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Search - "wk232"
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A year ago I would have said:
"Because I love solving logic puzzles, there's no greater joy than finding a very simple, elegant translation of a user's requirements into code"
Then 2020 came. I'm SO FUCKING FED UP with coworkers and managers who miss all the required competence to organize and communicate about projects as they are fundamentally incompatible with the concept of working from home.
I'm quite sure I'm the last one to give up at my work.
The company chat has completely died down. I've tried setting up meetings, but even my bosses show up irregularly, confused about why I'm calling them in the middle of their Netflix marathon.
So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. My answer is now:
"I'm a developer because I get nearly 6 figures, for going through my Steam Library while completely shitfaced at 11AM. When I sober up in the afternoon, I work on some hobby projects. I get to spend 500/m on ordering sandwiches"8 -
Unpopular Opinion: most devs doing it just for the money are pretty fucking shit at programming and problem solving.
I do it because I like to make screen go blinkyblink. Top reason to be one: you are not scared if printer goes blinkyblink because you know why it makes blinkyblink.9 -
I was told there's gonna be:
- good salaries
- informal company setups with benefits
- lots of jobs available
- non-dev people look at you in amazement
- get to work on really interesting stuff
What I'm actually doing:
- carrying a team of people in uni because you're the only one who knows how to code
- deal with shitty uncommented legacy code at work
- be reminded that if you don't do something super-sophisticated you're easily replaceable
- spend unpaid overtime hours because you're the only one at your job that is on the issue (I see a pattern of being alone in a problem here)
- requestion all my career decisions
- cry and be stressed
- hate every minute of work, yet be stuck in it because it's a source of income that is flexible enough for me to be able to study full-time
So dunno man, I'm still waiting on what I've been told, people say there's lotsa money and satisfaction waiting for me after grinding through 5 years of high education, it'd better be worth it5 -
The top reasons to become a dev are:
- your brain acutally gets challenged to its fullest
- you can fix most of your IT problems yourself
- you are forced to learn how to deal and live with stress
I won't list the disadvantages, becaus it would result in memory allocation errors.5 -
I love it.
I'm a geek, and a nerd,
I love everything that computers,
I love electronics, physics, even mathematics,
I love thinking, solving problems, learning new things.
And programming is all of those combined, I love it with a passion.5 -
None, for me, but that's why I work as a cybersecurity engineer and not a dev!
But, I do tons of side projects and the reason why I love it: it makes me feel like I'm in God mode. (and helps me solve quite some problems)
Quite ironic, for an atheist ;)4 -
That satisfaction when you're teaching Python and git to a friend, and not only she actually understands things right away, but she tells you: "It's ok if you don't know this, I'll try to look it up and figure it out by myself".
Every now and then, the world doesn't seem such a dark and gloomy place :)5 -
Half Life, Portal and Halo as well as a hate over windows vista.
I don't shit on things I can't comprehend. So when I bought my laptop with vista and hated how shitty it was I decided to find out the culprits. Turned out they were software engineers, but I was not about to shit on engineers without knowing what they go through. Down the rabbit hole.
Portal and Half life are what inspired to focus on Comp Sci afterwards and Glados and Cortana fascinated me. The fact that good money follows in the field played a big part as well.
Also, and more importantly, mom wanted me to be a programmer since she wanted to be one, she always thought this was the future. She won't read this, but I always thank her for pointing me on this path, she is my biggest fan.2 -
The loop of having an idea, building a prototype over 3 months, deploying it and realizing there has been a better alternative in the market on day 1.4
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It's one of the rare fields where you get to be both creative and functional. Whatever you want to happen on the screen you can make it happen. You can really put yourself into whatever you are making. Maybe you can't do that and make a ton of money at work. Maybe you can't do that and release a product everyone will love. But you can do it. You can put power in people's hands. You can embed parts of yourself, your philosophy, your thoughts, your wishes, etc. into software and spread it all over the world very quickly. I like that about it1
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Being able to build automating tools and scripts. It's cool building your own tools, and even cooler if you like the process.1
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- always challenging, so fun
- real-life impact on masses
- programming is usually the core of "the next big thing" [™ Joe MacMillan]
- plays an important role in the world's growth nowadays
- every company needs them, so you'll always have a job
- well paid2 -
For as long as the world needs computers to do complicated stuff, it'll need good, skilled developers to tell them what to do.
Good, skilled developers don't come easily or cheaply, so they can command a hefty premium, both in terms of job perks & salary.
So putting that together - a well paid, good job in a reasonably stable field? Sign me up.1 -
Don't like the way how to do something? Witte software for it! You need something automated? Develop the autonation algorithms! Don't like how an open source application works? Change it! Don't like how the closed source application works? Fucking reverse engineer and patch it!
Being a developer opens incredibly man doors in the world of information technology, that technology that drives our world, society and so, so many parts of everyone's life. So why on earth wouldn't you want to be a developer?2 -
If I can’t find software I’m looking for it I don’t like the options I can just make it, it gives me the ability to automate tasks, it’s fun and it gives me a logical outlet.2
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Curiosity killed the cat.. or was it Opportunity?! 🤔
You get to learn new stuff daily.
Not one assignment is the same, and if it's similar, you can hijack the old code, improve it & turn in the better version of it.. or don't improve..totally how you feel that day..if you're not a crappy developer no improvement should still also be ok..
I love mostly adjustable schedule, so there's no biggie of I have a day or two of coders block & can't produce much of value..I can switch tasks & do some simple ones on those days..or just refactor.. all's good..
