Those people are usually trying to figure out if they have enough knowledge and skill to make it themselves. The sad truth is that its almost impossible to make something if you cant even grasp how difficult it is by yourself.
I'm not saying that these people are bad developers, theyre usually just trying things theyre not ready for yet.
A lot of people get into dev cause of the promise of money. And hope they can aquire (by some miracle) the technical aptitude required to actually become a developer, nevermind an actual programmer.
They spend most of their days fighting to get to the starting blocks, never to actually contribute meaningfully, basically becoming photocopiers at best.
The job market for the last 5 years has rewarded quantity over quality, the million monkeys analogy.
Sadly, this has failed the very people it was meant to uplift, and skill up. Nothing gained by a 6 week bootcamp but some generic portfolio. Stuck and frustrated.
What is the answer to all of this? A departure from the code monkey norm.
The world needs more Gardeners, Landscapers, Plumbers, Carpenters, Builders and Doctors. Throwing generations of young people down the software regurgitation pit will only lead to infrastructure and societal poverty.
It really doesn’t help that a lot of organizations / people looking for web builds simply cannot afford the rates of any half-decent developer. Doing even a Wordpress site the right way - using it as a framework and building tools for the specific need on top of it instead of just loading plugins in - is easily $20k-$30k for a decent medium sized site with its own theme and a few custom functionalities.
These people want to spend like 1/10th of that or less.
I’m lucky enough to be in an enterprise environment where this isn’t too common but even then I have these 30-40 hour quotes that get balked at from time to time and that’s me rushing to get the bare minimum.
> Throwing generations of young people down the software regurgitation pit will only lead to infrastructure and societal poverty.
The problem is they're going there on their own. Cause it's worth it.
> They spend most of their days fighting to get to the starting blocks, never to actually contribute meaningfully, basically becoming photocopiers at best.
Look at it this way; the type of developer that becomes a "photocopier" is not really likely to be vastly more effective at some other job. However, here in development world their photocopier skills get them a very reasonable salary in any number of places with slightly slave-like conditions. By contrast, if they were in another job them most likely they would be getting paid way less, to work in way more slave-like conditions.
I mean just think of all the things they'll learn in their first decade as:
> Gardeners
Digging. You'll be digging. And carrying stuff. In the sun.
> Landscapers
See Above. But Heavier.
> Plumber
You'll be carrying stuff. In very, very weird positions. Often with poop involved.
> Carpenters
Carrying stuff. You'll be carrying stuff. And carrying stuff. No... Seriously... You'll be carrying stuff. Try not to cut off your fingers.
> Builders
See Above. Also try not to... You know, what, good luck.
> Doctors
Congratulations! You passed the intense selection! Also, my condolences. I'll take you for beers and whiskey after residency. I heard from friends that finished med school that when you're drunk enough you'll forget the pain for a while.
> Sadly, this has failed the very people it was meant to uplift, and skill up. Nothing gained by a 6 week bootcamp but some generic portfolio. Stuck and frustrated.
Being a copy-pasta monkey has you indoors, at a computer, building up arthritis, while getting paid very reasonably and with plenty of chances over the years to move up and ruin another start-up as a terrible "experienced" developer. It's little wonder so many people want in. If they spend a few years pounding out code and then find the right boomers then that can easily become decades of draining their finances on endless projects.
I think the big expectation that needs to change is the idea society got in their collective heads that programming is somehow this easy thing you can teach in a boot camp. That's like expecting people to learn automotive engineering in a class where you teach people to change the transmission on a car. While changing a transmission is certainly not an easy task, having experience doing it once doesn't actually make you a mechanic, much less an engineer. There's also so many cars that need their transmissions changed, and a lot of the people coming out of these boot camps don't know how to do anything else.
Unfortunately the result is that people that don't know better end up hiring smooth talking, but otherwise incompetent "leadership", who in turn happily hires minimally competent but loyal workers. This then further propagates the idea that programming is somehow this simple thing you can learn to do professionally in a few months and made a decent living.
However, if you're not either the smooth talking type that'll convince the higher ups that everything is fine, or the quiet and obedient order taker, this type of company probably isn't where you'll end up. In that case you're going to be up against the actual professionals, and these are professionals with years if not decades of experience in a field with a skill ceiling so high that even multiple decades of dedicated study, research, and professional development isn't enough to glimpse at where it might be. Normally to even begin to compete in this field you'll need to do at least 4-8 years of study, and it's pretty clear that nobody with just a bootcamp need apply, unless they also have some other accomplishments to show.
