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born on a buy you posted:news.ycombinator.com While there are more libertarians on Hacker News than in the general population, I wouldn't cite it as evidence that all, most, or even a big portion of techies are libertarian. Indeed, most libertarian posts on HN are downvoted heavily, and anyone who dares mention Ayn Rand to support their view is laughed at. I'd say that libertarianism is more common among younger techies, usually those who are in college or who have recently graduated and have not yet been properly exposed to the real world. The thing is though, at least in my experience, most techies are also ultra-logical, and once they start using those logic skills to think more critically about libertarianism and see that there is no supporting data for any of its claims, most of them realize it's an incredibly dumb ideology and they abandon it with haste. There are always a few bad apples though, and the thing with political ideologies is that their bad apples tend to be extremely vocal to the point of fanaticism. Hence the caricaturization of ultra-socialists by conservatives, ultra-conservatives by liberals, and libertarians by everyone.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:27
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shrike82 posted:Yup, I have friends at Google and Microsoft that take pride in minimizing their work week e.g., "I've been getting away with 30 hours". This is pretty much it. On top of that, software development jobs tend to have really, really good benefits. I'm not necessarily talking about the Perk Wars between SV startups either. I mean stuff like flex-time and remote work. Half the developers in my company work from home, and the ones that choose to come to the office come in whenever they want and leave whenever they want. They also wear whatever they want - sandals, shorts, etc. I'm not aware of any other high-paying white collar job that offers this type of work environment.
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Jul 25, 2014 05:25
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Cicero posted:It's true that you can't count on squat for regular annual salary increases; the money usually comes from switching companies (or at least, that's the only way that seems to work consistently). That's what happened to me, I got a big bump from switching earlier this year. This has been the case for pretty much all jobs for the past decade or two. Staying at the same company for twenty years used to guarantee a very comfortable retirement. Now the only thing it does is ensure being severely underpaid compared to counterparts who switched jobs every few years. quote:I'm curious as to whether salary here means total compensation (so including bonuses and stock grants/options) or really just base salary. Probably base salary, since the other stuff is not standard and therefore would be very difficult to quantify for a graph like that. And don't forget perks, especially those that reduce the cost of working. For example, the sales folks at my company have to dress up in nice suits and keep them squeaky clean, which means regular dry-cleaning fees that really add up over the course of a year. Engineers, not so much. I can go in with a polo shirt and a pair of moderately ironed khakis and no one says anything. For our developers the situation is even better. Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 05:54
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icantfindaname posted:For the time being software developers are clearly petite bourgeois professionals and thus wouldn't really benefit at all from a union. Come back in 20 years and this might be different after the tech bubble bursts/peters out. As for IT grunts yes they could probably use a union but they aren't really libertarian, simply unorganized politically. Yes because that's what happened after the last bubble burst oh wait not really. Look man, as long as you have a job that only a small portion of the population is interested in and capable of doing, you aren't going to get much unionization from them. They already have lots of job security regardless of the condition of the economy, and the vast majority of them are already treated extremely well. This isn't going to change anytime soon either.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:19
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Summit posted:I don't think you need to be a genius to be a great programmer but not everyone can do it. It takes a certain personality. It's most easily described as stubbornness. You have to be the type of person to run into a problem and then not be able to sleep until you figure it out 8 hours later. Most people don't find programming interesting enough to do that. It's not a career that you can just go to school and drop into easily. As a result even though the wages are fantastic, the competition for jobs has remained quite low. I agree about the stubbornness part. That said, I don't think it's a matter of finding programming itself interesting. I find that most programming is just tedious work. What is most important, I think, is having an end goal that will keep you motivated throughout the drudgery. Something that will keep you going when you run into problem after problem and want to slam your head against the wall. Most people I know who start programming don't have an end goal in mind. So they start learning about loops and conditionals and syntax, then get bored and give up. My sister for example tried to learn programming early in college, but it was only during her senior year that she really got into it. That happened when she joined a community service group and realized they could use a web app to facilitate event sign-ups. So she just crushed through tutorials and eventually built it. Now she can put "proficient in Python" on her resume.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:38
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Lacrosse posted:I think I could enjoy learning how to program. I taught myself HTML when I was 11 and I dabbled Second Life scripting while unemployed to see if I could make a buck to help out with the bills. I used to really like building websites, so I bet I could enjoy being a programmer. You should give it a try! While a lot of jobs ask for technical degrees, computer science is probably the highest-paid white collar field with the greatest number of people who haven't received a formal degree on the subject. There are many employers who look mainly for technical skill and past accomplishments (such as hobby projects) and don't care much about formal education. It's also the easiest field to create startups in, since the capital requirements are ridiculously low. Check out this thread for further questions. computer parts posted:That's another issue with many computer science programs - if you're not the type of person that's a "natural genius" at it they don't want to teach you because that would require actual effort. Wow, you really should stop talking out of your rear end.