I love solving puzzles, every bug is a new puzzle I can play with..
So basically, I love being a dev, because it's like being back in school, but only with the subjects you like! -
* Well paid
* Low painfulness
* High employability
* We control the world, without getting it
* Possibly creating the system who will destroy humanity/the world3 -
Software engineering was the only field, which was scientific in it's nature and got my interest in early teens.
I've always wanted to be a scientist and/ or do scientific research, however, this dream is still far away at this point in my career. -
Cause when you die or exit from process it doesn’t matter how it happened, was it kill -9, sigkill or sigterm. As long as you go to hell / heaven / you name it and not to /dev/null you can still try to segfault the universe. Just give me the code !!!
And it aligns well with depression, alcoholism and lack of sleep. -
One thing I do well and the only thing I like doing, and the only thing I could think of doing at all1
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I get to make things others havent yet.
well, one day.
and it's the best excuse I've found so far for binging technical subjects and papers.
also because when talking with people about say, compilers and how they're made, or machine code, or a dozen other topics, people dont roll their eyes like I'm speaking a foreign language.
also the occasional math shitpost makes it worth it. -
Did it when You l was a kid. Got good through a decade of learning before I even started working as one.
Don't want to waste all those years of learning, probably the only good thing about my childhood...
So yes, it's mostly sunk-cost-fallacy at this time. But it brings food to the table.1 -
I can't imagine how exactly not being a dev feels like :D (in the sense of skill, not profession). I honestly believe it will be part of primary education in the not so far future.
So actually I need reasons for not to be a dev :) -
By making badly optimized code that takes forever to run, I have a good reason to do nothing but feel like I'm achieving something by glancing at the progress bar every so often. "Still rolling, way to go my little rock with lightnings. You can do it!"
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My father is an electrical engineer and using computers from MainFrame times. So, duirng my childhood I always see computers arround me. This is the first reason I fall in love with computers and programing.
I think I am using a computer since 3rd grade. Or mightbe erlier. doesn't remamber.1 -
Not bragging, when I was in EE Engineering dept, programming with C grade was A1. When I realized I was terrible at ee and wanted to switch to a new dept, I have choosen comp eng because sw dev would give me the most money for the least effort.
TLDR: GREAT MONEY, LOW EFFORT.4 -
Being a developer allows you to enjoy using most of the creative skills artists also put to use (writing structured prose, design, semantics, ergonomics, ethics), while adding logic, job safety, and a decent paycheck to the mix.
Also: puts you in a good position to readily take advantage of new digital goodies (eg bitcoin), and to understand the gem that is developer humor -
- Curiosity - always eager to learn how stuff worked
- Money [obviously]
- Future is technology
- minimal interaction with people
- I'm good at it
- call it a guity pleasure but it gives me sence of being better than people around me [don't take it seriously]
Personally, I am surrounded by people who are deeply religious. Growing up, saw my family, relatives and whole nation neak deep into religion and politics. No one was interested to ask questions or see things differently.
When I was 15 got an internet connection and started consuming information as much as I can. Understood things with physics, got to know a bit about universe that gave the perspective on existence and stuff.
It was not too long my curiosity took me to learn CPUs and it's components.
Well, from there it was deep 90° slope and I'm still diving down, I just simply can't stop myself.1 -
Because I got paid to do stuff I was already doing for free...
And because business school didn't get me a "guaranteed" high paying job 10yrs also. -
For the challenge:
The challenge of living within your means when you start out then realising that no company gives the payrises and/or bonuses stipulated as possible in the contract or 'a sure thing' by the recruiter, such that what was comfortably your living within your means becomes living well outside your means thanks to inflation, and no pay review to make things match.
OR
Because I like to do work that either never gets used, or gets rewritten and fucked by the apprentice before anyone attempts to use it.2 -
Everyone else complains about the lack of tooling, shitty online tools or technical analphabetic coworkers. While all of these happen to devs, they're much, much rarer.
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Well, you share ideas with like-minded individuals, you work on what you like and you try to make the most out of it, and maybe get famous on the way (a small bonus). We progress the current technology to the edge using more efficient software. It’s basically answering a question: what is “peak performance” in the blend of hardware and software.
At least that’s how I feel about it.
:P6 -
The top reason was probably the people I surrounded myself with. I always loved computers and, as a result always joined cool tech-based clubs when I heard about them. The teachers there were also Devs and could do some awesome things with the code they wrote.
Hence me downloading eclipse and everything after... -
If you like developing apps, then it may be a nice idea to work as a developer. In my case, developing was my hobby while I was in school. And after school, I started working as a dev.
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It's a form of artistic expression for some people (like me) who aren't as great with paper and pen but still have ideas and patterns and concepts and abstractions to express.
Watching the data just flow through the pipelines and pathways you've laid down for it, creating spectacles from what is essentially electricity running through a rock. Being able to create an interface between a human mind and an inanimate dead block of dug out and processed ore, feels like tapping into the metaphysical.
(Yeah I'm pretentious with words) -
1) After many years of development the thing that grew the most is my capability to troubleshoot much more easily most issues, both physical or virtual, with greater enjoyment from such accomplishments.
2) The power to create something from nothing is a great feeling, especially if you keep on personal projects and most of your dev passion you keep it outside the working environment.
3) Career paths can easily be opened in case you live development as an infinite cycle of adaptation and improvement.