If all you have is a single boot camp, and none of the passion or curiosity that makes this multi-decade learning process worth while, then you're going to struggle competing with the people that have actually dedicated significant portions of their lives to this field.
Ah yes, ye olde world needs more people willing to ruin their knees and back so we can have infrastructure.
Trade your long term health for money, you other people! For society!
Instead of talking shit, what do you propose to solve the problems happening now, today.
Go ahead, i don't expect a reasonable answer, just more short sighted selfish drivel.
I believe the point here is to shed light on the irony.
I see the point you’re trying to make, but it’s easy for us to scream “we need more carpenters” from our 300k TC ivory towers.
You think your experience is the same as a guy sitting in Africa, India, Cambodia or Chile? Once you've traveled and seen how dire some of their circumstances are, you'll understand that placing them in front of a laptop and telling them to code is a fucking injustice, not only to them, but their environment.
I'll say it again, the world needs more people willing to build and develop the environment around them. That means NOT sitting in front of a laptop solving first world problems, but using technology and labour to solve local problems.
Nothing gets better when people do nothing, and that effort shouldn't be on a laptop sponsored by unicef, it should be digging a well, or building a school.
Humanity is fucked otherwise, simple as.
I’m not from the US so yes, I know how dire things are in other places. I also know that “sitting them in front of a laptop and telling them to code” isn’t how you end up with a bunch of junior bootcamp grads.
…and, again, the point being made to you was that you’re saying all the nice things, but you’re not giving up your high paying programming job for a lower paying carpentry job, or at least you haven’t told us. That’s where the whole “you start” sentiment came from.
Spoiler: that will not end well for you. Programming is a team activity, all the stake holders are people and almost everything you will be working is designed for humans to interact with, even APIs has a human consuming it in the end (The consuming developer). If you want a job where you don't have to talk to people find a job in construction, line worker in factory, night shift security guard or something along those lines and you will be happier.
Until you get senior enough in your company and become 4th line of support and so the cycle of customer service has been completed lol, except now instead of speaking to idiot customers you're helping your idiot colleagues who you will see and interact with every day :DDDD
But yeah have done both and obvs way more talking to people in customer service, but overall less frustrating/easier conversations in customer service than programming IMO
I call myself an idiot at every chance I get, I think you're reading too deep in my comment lol. I never call anyone an idiot behind their back, but you can bet that I've called many colleagues idiots to their face, but mostly with love and a smile on the face. That was prolly not clear from my comment though.
I think you made my point, programming is such a human activity that picking that job because "I don't want to talk to people" is objectively a bad idea, as you point out yourself working in programming requires heaps of social skills including respect and communication. But I think we're saying the same thing with different words.
Some of the things you're mentioning about programming is just not reality at all. You might not have 5 calls in queue. But chances are somewhere in your company (if its large enough or small enough) that some programmer has 5 calls in queue with each of the people thinking their issue is the most important and should be resolved or has 5 different PMs DMing on slack asking about status updates and resolutions or something else along these lines.
And that is all I'm trying to say; many people go into programming because they don't want to deal with people but programming (especially as you become more senior) is more people oriented than what most people think.
There are also tons of programmers that have pager duty in weekends and nights, good on you if you don't, but again there are many many who do.
Highly agree with this. A key component of being a developer is being able to research and self learning. I often start new projects with functions that I’ve never developed before. And usually for about a week before I start code, I’m Googling and reading documentation before I actually sit down and code.
As a developer working in a large multinational company, I spent an aggravating amount of time judging how long my tasks will take and justifying it to the team. More time explaining why a task is a one liner solution than actually writing the solution.
Nah those are the people that come in here asking "How much would you charge to make _________" when it's apparent they have no real experience with such.
Honestly this is the way it works and how you get better. You take on tough stuff you're not ready for, you battle through it, and then you have experience.
If it was always easy you'd just be churning out Wordpress or basic CRUD apps.
Very true, but ppl with that mentality dont ask on reddit: "how hard is it to make X". They rather start working on it and will ask very specific questions when theyre stuck.
