'Just Let Me Code!'

An anonymous reader writes: Andrew Binstock has an article about the ever-increasing complexity required to write code. He says, "I got into programming because I like creating stuff. Not just any stuff, but stuff other people find useful. I like the constant problem solving, the use of abstractions that exist for long periods nowhere but in my imagination, and I like seeing the transformation into a living presence. ... The simple programs of a few hundred lines of C++ long ago disappeared from my experience. What was the experience of riding a bicycle has become the equivalent of traveling by jumbo jet; replete with the delays, inspections, limitations on personal choices, and sudden, unexplained cancellations — all at a significantly higher cost. ... Project overhead, even for simple projects, is so heavy that it's a wonder anyone can find the time to code, much less derive joy from it. Software development has become a mostly operational activity, rather than a creative one. The fundamental problem here is not the complexity of apps, but the complexity of tools. Tools have gone rather haywire during the last decade chasing shibboleths of scalability, comprehensiveness, performance. Everything except simplicity."

Comments

Code the way you want...

[Anonymous Coward]

...just do it on your own time, and don't expect people to pay for it.

He who pays the piper calls the tune...

Re:Code the way you want...

[Sowelu]

May I also suggest that you make your work and your hobby /different languages/, so you can more easily separate them. When I've worked and coded-for-fun in Java at the same time, I'm miserable. When I started taking up C# at home (can the language hate, it's fine for small projects) I had a lot more fun. Work in the web industry? Write native apps for a hobby! You CAN code for work and for fun, but only if the projects are different enough that you can get in an entirely different headspace while having fun.

"Just let me build a bridge!"

[horm]

Engineering any complex system requires a significant amount of planning and management overhead. When you want to build a bridge, you don't just throw a bunch of construction workers at it and trust them to make the best judgements, even though you might trust each one of them individually to build a sawhorse or something equally trivial.

Re:"Just let me build a bridge!"

[aix tom]

I agree, and that is actually a pretty good example on how it could/should work in IT also.

You have an architect or an engineer to make the general plans, then split that into chunks the individual construction workers can handle, and then let them do their job. On top of that you have some sort of infrastructure specialist, who might not know much about bridges, but has determined that there is a traffic bottleneck at point X that needs a bridge.

I would be perfectly happy to be either the architect or the construction worker in a project, but (for projects larger than a sawhorse) those two people SHOULDN'T be the same person. I that sense I sometime would also like to scream "Just let me Code!" instead of dragging me into all sorts of management meetings where people just sit around going "Say, wouldn't a bridge be nice?" First decide THAT you want a bridge, then decide WHERE you want a bridge, only then come to me to be the architect and get someone else to code, or get an architect that then gets me to code.

But in IT a lot of unnecessary overhead is caused because people call big meetings of construction workers before having even decided if they want a bridge or not.

Cue the "artist" vs. the "engineer"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a old song and dance. It's easy to create software, but it is difficult to create and maintain good software.

Apply Sturgeon's Law and be done with it.

I'm tired of whiny youngsters, and not-so-young wimps who think they can program because they took a few classes, or got hired by a tech company who was desperate to hire anybody with even the slightest talent.

Like the whining by Phil Fish in Indie Game movie about it being hard to write video games. Duh.

Get over yourself, it's called work. Many people including many programmers have being doing it for several decades now.

Re: Just let me do brain surgery!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actuall, during a surgery every scalpel move does not need to be pre-approved by some clueless administrator. The surgeon knows his job and does it with great freedom. He/She 'just do' brain surgery

Nobody would survive a brain surgery if a physician would have to go through the same hurdles as a professional programmer

Re:Who is stopping him?

[Motherfucking Shit]

Let's say you're a competent Java developer and you'd like to build an Android app. I wish you the best of luck!

First you're going to need to pick an IDE. I've always used Eclipse and hey look, there's an Android SDK for Eclipse. Perfect! Download, extract, fire it up... Errors. This version of Android SDK requires Android API version foo, you have version (foo - 9), please use the SDK manager to upgrade. The hell, the IDE bundle doesn't even launch out of the box?

Alright, so you're distributing your IDE with an outdated version of your API, I can forgive that. Run SDK Manager like it suggested, let it do its thing,. Update available for SDK tools and SDK platform tools, looks good, do it! ...And, errors. Package not found, blah blah, let's see what Google has to say about this one.

OK, apparently hundreds of other developers are having the same problem and have, after much wrangling, figured out a solution on their own. I see, I have to go into SDK Manager Settings, create a new User-Defined Add-On Site pointing to https://dl-ssl.google.com/andr... because the URL that ships with the IDE is missing the "s" in "https" and that server doesn't have the right packages available to download. That highly intuitive process would surely have been my first try anyway, but at least someone else found the fix.

SDK Manager seems to find the packages now, great! Got past that hurdle so let's do the upgrade. Wait, now what! What do you mean you can't upgrade to SDK Tools rev. 23 while SDK Platform Tools 19.0.2 is installed? I checked the boxes to upgrade them both; if Platform Tools has to hit rev. 20 before SDK Tools can be upgraded, why is the installer going in the wrong order?

If and when you finally get the actual goddamned IDE installed and working, have fun with the official developer tutorials to create your first "Hello World" app. See, the API has changed over the years^Wmonth^Wpast week and so the app architecture that the tutorial talks about isn't valid anymore. XML files that it says should be there, aren't, so there's no way to follow along in the tutorial by editing them.

I gave up on Android and won't touch it again unless I'm being paid to.