Software is eating the world: Why you need to question your current career | Hacker News Reader

Software is eating the world: Why you need to question your current career

cognitiveosman.com

Some things are inherently transient (i.e. will be discarded and rewritten) so why not do them as quickly as possible and use the latest and greatest? Examples: a business dashboard (yes they still exist) or some back end for an IoT gadget that will probably get canceled, and if not, well, you won't be around (but today you will be rewarded for speed).

Some things will outlast your lifetime. COBOL banking systems are still undergoing active maintenance, and the aircraft reservation systems are stuck in the 60s/70s. Unmanned sacecraft can operate for decades and the hardware, at least, is not replaceable.

The trick is to figure out the non-obvious criteria that cause the thing you're working on to fall into one of the other bucket. Nobody thought the banking systems would last so long (else there wouldn't have been a Y2K crunch). And some of those quick-and-dirty business systems stick around forever.

Really nice dimension you highlighted - It is indeed many legacy systems are running business critical application which are quite expensive to replace, we see that in the finance, insurance, banking, and aviation domain. On important dimension to consider when learning technologies is to always invest on learning the fundamentals which rarely change with time. For example, investing on developing sound understanding of TCP/IP protocol will be helpful regardless of what technology vendor you will use and the basics remain (almost timeless)

What about time to learn? I am one of those older average devs stuck in small scale design and development tasks that start to feel like a burden when you are on the wrong side of 40s. Time or lack of it seems a bigger factor right now as compared to the points mentioned in the article. Finding time to learn something new while fulfilling one's responsibilities in life while trying to desperately hold on to the current job feels overwhelming. Time management in short might be more useful than all the other things combined. Or maybe i am just an old geezer.

Well, Indeed I agree: It is quite challenging to balance learning, life, and career development. Actually, I am planning to write a specific article on this - How to properly choose and learn technologies. I have an article on time management you might like https://www.cognitiveosman.com/few-tips-and-tricks-you-are-m...

My stack is interesting. It's about SQL.

Non-programmers could learn, understand and use SQL for their need.

So, i migrated from a RoR stack, which uses Active Record into the SQL to API approach. That means, i put non-programmers into the center of my stack.

That said, developers will need to build more strong abstraction, so that non-programmers could stand on their own to build their things. It's not the job of developers.

Developers is to build foundation.

Do you have any resources to learn about this approach? First time hearing about something like that and it sounds interesting

Hi revskill, seems very cool! I would glad to know more about the stack.

Hi, there're many SQL to API solutions there, any one could work.

What i mean is, if i would be not the maintainer of my projects later on, i don't need developers to maintain (and maybe adding features), because non-programmers could use SQL to build their stuffs.

So, the less code for logic, the better.

> investment in recent and modern technologies could be cumbersome on the beginning, but they will be very rewarding in forms of higher support, better UX and productivity

I'm incredible tired of this productivity phrase being thrown around at whim. These claims are rarely verified.

Well, I agree the statement could be over-generalized. It is indeed case by case. For example, I can objectively claim that React based website with modern UX will have higher user experience as compared to static HTML - the claims are easily verifiable on the extreme ends. But on the other hand, is Flutter better than React Native just because it is newer or will provide more business value? I find it tough to answer without sound experience and analysis.

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