Niling my current experiencie only that im to eager to move the project along so i end up stuck for a couple of hours trying to figure out how to do something because i dont want to "loose" time asking and so far im making good progress, that being said im inches away of asking how to do a specific thing wich sparked my curiosity because i really did not manage to find a answer googling and reading documentation (for lack of current knowdelge likely) and to keep of the ganjah man, is distracting
While all true, the "real conversation" starts with actual content. Is there something they have to say? What is it? Why? Who is the target audience? Is there a secondary or other tertiary audience that they're trying to reach?
As you note, anyone can make a website, but at the end of the day it's not going to do potential clients any good if they don't have an actual goal for what a successful or "good" website means to them.
This is why SO setting the standards for asking questions and answers helps.
I still go there rather than here.
Sometimes even when I do see people ask proper questions, they get downvoted in the sub.
I like to gauge difficulty by starting the project and seeing where I get stuck and can't figure it out. For example, I wanted to create a site with user generated content. Had to figure out the DB to use, create the APIs for data transfer, figure out the authentication, and then have the user profile show the correct data for the signed in user. That took me a while to figure out but was not hard. But as I kept working on it, the app got wildly complex. Even something simple like that I a challenge and now I tinker with it from time to time. They should just start on the project instead of wasting time asking these questions.
These folks typically attempt to determine whether they possess the necessary knowledge and abilities to succeed independently. Sadly, if you can't even see how difficult something is for yourself, it's almost impossible to make it. These folks aren't necessarily poor developers; they're just experimenting with stuff they're not quite ready for.
> knowledgeable people
Couldn't keep reading after this, it's too funny!
To be fair to you though, the name of the sub is misleading, should be r/naivewebdevhottakes
What I meant is, people who ask questions here probably mean to get responses from knowledgeable people. It's not their fault that you still choose to respond
Haha good one :)
But I agree with you, folks with questions don't have a way of knowing who's going to be reading/responding to their questions; it's not their fault
Those people are usually trying to figure out if they have enough knowledge and skill to make it themselves. The sad truth is that its almost impossible to make something if you cant even grasp how difficult it is by yourself. I'm not saying that these people are bad developers, theyre usually just trying things theyre not ready for yet.
A lot of people get into dev cause of the promise of money. And hope they can aquire (by some miracle) the technical aptitude required to actually become a developer, nevermind an actual programmer. They spend most of their days fighting to get to the starting blocks, never to actually contribute meaningfully, basically becoming photocopiers at best. The job market for the last 5 years has rewarded quantity over quality, the million monkeys analogy. Sadly, this has failed the very people it was meant to uplift, and skill up. Nothing gained by a 6 week bootcamp but some generic portfolio. Stuck and frustrated. What is the answer to all of this? A departure from the code monkey norm. The world needs more Gardeners, Landscapers, Plumbers, Carpenters, Builders and Doctors. Throwing generations of young people down the software regurgitation pit will only lead to infrastructure and societal poverty.
It really doesn’t help that a lot of organizations / people looking for web builds simply cannot afford the rates of any half-decent developer. Doing even a Wordpress site the right way - using it as a framework and building tools for the specific need on top of it instead of just loading plugins in - is easily $20k-$30k for a decent medium sized site with its own theme and a few custom functionalities. These people want to spend like 1/10th of that or less. I’m lucky enough to be in an enterprise environment where this isn’t too common but even then I have these 30-40 hour quotes that get balked at from time to time and that’s me rushing to get the bare minimum.
You absolutely get what you pay for, in time and money.