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Jul 27, 2014 19:07
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computer parts posted:Go and tell me your anecdotes so that I may be convinced otherwise. Nice try. You made a huge claim: that unless one is a "natural genius", computer science programs will not want to teach them. The burden is on you to provide evidence.
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Jul 27, 2014 19:21
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computer parts posted:That's been my own personal anecdote corroborated by people in previous threads. I'm sorry but I fail to understand how Google employing 83% of men is evidence of your claim that computer science departments refuse to invest in people who are not "natural geniuses." If you are suggesting that the field is more difficult for women to break into... the answer is both yes and no. Like most tech fields, it's unquestionably male-dominated. However, there have been huge pushes, both in academia and in the industry, to equalize things in recent years. Admission rates for women have been increasing rapidly in CS departments, and women-only scholarships and mentorships and support groups are being created. And many companies are trying to hire more women onto their tech teams for a lot of reasons, the least of which is that it makes the company looks good. If there's a "right time" for women to take a shot at programming as a career, that time is now. Of course, this all assumes that one wants to go the traditional route of degree + full-time job. Whereas the possibilities that open up when one is proficient in programming involve much more than that.
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Jul 27, 2014 19:35
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computer parts posted:You cleverly avoided the racial demographics part. Race in America is heavily correlated to poverty (28% of black people and 26% of Hispanics are below the poverty line). Unless you're a savant if you're poor you're going to need a lot of help to catch up and actually learn with your peers, and clearly that is not happening. I didn't avoid it. It's simply irrelevant to the discussion we're having at this moment in which Lacrosse said she's a 28 year old woman and she's interested in learning programming, and you responded with what amounted to "don't bother unless you're a natural genius." (And by the way, we're still waiting for evidence of that.)
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Jul 27, 2014 19:51
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computer parts posted:I already gave you evidence of that: poor people are more likely to be minorities, there are little to no minorities (at least the type that tend to be poor) in a typical software company. Ergo, there is *some issue* relating to that (unless you think software companies are racist which is also possible but unlikely given the percentage of affluent minorities). So wait. Your reasoning goes from, "poor people are more likely to be minorities, there are little to no minorities in a typical software company," to "computer science departments don't invest in people unless they are natural geniuses"? Wow! computer parts posted:Just as an aside - I'm not pretending to know her background but someone who's 28 and has never been to college is unlikely to be that affluent. Well, she said she repairs computer parts. Maybe she can repair your brain, too.
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Jul 27, 2014 20:02
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Xandu posted:Well obviously, but the reason enraged_camel is confused is because that's not the same thing as natural genius. Yeah, we call that "moving goalposts." 
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Jul 27, 2014 20:07
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computer parts posted:"Natural" in this case refers to propensity to take up a talent without instructor aid. And yet one of the main reasons children of rich people are advantaged when it comes to success in education is private instructor and tutor aid.
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Jul 27, 2014 20:11
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computer parts posted:Cool, that doesn't matter to a college instructor. If they don't have to teach you they don't give a poo poo. They are less likely to do well, yes. For the record, this was never a point of contention. What I'm asking for evidence is your claim that they are unlikely to do well because the instructors are unwilling to invest in them. Because that's what you originally said: "if you're not the type of person that's a "natural genius" at it they don't want to teach you because that would require actual effort."
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Jul 27, 2014 20:19
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anonumos posted:Does anyone know why Yo was valued so stupidly high? It just texts "Yo" to someone, right? Is there more to it, like some revolutionary network communication technique or something? I'm thinking about Silicon Valley where he made a worthless app on top of his compression engine, and he had no idea the basic tech he developed was so revolutionary. What is it about Yo? People asked that question a lot on Hacker News, too. Example: jacquesm posted:Stuff like that really gets me. I see tons of start-ups that would have a fighting chance given that sort of investment and then lame stuff like this gets funding. Of course they're entirely free to spend their money any way they want, but was there really no place to spend that better? Best answer is this one IMO: ChuckMcM posted:Perhaps, and this would not surprise me in the least, it is vanity investing. Something which has some traction, clearly is scratching some itch, and is under valued relative to that traction. Here we are in June, a couple of months from April and it has 50,000 active users. With a bit of virality that gets to maybe 250K or 300K. Conceptually simple (probably not patented or otherwise circumscribed) the team is probably 2 maybe 3 people. So with the two founders and maybe an employee, its an easy Acqui-hire at $3M. So you put in your 1.2M, get prodded, sell for $3M and double your money in what, 6 months? A year? And I agree with your 1+M$ is nothing to sneeze at, a lot of good can be done with that. Welcome to the gangsta school of high tech investing :-) If you have the capital to play with you can lay down bets like this, and it is exactly like laying down a million bucks on the 'pass' line at the casino. If they get an acquihire you get your money + 100% back, if they manage to keep the shine and traction going maybe you get back 2x or 3x your money, or maybe they fizzle and fade and people move on and you are out a million bucks. I was familiar with a guy who was a 'player' and he mortgaged his house for nearly a million dollars and put it all into a 'winner' startup/concept which, in his case, did not win. It was an "interest only" note with a big payment at the 5 year point, at which time he turned the house over to the bank. Very sad. By the way, what started out as a dumb app now has a potentially life-saving use. Of course, I don't know how true that is, but I thought it was interesting. Which brings us to the number 1 rule in technology: don't be quick to dismiss ideas as "dumb", because even dumb ideas can be used in smart ways to do good.
