Im drunk and miserable about programming

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Raybarg
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Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by Raybarg »

Hey, writing this as drunk.

I started programming with C64 and once I got my PC I learned about C and ASM (and some C++). My past was pretty much that, I was curious about computers while all around me were talking me down... to all people around me computers made people bad or weak. For a while I was curious about electronics also, made all sort of I/O devices on old LPT port (including Covox sound card) but for some reason electronics was so much harder that people around me telling me how shit I am with it, dig too deep. But programming, noone understood it, so noone could say the damaging words to undermine my confidence... So for some time I started to believe I am "god" in programming, I thought I was so good. Then I did programming for industries for 10 years where "unhappy customer relationship" can slowly undermine confidence and that happened to me.

Then I spent some years suffering from bad depression, anxiety, ocpd, ... all kind of things. I started believing I am no good programmer and all those years I was just so good at pretending.

I am back to programming again... but nothing seems changed. I thought my knowledge of programming got outdated while I was many years away, but all is still applicable. I could pick up on real challenges of understanding complex systems with framework completely new to me in timespan of within a week being able to do productive programming. I was anxious to prove I am still worth the salary I am being paid.. I was so focused trying to make myself liked... that I forgot to pay attention how demands after demands undermine confidence... I enter the world of badly executed Scrum and instead of meeting deadline I have 20 deadlines per sprint to meet with their individualistic 5 hours long tasks which only account to the workload only, nothing about overhead, getting into, or learning or anything. Just some abstract "CRM Interface for GDG" and 5 hour estimate on it.

Then there is the "emerging technologies" and "trends" and all that bullshit.... I know dozen programming languages and its not much of a deal to jump on new one now... but theres plenty of confident people talking about programming as if they know it so well, and describing some aspect of some new language which is quite better than in comparison in some other language, but then skip all details about the shortcomings...

Its like the same same when I was loving C and questioned OOP of C++ saying that "isnt that just a bit of abstraction away from just programming it the 'right way'..." I dont really want to go to the technological details since I suck at the jargon-warfare, I am only good coding alot. Its just we see alot of new emerging languages/frameworks/technologies which are all good on their own merit, its nice... I dont mean to bash that. But when one thinks of whats under the roof, theres still same principles that applied back in C64 days and nothing really changed.

Why does it seem like theres some language-cock-fight going on, has been going on and continues going on.. when programming itself, as in understanding and solving a problem. Especially if understanding the problem explained by the ignorant and then solved.... is not being seen as the most important aspect above the mundane skill of knowing "that one language" which fits best to solve that problem?
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heartbone
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by heartbone »

Next time try a cannabis product, that is if you are a free person.
It should help you a lot with many aspects of that whole deal.
Keep it BASIC.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by Keya »

firstly congratulations on a drunk post you won't regret in the morning, lol, dont think i ever managed that

secondly, i echo what heartbone said. third, i echo what heartbone said

finally, i personally don't think it matters if you use Logo, .NET, pure asm, Purebasic, C, C++, or whatever, because when a potential customer is considering your app the question "hmm i wonder what this was written in?" probably only ever realistically pops up in the minds of other developers. They're just asking questions like "does it run well? does it do what i need?" etc. Purebasic is my secret weapon!!! not many "professional hardcore C coders with 5+ years uni" can belt out programs for both Windows, Linux and OSX as fast as i can, yet looking at the exe's they're essentially the same - no dependencies, nice lean exes, both allowing the ability to use inline asm, both allow importing of libs ... two chips off the same block! When it comes to employment i guess thats trickier as your employer will probably want you coding in one of the more popular languages along with the rest of the team, but if you're only writing for yourself you have total freedom over how you get from A to B, and i choose to take advantage of that!

so i'm sober and couldn't be happier about programming, lol :) and of course that's not even getting to things like the mental stimulation/challenges we enjoy compared to many other jobs (programming rarely gets dull right!), the good working environment especially when the weathers bad lol, the relatively low risks (no way could i be a crane operator, but my fatal crashes in a debugger are painless and stress-free) etc etc. Best job in the world besides being a writer for South Park, although that'd be more stressful.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by HanPBF »

Great post; unfortunately, I am not drunken writing this...

Management: they are mainly idiots; not because they don't know what programming means but also they want to "know all but not the details". It is important to understand that a web application is something different than a desktop than a tablet than a watch app.
"Management does not need to know how to program" -> wrong; children in school learn it in regular courses.
"Management does not need to know how databases work" -> wrong; all the knowledge of their domain lays there and they are not able to understand tables and links between them; that little step above Excel is too much??? It isnt'!

Scrum
Until scrum, projects misses functions, were more expensive than predicted and got not ready in time.
With scrum, projects misses functions, is more expensive than predicted and get ready in time (the sprints only;-).
Not more and not less.
" \"CRM Interface for GDG\" and 5 hour estimate on it" -> if this happens build a list of tasks and make it visible!
It's easy to pick each task and give it a schedule; the whole list of tasks is important and if they depend one on the other -> so what! "Boss, you want to have that important report I need two hours to build it up? " no problem -> and the list of tasks sinks down... each point of other customers, stake holders and members drops visibly down! No more You are guilty but the one with the report.

Still so much to say and no beer available...
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by Lunasole »

Sorry for my belated answer, buy I should say @heartbone and @keya advice about marijuana are just precious ^^
But don't use it too much, only in cases when you are in state of debugging of your lifetime and things looking bad. And forget for any others such stuff.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

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****Managed Code**** PB, Rust, Python, LiveCode, LUA etc..