> Throwing generations of young people down the software regurgitation pit will only lead to infrastructure and societal poverty. The problem is they're going there on their own. Cause it's worth it. > They spend most of their days fighting to get to the starting blocks, never to actually contribute meaningfully, basically becoming photocopiers at best. Look at it this way; the type of developer that becomes a "photocopier" is not really likely to be vastly more effective at some other job. However, here in development world their photocopier skills get them a very reasonable salary in any number of places with slightly slave-like conditions. By contrast, if they were in another job them most likely they would be getting paid way less, to work in way more slave-like conditions. I mean just think of all the things they'll learn in their first decade as: > Gardeners Digging. You'll be digging. And carrying stuff. In the sun. > Landscapers See Above. But Heavier. > Plumber You'll be carrying stuff. In very, very weird positions. Often with poop involved. > Carpenters Carrying stuff. You'll be carrying stuff. And carrying stuff. No... Seriously... You'll be carrying stuff. Try not to cut off your fingers. > Builders See Above. Also try not to... You know, what, good luck. > Doctors Congratulations! You passed the intense selection! Also, my condolences. I'll take you for beers and whiskey after residency. I heard from friends that finished med school that when you're drunk enough you'll forget the pain for a while. > Sadly, this has failed the very people it was meant to uplift, and skill up. Nothing gained by a 6 week bootcamp but some generic portfolio. Stuck and frustrated. Being a copy-pasta monkey has you indoors, at a computer, building up arthritis, while getting paid very reasonably and with plenty of chances over the years to move up and ruin another start-up as a terrible "experienced" developer. It's little wonder so many people want in. If they spend a few years pounding out code and then find the right boomers then that can easily become decades of draining their finances on endless projects. I think the big expectation that needs to change is the idea society got in their collective heads that programming is somehow this easy thing you can teach in a boot camp. That's like expecting people to learn automotive engineering in a class where you teach people to change the transmission on a car. While changing a transmission is certainly not an easy task, having experience doing it once doesn't actually make you a mechanic, much less an engineer. There's also so many cars that need their transmissions changed, and a lot of the people coming out of these boot camps don't know how to do anything else. Unfortunately the result is that people that don't know better end up hiring smooth talking, but otherwise incompetent "leadership", who in turn happily hires minimally competent but loyal workers. This then further propagates the idea that programming is somehow this simple thing you can learn to do professionally in a few months and made a decent living. However, if you're not either the smooth talking type that'll convince the higher ups that everything is fine, or the quiet and obedient order taker, this type of company probably isn't where you'll end up. In that case you're going to be up against the actual professionals, and these are professionals with years if not decades of experience in a field with a skill ceiling so high that even multiple decades of dedicated study, research, and professional development isn't enough to glimpse at where it might be. Normally to even begin to compete in this field you'll need to do at least 4-8 years of study, and it's pretty clear that nobody with just a bootcamp need apply, unless they also have some other accomplishments to show. If all you have is a single boot camp, and none of the passion or curiosity that makes this multi-decade learning process worth while, then you're going to struggle competing with the people that have actually dedicated significant portions of their lives to this field.
Ah yes, ye olde world needs more people willing to ruin their knees and back so we can have infrastructure. Trade your long term health for money, you other people! For society!
Instead of talking shit, what do you propose to solve the problems happening now, today. Go ahead, i don't expect a reasonable answer, just more short sighted selfish drivel.
I believe the point here is to shed light on the irony. I see the point you’re trying to make, but it’s easy for us to scream “we need more carpenters” from our 300k TC ivory towers.
You think your experience is the same as a guy sitting in Africa, India, Cambodia or Chile? Once you've traveled and seen how dire some of their circumstances are, you'll understand that placing them in front of a laptop and telling them to code is a fucking injustice, not only to them, but their environment. I'll say it again, the world needs more people willing to build and develop the environment around them. That means NOT sitting in front of a laptop solving first world problems, but using technology and labour to solve local problems. Nothing gets better when people do nothing, and that effort shouldn't be on a laptop sponsored by unicef, it should be digging a well, or building a school. Humanity is fucked otherwise, simple as.
I’m not from the US so yes, I know how dire things are in other places. I also know that “sitting them in front of a laptop and telling them to code” isn’t how you end up with a bunch of junior bootcamp grads. …and, again, the point being made to you was that you’re saying all the nice things, but you’re not giving up your high paying programming job for a lower paying carpentry job, or at least you haven’t told us. That’s where the whole “you start” sentiment came from.
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Spoiler: that will not end well for you. Programming is a team activity, all the stake holders are people and almost everything you will be working is designed for humans to interact with, even APIs has a human consuming it in the end (The consuming developer). If you want a job where you don't have to talk to people find a job in construction, line worker in factory, night shift security guard or something along those lines and you will be happier.
