• melsaskca@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 hour ago

    An architect’s building can last several hundred years. A programmers genius logic becomes obsolete in three years.

  • tiramichu@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 hours ago

    You know those illustrated story books for children?

    The ones with cute anthropomorphized animals going about their jobs in a fairytale animal society, posting letters and walking kids across the street and fixing cars in the garage?

    If you can’t accurately depict yourself doing your job as a drawing in one of those books, it’s not a real job.

    (I’m also a programmer, by the way…)

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    4 hours ago

    One day I was thinking of Andy Warhol’s film “Empire”, which is basically one continuous 8 hour shot of the Empire State Building.

    I thought it’d be cool to make a similar art film about your average programmer’s work day. 8 hour shot of a programmer staring at the screen intensely, drinking coffee, scrolling through the code, and occasionally muttering “why the fuck doesn’t this work?”

    • Hadriscus@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      ooooooohhhh… so that’s the point of “Empire” ? showing the stark immobility of the nevralgic/symbolic center of Earth’s most powerful military empire ?

      I never saw the film, tbh. Maybe it would have stricken me

      • Rose@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        Well it’s an art film. The purpose of art is to evoke emotions, to inspire dialogue. Yours is one possible interpretation. Ultimately, who’s to say it’s not valid?

        • Hadriscus@jlai.lu
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          3 hours ago

          That’s quite non-committal… of course art is supposed to evoke emotions… but that’s not getting me anywhere I wasn’t already… I was asking about the artist’s intent

  • menas@lemmy.wtf
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    4 hours ago

    The result is : nothing that as a market value, from which at least 2/3 goes to capitalists (shareholders and rent) and hopefully 1/3 to your wage.

    aaand it cost energy with the pollution linked with

    So, it’s a nothing to be angry about

  • Psythik@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    9 hours ago

    It puts food on your table so you don’t fucking starve, you little unappreciative shit.

    • toynbee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 hours ago

      My kid seems to get the connection between my job and our accommodations, but they’d still rather I play with them.

      They once introduced me to a teacher by saying “this is my dad. He likes working. And money!”

      The (quite young, probably barely in her twenties) teacher considered this for a moment, then said “well… I guess my parents do, too.”

  • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    76
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 hours ago

    I’m not going to lie, that last one is the hardest thing for me.

    After years of trades i always loved having a physical thing you can touch and feel at the end of the day. I’m in university for tech, and i’m still struggling with the lack of achievement. I don’t often get to see someone use a thing I worked on, so it kinda feels like I spent a lot of time doing nothing.

    • Bluewing@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      41 minutes ago

      I feel you. Certain professions have an emptiness to them because you don’t know if what you do matters.

      I did about 15 years as a medic in a rural area. And while the saying is “You work on family and friends”, I often had no clue if the people I scraped up and treated in the back of my bus lived or died. Once I dropped them at the ER, that was it. It was just a black hole that I could very rarely get a glimpse into. It left a real empty spot inside not knowing if what you did mattered.

      So, go home tonight, pour a whisk(e)y and do what I did-- pretend it does.

    • four@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      6 hours ago

      What helps me when I feel like this is making something for myself. A script that automates something I do or a program that I will use. Then I do feel the accomplishment everytime I use that thing

      • tinyvoltron@discuss.online
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        4 hours ago

        And that’s why today is shell script Friday! I always try to do some little thing on Friday that makes things easier for me and my team. Not always a shell script but always something I can finish in a day. I don’t always succeed but I can usually come up with something cool.

    • kamen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      5 hours ago

      I used to struggle a bit with that. My first full time job was at a startup making puzzle/logic games and I was hoping that at one point everybody is going to play them and I’ll be able to say “yeah, I worked on that”. Needless to say it wasn’t that successful at all, but I learned not to care that much. Money’s in my bank account, food is on the table, everything’s fine.

      On the flip side, software not being material is also a plus - you make it once and distribute it an infinite number of times.

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      edit-2
      10 hours ago

      A few years ago, corps were just throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick. Everybody who wasn’t a software company decided they were now a “software company”. I liked the salary that came with it but the actual projects sucked. Working on stuff you know is DOA is very demoralizing.

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      10 hours ago

      You may enjoy the robotics field of programming ngl. Or embedded systems if you still want more coding than engineering.

      • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 hours ago

        Robotics (or more broadly mechatronics) is a super interesting field. To do the work at the mechanical/electrical interface is really hard.

        The field of industrial controls skips the hard part and just buys stuff that is pre-designed to move. Then those pre-designed pieces are made to fit and work together. It’s like complicated Legos and is honestly very fun and rewarding.

        If you want to do programming with a physical result, controls engineering is a great option. I would recommend shooting for the hard stuff (real programming - DSP, FPGA, etc) knowing you’ve got a safe fallback with industrial controls (PLC programming).

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    8 hours ago

    Yeah once i realized that nothing lasts very long in it, it started to feel like a pointless job. But it makes good money. But in the end, its just new frameworks and languages to learn forever so you never feel like you actually are an expert at anything.

    Networking is a good field though. If you are an expert in networking and devops, it really helps with a lot of troubleshooting and networking so you can easily run a homelab. Those skills actually last and are useful every day.

    I cant bring myself to be interested in Ai though. Im just not excited about training models.

  • Robyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 hours ago

    Yea… Tho I’d argue that’s true of most jobs nowadays. Nothing, or somehow less than. Joining the work force has been a very depressing experience so far. Any ambition of learning and or contributing getting annihilated. It’s a compromise that allows me to have a roof and food at the end of the month without living at my parents.