For me, think it's probably more your second idea, that we're not funneling media through a handful of TV channels, newspapers, etc. anymore like we used to. This creates (for better or worse) more of a "group think" mentality, since they've all seen the same tv shows and movies, and become more in sync with their views on all things, cultural, political... So people's sense of fashion is also in sync as well as the need to fit in.
That was a really interesting article. It does show though why Ukraine's relatively small army is able to punch above its weight class vs the more poorly train and led Russians. Was a great read:)
Agree that physical sciences, on one aspect, are inherently more difficult, Especially in research, the problems are more difficult to solve because they are limited by the physical world.
But also think that is what makes dev work so difficult, because our "build times" are so short. Because we aren't limited by the real world, we can build our entire system often in seconds and then test them, which allows us to move fast and generate enormous amounts of complexity. While with physical sciences, during an experiment, the "build time" for their tests is typically much slower, often taking hours or days, so they can only deal with a limited number of variables and information at once.
Also think that is what makes software engineers often good at working in other technical domains, we have a lot techniques and hands on experience in dealing with large complex systems, much of which carries over to non-software problems...
(... but my saying this is admittedly half theoretical, because personally, haven't actually applied this to an actual science field, only to things like small construction projects and to the field of music theory, and yeah, super helpful)
think this is more about that there is a variety of types of work in tech. As you probably have experienced yourself, if you join a fast moving startup, they'll work you to the bone, whereas a large, a wealthy corporation will let you just go to meetings 50% of the time.
Hmm, i guess in my opinion, think most devs would agree that startups in general are more work than the average corporate job. Maybe we don't have a basis to have a discussion if we don't hold common beliefs in our field. No worries I guess (shrug)
Maybe it's time to switch to a new role/project?? :)
But, agree, many tech jobs require you to initially mount a difficult learning curve, then coast, doing the same thing over and over (although, for better and for worse, this was rarely what my jobs in tech were like. Was always jumping around having to learn new things).
hmm, kind of feel like you're cherry-picking the most difficult versions of those jobs. No need to to into too much depth, but for instance, yeah, not all fast-food employees are working two jobs (many seem to be high-schoolers?). Not all farmers own their own business and are employees. I had a roommate who was a truck driver. He was simply an employee and worked a 9-5 and didn't own his own truck (many of them do, but this is becoming less common).
Although, I agree, there is a lot of blue-collar work that is tough, especially on the body - have done a few weeks of construction work myself, it can destroy your body quickly if you don't learn how to pace yourself and use your body correctly (it's not something I personally would ever want to do long term). But there is also a ton of cushy blue-collar work that are easy - my roommate works at an Amazon warehouse, and she says that her role is mindless work that anyone can do sorting items in boxes.
Yeah, I am probably somewhat biased, but saying that the average fast-food employee's job is more difficult that an average SWE's job (with its deadlines, stress and politics, not to mention all the years of studying), that seems like a stretch. I'm all for the blue-collar worker, but let's be reasonable. Yeah, at least from what I've seen, often, it's not their jobs that are tough, it's the circumstances of their life (many of course are low paying, which makes everything difficult) and lack of advantages they had growing up...
... although, I do admit there are a lot of devs that once they get over the learning curve just coast at their jobs, learning little that is new and working on the same system year after years. Hmm, interesting...
I wouldn't do much calling it cherry picking as looking at people who choose something as a career path. For example: a high school student, or even a university student, working in fast food aren't fully supporting themselves with the job (nevermind supporting a family). Farm labourers are also different from farmers. Truck driving is all over the map, but most variants have their own stressors.
I'm not going to pretend that software development is devoid of stress. That said, virtually every job has stress, deadlines, politics, and other such nonsense.
If we look at their lives outside of work, can see where you're coming from (as mentioned, a few of my current and past roommates worked blue-collar jobs, and couple of them really had a tough time financially, and one of them emotionally). But if we're talking about the job themselves, as mentioned, seems like most blue-collar jobs are less demanding, and is stable at many levels, and doesn't require much training.
Yeah, at least to me in this thread, seems like we were referring to jobs themselves, not their overall lives.
But, I do agree, if we look at their lives overall compared to white collar, it seems like it can be just as stressful, especially because of the lack advantages growing up (growing up in a stable financial household, education, resources...).
Writing software underneath MBAs who are clueless about engineering, driven by sales and marketing teams who are clueless about engineering, constantly "sprinting" to get stuff out the door...
There's a lot of stuff in the industry to suck any joy out of writing software
True, all the crap that we have to deal with does make you question why you're doing it - thought of another one, often, you're working on some very small piece of a feature you don't care about, working for months on end.
Still, for me, at some level always enjoy the act of building something that needs to function in the demanding environment of the digital world (especially, high-volume applications). Yeah, it requires you to use your experience and training to solve difficult problems and produce a real result. For me at least, this typically enough to keep me going:)
Appreciate the sentiment, but in my humble opinion, seems like they should lean into creating even better automated testing, because adding all the new bugs to their suite of automated tests would be a more certain way to decrease their chance of happening again.
But, in a sense, this still incorporates your idea, because the devs and QA must be given the mandate of finding these bugs, and also towards making the automated tests cover the bug's related test cases (as well as charged with improving the test code itself, which is often in a mediocre state in most code bases I've seen at least).
Haven't coded for a couple years (but have been a dev for two decades) and haven't used LLM's myself for coding (not against this), so am really just curious, wouldn't you want to know if a dev can solve and understand problems themselves?
Because it seems like tougher real-world technical problems (where there are tons of dependencies with other systems in addition to technical and business requirements) needs for the dev to have an understanding of how things work, and if you rely on an LLM, you may not gain enough of an understanding of what's going on to solve problems like this...
... Although, I could see how devs that are more focused on application development and knowing the business domain is their key skill, wouldn't need to have as strong an understanding of the technical (no judgement here, have been in this role myself at times).
> Haven't coded for a couple years (but have been a dev for two decades) and haven't used LLM's myself for coding (not against this), so am really just curious, wouldn't you want to know if a dev can solve and understand problems themselves?
Yes, definitely, though I lean more on the 1:1 interviews for that. I understand the resistance to this from developers, but there's a lot of repetition across the industry in product engineering, and so of course it can be significantly optimized with automation. But, you still need good human brains to make most architectural decisions, and to develop IP.
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