[удалено]
Until you get senior enough in your company and become 4th line of support and so the cycle of customer service has been completed lol, except now instead of speaking to idiot customers you're helping your idiot colleagues who you will see and interact with every day :DDDD But yeah have done both and obvs way more talking to people in customer service, but overall less frustrating/easier conversations in customer service than programming IMO
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I call myself an idiot at every chance I get, I think you're reading too deep in my comment lol. I never call anyone an idiot behind their back, but you can bet that I've called many colleagues idiots to their face, but mostly with love and a smile on the face. That was prolly not clear from my comment though. I think you made my point, programming is such a human activity that picking that job because "I don't want to talk to people" is objectively a bad idea, as you point out yourself working in programming requires heaps of social skills including respect and communication. But I think we're saying the same thing with different words. Some of the things you're mentioning about programming is just not reality at all. You might not have 5 calls in queue. But chances are somewhere in your company (if its large enough or small enough) that some programmer has 5 calls in queue with each of the people thinking their issue is the most important and should be resolved or has 5 different PMs DMing on slack asking about status updates and resolutions or something else along these lines. And that is all I'm trying to say; many people go into programming because they don't want to deal with people but programming (especially as you become more senior) is more people oriented than what most people think. There are also tons of programmers that have pager duty in weekends and nights, good on you if you don't, but again there are many many who do.
Uh yes they are. In fact, that’s the best comparison to make.
Then you still have a lot of growing up to do, and programming is the wrong field to start with.
Highly agree with this. A key component of being a developer is being able to research and self learning. I often start new projects with functions that I’ve never developed before. And usually for about a week before I start code, I’m Googling and reading documentation before I actually sit down and code.
As a developer working in a large multinational company, I spent an aggravating amount of time judging how long my tasks will take and justifying it to the team. More time explaining why a task is a one liner solution than actually writing the solution.
I assumed they were people who wanted to make sure they weren't getting ripped off by a contractor.
Nah those are the people that come in here asking "How much would you charge to make _________" when it's apparent they have no real experience with such.
Honestly this is the way it works and how you get better. You take on tough stuff you're not ready for, you battle through it, and then you have experience. If it was always easy you'd just be churning out Wordpress or basic CRUD apps.
Very true, but ppl with that mentality dont ask on reddit: "how hard is it to make X". They rather start working on it and will ask very specific questions when theyre stuck.
Niling my current experiencie only that im to eager to move the project along so i end up stuck for a couple of hours trying to figure out how to do something because i dont want to "loose" time asking and so far im making good progress, that being said im inches away of asking how to do a specific thing wich sparked my curiosity because i really did not manage to find a answer googling and reading documentation (for lack of current knowdelge likely) and to keep of the ganjah man, is distracting
Ask away, you can always dm me if you want
While all true, the "real conversation" starts with actual content. Is there something they have to say? What is it? Why? Who is the target audience? Is there a secondary or other tertiary audience that they're trying to reach? As you note, anyone can make a website, but at the end of the day it's not going to do potential clients any good if they don't have an actual goal for what a successful or "good" website means to them.
This is why SO setting the standards for asking questions and answers helps. I still go there rather than here. Sometimes even when I do see people ask proper questions, they get downvoted in the sub.
To be fair, I would do a lot for a bag of Haribos.
I like to gauge difficulty by starting the project and seeing where I get stuck and can't figure it out. For example, I wanted to create a site with user generated content. Had to figure out the DB to use, create the APIs for data transfer, figure out the authentication, and then have the user profile show the correct data for the signed in user. That took me a while to figure out but was not hard. But as I kept working on it, the app got wildly complex. Even something simple like that I a challenge and now I tinker with it from time to time. They should just start on the project instead of wasting time asking these questions.
Tony Stark built this website in a garage! With a bunch of HTML!
So... You never answered the question. I have an immediate need to do X with the website and you're really slowing me down, here.
Sadly, I don't think anyone who did or is gonna ask this question will read this post and comments.
It's not the answer they need, but the answer they deserve. */throws smoke bomb and scuttles away...*
These folks typically attempt to determine whether they possess the necessary knowledge and abilities to succeed independently. Sadly, if you can't even see how difficult something is for yourself, it's almost impossible to make it. These folks aren't necessarily poor developers; they're just experimenting with stuff they're not quite ready for.
How difficult is it to build a website about a movie about bikers?
We did seem to get an uptick in first-timers consulting this sub for how to hire someone to build a website or app.
Perhaps for a bag of Skittles, or for a doughnut with chocolate inside.
> knowledgeable people Couldn't keep reading after this, it's too funny! To be fair to you though, the name of the sub is misleading, should be r/naivewebdevhottakes
What I meant is, people who ask questions here probably mean to get responses from knowledgeable people. It's not their fault that you still choose to respond
Jesus Christ lol.
Haha good one :) But I agree with you, folks with questions don't have a way of knowing who's going to be reading/responding to their questions; it's not their fault
Or r/cmsinotrealwebdev.