Fully retired now and one of the things I’d like to do is get back into hobby programming through the exploration of new and new-to-me programming languages. Who knows, I might even write something useful someday!

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I didn’t suggest otherwise. I was merely pointing at a couple of examples where some pretty smart, pretty experienced people used Go to successfully implement entire collections of algorithms in some very performance-sensitive systems. It’s just by coincidence that I chose those examples because that is where my study is right now. Ask me in a year and I might point to your project as an example when the next person is asking for similar advice.

    If Go isn’t going to be fast enough to perform your task, then you’re probably going to be sorely disappointed when you finally get the performance you’re after and then have to stick it at the end of a wire with all kinds of stuff between you and your end users:

    Operating systems, databases, hardware, virtual machines, containers, webservers, firewalls, routers, HTML/CSS/whatever, DNS, certificate authorities, more routers and firewalls, ISPs, modems, more routers and firewalls, WiFi connected machines of all kinds, and random browsers implementing any of several different rendering engines.

    Quite frankly I can’t imagine a language that won’t offer enough performance to meet your needs in that environment.




  • That IT subject matter like cybersecurity and admin work is exactly the same as coding,

    I think this is the root cause of the absolute mess that is produced when the wrong people are in charge. I call it the “nerd equivalency” problem, the idea that you can just hire what are effectively random people with “IT” or “computer” in their background and get good results.

    From car software to government websites to IoT, there are too many people with often very good ideas, but with only money and authority, not the awareness that it takes a collection of specialists working in collaboration to actually do things right. They are further hampered by their own background in that “doing it right” is measurable only by some combination of quarterly financial results and the money flowing into their own pockets.


  • I’ve always thought the best way to kill a hobby was to turn it into a job.

    100%

    I tried turning my hobby of programming into my job. On the surface, I was reasonably successful, but the most enjoyable aspects of my hobby had to be set aside in favour of actual productivity.

    Worse, the fact that I actually got pleasure from my work left me open to exploitation. When I finally woke up to that, I ditched programming in favour of “just a job” that paid the bills and was about a million times happier as a result. It’s only recently, 15 years after leaving the field, that I find myself once again drawn back to programming.


  • In the spirit of “-10x is dragging everyone else down” I offer my take on +10x:

    It’s not about personal productivity. It’s about the collective productivity that comes from developing and implementing processes that take advantage of all levels of skill, from neophyte to master, in ways that foster the growth of others, both in skill and in their ability to mentor, guide, and foster the growth of others. The ultimate goal is the “creation” of more masters and “multipliers” while making room for those whose aptitudes, desires, and ambitions differ from your own.



  • But typically when a field becomes more affordable, it goes up in demand, not down, because the target audience that can afford the service grows exponentially.

    I’ve always been very up front with the fact that I could not have made a career out of programming without tools like Delphi and Visual Basic. I’m simply not productive enough to have to also transcribe my mental images into text to get useful and productive UIs.

    All of my employers and the vast majority of my clients were small businesses with fewer than 150 employees and most had fewer than a dozen employees. Not a one of them could afford a programmer who had to type everything out.

    If that’s what happens with AI tooling, then I’m all for it. There are still far too many small businesses, village administrators, and the like being left using general purpose office “productivity” software instead of something tailored to their actual needs.