have here, mostly because it is used against us. We are expected to be at work unless we request PTO, and we end up having to use PTO for things like doctor appointments and seeing our kid graduate, or whatever. It's an absurd joke.
I don't want PTO, and I realize that's an unpopular opinion, but it comes from years of seeing its abuse by employers who think they command our time (and the employees who allow them to).
What I want is simple; if I am at work, pay me, if I am not at work, do not pay me. That's it. That would keep both sides honest. I need to plan/budget for days off and can't game a system. Employers can't hold me hostage and need to look for better ways to incentivize employees to choose to be at work.
