It absolutely fucking BAFFLES me that Brooks’ Law isn’t known by every software manager on the planet.

I’ve quoted it so many times at work, even in engineering focused teams in at least two big tech companies. It’s not a concrete fact, but it explains why so many teams are hilariously shit at delivering software.

I got into cooking during lockdown, and have managed to get surprisingly good at it, to the point where if you asked me to make a meal of your choosing I could probably make it without looking up a recipe. It’s actually unbelievably simple to make even complex stuff, basically using all the same rules you apply at work:

• Use the right tools for the job
• Plan it out first, do your prep and the actual work is simple
• A simple dish will take much longer than you think
• RTFM. Many sauces and dishes from classic cooking are basically a mixture of a small handful of base ingredients/techniques, and they’ve been written down for decades.
• Once you have the basics down, you can basically make it up as you go. You’ll make amazing meals, and you’ll never be able to replicate it again because you eyeballed it or cooked it in a way that made sense at the time. You say you’ll document it well, but deep down, you know you won’t.
• Nothing is original, everything is stolen. Adapt recipes you see, look at ingredients of sauces and sachets you buy/use, etc.
• You can be a solid hobbyist, but against a pro that does this shit all day every day, you don’t know a fucking thing. You’re also probably not going to replicate what they can do in a professional setting while at home unless you’ve got money.

I’ve fought this battle so many times.

My most recent battle was being told to implement Scrum and agile practices. When the subject of standup NOT being a status update came up, and I forcibly told people to keep their updates brief, it was changed to a “Sync Meeting” that lasted over an hour. Apparently, despite delivering stuff faster, being able to track velocity and ensure we’re not overextending ourselves each “sprint”, and actually knowing what we’re delivering through actionable tasks - we’re not doing agile any more…

Out of interest, what do you do and where are you based? It’s a shitty place to work, but if you’re near an Amazon office and you do Amazony things I’m happy to send a reference your way.

I’ll die on this hill.

If you want an easy language for beginners, Ruby is a much better alternative. It’s like a simpler Python, and aside from a crazy loop syntax teaches clean programming principles better than most languages.

With that said, Rails IS a ghetto, and many of the kinds of companies that use Ruby as their main language are stuck in the past or are full of the biggest toolbags you’ll ever meet. DHH, in particular, built a reputation on being a programming contrarian, so much so that there’s a golden rule where if he says something, the opposite is probably the correct choice.

Working in Ruby did 10x more to help me write clean code than reading Clean Code ever did.

Many of the lessons drilled into me with Ruby (keep a consistent style, tests are cheap, keep your methods relatively small where possible, reduce nesting where possible) carry over nicely into other languages without needing to go through any OO bullshit.

IMO, the best lesson around Clean Code is this: you’re not clever, write obvious code that works with as few tricks as possible.

I switched from .local to .honk and I’m never looking back.

Atlassian is one of those companies that I equally laugh at, love, and hate.

They’re in so many markets in software and project management, and have so many large clients that pay for Confluence, Jira, BitBucket, etc. Despite this, people almost universally despise their products, with bugs being left open for years, features blissfully ignored, etc.

I often imagine what it would be like to work for Atlassian, and what “that” code based must look like. Working there must be fun as hell given the impact and breadth of opportunities, equally frustrating if you dogfood your own products, and infuriating given just how much stuff must be utter shit under the hood.

It’s a mix of both. My wife makes good money as a teacher, primarily because she’s very senior in her role, and takes leadership responsibilities. Teachers are required in (mostly) equal measure everywhere, whereas software engineers always gravitate towards HCOL areas where the jobs are. If you’re not in one of these areas, you’re stuck with limited jobs, with limited pay.

My commute is close to two hours, one way, but the pay I can get here is over double what I’ll get where I live. Comparably, as a senior I probably get paid less than a new graduate in a HCOL city in the US.

My wife is a teacher. Her pay was mostly comparable to mine throughout our careers. My pay has literally tripled since working in London.

Currently, there are senior design and development roles in my home city of Bristol that pay less than what you’d get paid as a fast food manager.

Not all programmers live in the US. In the UK, especially outside of London, the pay is surprisingly bad.

deleted by creator

I’ve regrettably only heard of Podman in passing. At work we use docker containers with kubernetes, is this something we could easily transition to without friction?

I’m not against bootcamps, but there are so many caveats.

1. Most bootcamp instructors have no business teaching. They have no qualifications for it, and rarely have the experience to teach the subject matter.

2. Many bootcamps are owned by agencies or companies looking for cheap labour, with many making false promises on employment - because they give them a temporary contract to get cheap devs. It was painful to see so many bootcamp grads last year, entering an empty market.

3. They are often very expensive, to the point where I’ve worked with people woefully unqualified, who put up with so much shit because they’re in debt. They were promised a career, only to be taught just enough to do basic tasks in React, and then being limited in what they can do.

4. You end up with a horrendous amount of imposter syndrome, in an industry where people already feel like frauds.

5. I’m in the UK, and you wouldn’t believe how many people go to bootcamps and assume we’re all making £100k salaries. Hell, where I live, I regularly get roles for senior engineers that are £40k a year. A woman I used to work with gave up her £30k a year job to be a front-end developer for £20k, with zero benefits, no union, etc.

This. This is how you get me to try your programming language.

I’d wager that most people haven’t used Ruby in anger, so don’t really have the comparison. Those that have used it have probably only used it in a Rails context, which IMO is a fairly limited environment to really play with Ruby.

I definitely love the language, but the ecosystem, library support, and some of the companies that jumped on the initial Rails bandwagon can be extremely backwards and resistant to change in tech.

IMO, Ruby is a better Python than Python. It’s simpler, has a cleaner syntax, and if you want to do funky stuff metaprogramming can allow you to do cool, and sometimes unspeakable things. Python has great library support, and slowness and Rails did make Ruby unpopular for a bit, but I would love to see a Ruby resurgence that wasn’t to do with Rails, because it is truly a lovely language to use.

Hell, I would say that in 2023, it’s easier/faster to get something set up and working in Rails than it is with frameworks like Symfony, Express, ASP.NET, etc.