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Comment by tester756 | Hacker News Reader

If you feel like "modern programming is boring configuration mess"

then ask yourself - what have you done in order to have interesting job, projects, challenges, etc?

I mean, if you decided at some point that $big_salary for throwing JSONs via REST from CRUD app

is what you want to do until you pay your loans (e.g decade), then it's fine, but don't be shocked that you aren't doing bleeding edge R&D at some fancy place.

Like what prevents you from putting effort for year? two? and switching from X to Y?

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Capability trap. Not everyone is capable of effectively working 2 jobs at once, and generally speaking no matter how big that $big_salary is you aren't going to have more money or time.

Also there are lots of way for a company to say they are doing interesting/meaningful things or whatever and effectively not be. And no matter how great the work you may be doing, you don't want to be doing it if it doesn't pay enough.

So the only way is to complain whole life?

Most of the time life is "choose the least shitty option" and not "choose the best option".

That's just the world we live in.

I mean, if you can’t, or don’t want to change your situation, it’s an effective outlet. There’s also more than enough people feeling the same to commiserate, so you’ll never be alone.

"leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."

Lets not reduce this article to "complaining", it didn't just say "modern software development sucks" and be done with it. The author gave an overview on what she thinks is wrong about the field, with a fairly detailed example and references. Even if you disagree with her take, these kinds of articles force us to reflect on the state of the industry. There is nothing wrong with that.

Should we be mindlessly churning away taking no issue with the state we're in?

tbf I've been mostly focused on HN's comment section's opinion

Every project I worked on was JS/Node hell. Then I decided to switch to Elixir/Erlang and now I’m much happier. Of course, there are uninteresting or badly engineered projects but overall it’s much better.

There's a true joy in working with some languages. It's like using a great pen or driving a well-made car. You get focus and flow.

F#. Wield the power of .NET with functional programming and beautiful syntax.

If you feel like "modern programming is boring configuration mess"

then ask yourself - what have you done in order to have interesting job, projects, challenges, etc?

These two things don't connect to each other at all

How so?

How do they not connect? How do they connect?

Yup - how do they not connect in your opinion?

It's not a yes or no question, I'm asking you to explain how these two separate things have anything to do with each other. The burden of proof is on you, you're the one who said it and you're asking me to prove a negative.

wut? what "proof" are you talking about, there's nothing to prove.

The connection is simple: If you don't like something, you're free to change it (in this case)

If you feel like your job is easy and you feel bored, then you're free to quit and apply to place which will challenge you.

If you expect that some magic will happen and one day you will come to your job and you'll be tasked with coding spaceship, then you're optimistic as hell.

So, the question stands - what did you do in order to improve your situation? if nothing, then do not expect magic to happen because that's unlikely.

> Like what prevents you from putting effort for year? two? and switching from X to Y?

I don't think it only takes 1 yr to switch to something interesting. Any R&D lab wants you have a phd with published papers.

The first step you can do is: actually start working with this on daily basis

Maybe over years you'll gain an expertise to work in research, idk.

for sure. beats complaining having to write crud.

> then ask yourself - what have you done in order to have interesting job, projects, challenges, etc?

This thousand times for all the whiners. Learn an esoteric skill, get hired for esoteric job.

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