You'll never be cool you'll just have finished projects and capital.. Maybe learn to reverse-engineer MSVC and GCC binaries so you can make them even more mad..

I also learned in the 8bit era and finished some games and utilities. I mostly used QBASIC, Fortran, COBOL, and Borland C utils though.. Something I learned is the programmers aren't the ones with all the power and value in the field, it's the people who can do binary analysis and debugging.. Even then a person skilled with SoftIce was highly valued compared to even a career senior software engineer. Now you can retire off six-months of work with IDA Pro even in first-world-nation economies(where you can then smoke cannabis and do only what interests you every day)..
The truth hurts.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by netmaestro »

(where you can then smoke cannabis and do only what interests you every day)..
Yes but what if I'm looking for a change?
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by walbus »

Depressions are a bad thing
I think it is better, you speak about this with very good friends, this can help

Now, after many years with inet, i self think, it is ever better, write never private things for the community.
You never see who you actually in front of you.
A professor, a bad guy, a good guy, a child, an idiot, or a perverse.

All you write in the inet is same a arrow, you shot and you can not get back the arrow.

Drunken programming is a bad idea, this can making a later bugfixing more as complicated.

But, software can looking too a drunken coder, lol, shit happen.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

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netmaestro wrote:
(where you can then smoke cannabis and do only what interests you every day)..
Yes but what if I'm looking for a change?

What is change? Different motives? Currency has a tenancy to bypass the social bureaucracy of society that would otherwise just make those motives a change in tedious ambition towards long-term unlikely goals.

I'll change my perspective the day that even one out of fifty-thousand people will do things beyond immediate gratification just out of kindness.. I'll keep thinking everything is cost-based as long as society behaves that way.

I'm talking about social-currency as well.

This is subjective I guess. Managed code is economical though and with the efficiency you can go which ever way you want. Change is possible with the profit that being time or currency or both.
The truth hurts.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by collectordave »

After the mandatory couple of glasses of wine read this and liked a lot of it.

Every sympathy Rayberg.

First from rayberg
when programming itself, as in understanding and solving a problem. Especially if understanding the problem explained by the ignorant and then solved.... is not being seen as the most important aspect above the mundane skill of knowing "that one language" which fits best to solve that problem?
Then later on the web page "Programming is solving a problem that you do not understand and do not have the time to understand". Describes it all perfectly.

Of course when the problem is described by the ignorant you have no chance at all as if you solve the problem they describe then you find that you misunderstood the problem they described. this maybe why there is some research into reading brain waves at the moment to give computers the ability to read minds, alas they will also need to read the future. Must work on my tarot card app sometime soon but I cannot see when I will have the time.

My real introduction into programming came from a friend way back who had a Dragon32. Went to their place for a barbeque and was shown the glossy new computer with a programme he was writing, just couldn't get the last part to work. Intrigued I spent the next four hours attempting to understand what was happening, while everyone else enjoyed the beer and burnt beefburgers. Eventually a little light dawned and I found a variable had not been declared, fixed that and like magic the programme worked.

Proud of my work I told my friend it was fixed. Straight away he told me "you should not have bothered, the solution will be in next months Dragon User magazine". I was a little flabberghasted at this at work he was the computer expert! All he was doing was typing in a few lines of code from a magazine. Later on I found that he would buy the magazine and tell his wife to type in all the code examples for him to run later.

This sat in my mind through all my working life seeing people who understood computers and were experts simply because they could use a wordprocesor, damn spell checker.

I carry on because I enjoy programming using it to solve problems I never knew I had till I used a computer for the first time.

Still after forty years I have learnt that beer time is more valuable than computer time so not all my working life was wasted, i am just wasting my retirement now but that is good it keeps me quiet in my little corner and the wife can watch the soaps on TV.

If none of this makes sense remember the glasses of wine?

Kind regards

cd
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

Post by Keya »

I haven't had a drink not a single drop in over three years as it got the better of me and before i knew it i was going down the rabbithole, but tomorrow i'm buying a bottle of scotch for sanity
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Re: Im drunk and miserable about programming

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My last experience was past summer when I've made an exception from non-drinking and drink 4 big glasses of some hell stuff (160% power of vodka). The result was terrible [I've greatly lost self-control and did few shameful things, like writing obscene phrases on a fence because it looked funny for me in that state, lol]. Well at least I've reminded why I completely abandoned alcohol many years ago ^^
Generally I'm only drinking wines, and even that is very rare.

Keya wrote:I haven't had a drink not a single drop in over three years as it got the better of me and before i knew it i was going down the rabbithole, but tomorrow i'm buying a bottle of scotch for sanity
What about "sanity"... with it things became bad recently too, I've made following steps to escape that:
- decided to drop marijuana completely (20 days passed since last use, while post-effects might occur up to 30 days) and probably never will use it again, as I already got most of interesting things which it can give and don't want to play too much and get possible long-term negative effects
- decreased frequency of regular cigarettes smoking
- put hard limits on consuming all sweet stuff like chocolate/anything with sugar
- stopped drinking coffee, as well as limited some other things, greatly modifying the mood or overall state

However, there are not only mentioned things involved. In my case really many depends on weather, atmospheric pressure/humidity changes [or also Earth electromagnetic field fluctuations ^^] as I have strong meteodependence. For example where it is "risk of rain", that greatly modulates my behavior and many abilities.
Generally I like how it all does, so nothing to do more. There are periods with emotional or other problems, they are passing over as well as switching to periods with extremely cool conditions.

Even if you are not so much bind to weather, remember that winter itself anyway has it own... features, and that is the reason
Last edited by Lunasole on Sat Feb 11, 2017 10:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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