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Jul 27, 2014 20:47
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You guys keep making car analogies to explain why not everyone needs to learn programming. To me, doing so just shows that you have a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes software special. Cars are physical objects with complex machinery under the hood. Knowing how the complex machinery operates does not bestow someone too many advantages over not knowing it. They might be able to maintain their car a bit better, and maybe modify it a bit to make it operate a bit better, but that's pretty much it. At the end of the day, they will be able to get from point A to point B at roughly the same effectiveness and efficiency as someone who has nothing more than basic driving skills. In contrast, software is logical. It touches pretty much every aspect of our lives, in business and commerce, in government, in our physical day-to-day living. We're working with so much information, so many rules and processes, that being able to make them more efficient with software can be a huge improvement over the status quo. This is the reasoning behind the now-popular saying, "software is eating the world." Is there a need for everyone to learn programming? In my opinion, no. Would knowing programming potentially improve everyone's life? I really do think so. I have a friend who once had to harvest all email addresses from a 1000+ page PDF file. Realizing that doing it manually would take him weeks, he sat down one Saturday, learned some basic Ruby, wrote a short script to go over the PDF's text layer and spit out the email addresses to a text file. He didn't become a programmer, but learning even basic programming made a huge positive difference for him. Now apply this to tens of millions of people we have in our workforce who spend their days with repetitive, mundane, time-consuming tasks, and you'll understand how much their lives would be improved too if they knew some basic programming.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:30
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computer parts posted:And I can think of the reverse. If your argument is that basic carpentry skills can increase the average person's productivity as much as basic programming skills can, I can only conclude that you're trolling.
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Jul 30, 2014 04:44
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I don't care what Bloomberg is going to do with JavaScript and neither should you. He's obviously just trying to set an example.
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Jul 30, 2014 05:03
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Lampsacus posted:As somebody who is sliding into computer science as a degree and software dev as a career this thread is fascinating. It seems like nobody is entirely sure how software development will be viewed into the 21st century. Will it be seen as a 'blue collar' working class job (mechanic = code grunt)? Will it continue to circle every friggin industry and become the next gold rush position labour surplus heavy sector? If one were to start down this path, how secured is their livelihood in twenty years? How about forty? I personally don't see how it can ever have a labor surplus. We aren't going to run out of things to automate anytime soon, and there's always another layer of abstraction and automation to strive for. On the labor side of things, while a lot of people are getting into programming, many of them are finding out that programming is hard (aka "boring"). That's why a lot of them give up, and a good portion of the remainder continue to pursue it simply as a hobby. Even if the market suddenly gets flooded with labor, that's not a problem because unlike with a gold rush, programmers are not really competing for a limited physical resource. Sure, there may be a limited number of jobs, but in software (unlike other fields), striking out on one's own is very cheap. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection and a few hundred dollars in negligible expenses like domain name registration fees. After that, it's all about idea and execution.
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Jul 30, 2014 06:07
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CCrew posted:Nobody in this thread seems to have any idea what they're talking about, and everyone is incredibly quick to throw around massive generalizations. As a software engineer, some of these posts are straight insulting. I barely see any Cavern of COBOL posters in here, maybe you should invite knowledgable parties into the debate rather than calling all programmers autistic. The purpose of the debate is not to have an informative and civil discussion. It is to provide an outlet for D&D's hatred of techies, who are on average more privileged than your average poster here. I mean we have people like computer parts who compare software engineering to carpentry. That should give you an idea of the knowledge level of debate participants.
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Jul 30, 2014 18:28
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Stanos posted:Please explain how carpentry or a mechanic is so radically different from programming that people just couldn't get it. Is there some special brain problem that people have that they could just never wrap their heads around an IF-THEN statement or a linked list if they had all the time in the world? What's different about explaining how to build a house compared to how to develop a program that someone could never get on a surface level? Saying programming is about if-then statements and linked lists is like saying carpentry is about hammering in nails. Do you think that anyone who knows how to use a hammer is a carpenter? Or so you think that carpentry is about much more than that, and includes things like design, planning, attention to detail, strong knowledge of materials and tools used, and so on?
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Jul 30, 2014 18:56
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:I see that you've never heard of Chiropractors before. Or doctors of holistic medicine aka Naturopaths. All perfectly "legal" who earn exactly the same level of ire from legit practitioners. Did you just compare software engineers to chiropractors in terms of legitness?  This thread is the best thread. Guys look, it's OK. Let's strip away the bullshit arguments about carpenters and naturopaths. We get it, you hate these people for being smarter than you and earning more than you and living more comfortable lives than you. Roll your eyes all you want, that's what it really comes down to: privilege. Just like the rich hate the poor, the poor and middle class hate the rich. And both sides feel like they need legitimate-sounding reasons for their hatred to prevent coming across as total bigots. It's the never-ending story of American class warfare. But forget about class warfare and look at the truth. The simple fact of the matter is that the future will be shaped by software much more than any other single thing. Not by carpenters, not by chiropractors. Software developers. It's already happening right before our eyes, one has to be utterly blind to not see it. Maybe some of you are too young to remember it, but just fifteen years ago if you were curious about something you had to go to the library and look it up on an encyclopedia, or ask your mommy and daddy. Today, the information is a few keystrokes away and right in your pocket. This was made possible with software, the culmination of an untold number of developers collaborating and making poo poo happen. And the trend is only accelerating, with no end in sight. You don't see anything remotely similar in any other industry, even if it's high-tech. I'd love to see a carpenter building a chair and touching the lives of millions of people with it. But it just ain't happening. I like giving advice when no one asks for it. So I'll do that here too. If you want to be a part of building the future, learn programming. Otherwise, you'll be watching from the sidelines and making idiotic threads on D&D asking, "why are software developers total jerks and why are they calling themselves engineers???  "
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Jul 31, 2014 04:24
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Flectarn posted:wow, almost everyone who posted in here that claimed to be a software developer is kind of a smug twat huh? weird Step 1: go into a thread that insults an entire profession Step 2: point out that people of that profession who care enough to defend themselves and their peers are "smug twats" Step 3: win SA ironic post of the year award
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Aug 3, 2014 23:01
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EB Nulshit posted:Did engineers exist before accreditation existed? Was the word "engineer" ever used before the ABET existed? Here's the wikipedia definition, which includes ABET's definition: quote:Engineering (from Latin ingenium, meaning "cleverness" and ingeniare, meaning "to contrive, devise") is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes. The discipline of engineering is extremely broad, and encompasses a range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied science, technology and types of application. By these definitions, people who develop software can definitely be considered engineers.
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Aug 4, 2014 00:57
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uncurable mlady posted:Someone should tell the 18021 job listings on LinkedIn for "User Experience Engineer" that they don't exist. User Experience Engineers do exist, but they are different from UX designers in that they actually develop software. In my company the two have very distinct skill sets and responsibilities. I realize of course that this is not an established standard, since UX itself is even newer than software engineering as a field.
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Aug 4, 2014 01:20
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shrike82 posted:There're probably more software developers involved in low level embedded/kernel/realtime programming than there are engineers building bridges anyway. Exactly. Most engineers I know don't even build anything. They are simply consultants.
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Aug 4, 2014 02:38
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uncurable mlady posted:Therac 25, which (if it isn't already) should be drilled into the skull of every CS freshman is a great example of why we should hold software devs to the same standards we hold engineers. If a carpenter does a shoddy job when building a chair, it can put someone in danger and might even kill them. Shall we hold carpenters to the same standards we hold engineers? Yep, I am unironically comparing carpenters to software developers. Because hey, apparently they are sooooo similar.
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Aug 4, 2014 03:06
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hobbesmaster posted:Carpenters don't make chairs, they make houses and they absolutely are required to be licensed and bonded. You're totally and completely wrong.
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Aug 4, 2014 04:53
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hobbesmaster posted:Fishmech at least reads the Wikipedia articles he links.  You said: quote:Carpenters don't make chairs, they make houses From the Wikipedia article you didn't read (and then blamed me for not reading), here are types of carpenters who don't make houses: quote:A finish carpenter (North America), also called a joiner (a traditional name now rare in North America), is one who does finish carpentry, that is, cabinetry, furniture making, fine woodworking, model building, instrument making, parquetry, joinery, or other carpentry where exact joints and minimal margins of error are important. Some large-scale construction may be of an exactitude and artistry that it is classed as finish carpentry.
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Aug 4, 2014 05:58
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Stanos posted:Got to give them credit, at least they are teaching something that isn't going to disappear in 5 years or be flooded with mid-level developers like rails. Yep, anyone who doesn't write programs in assembly language is not a High-Level Developer (aka "Real Developer").
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Aug 5, 2014 03:38
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