Greg, You need to have a plan for what you're doing next. The brain is like anything else in the body... use it or lose it.
On Mon, 7 Oct 2024 at 11:10, Greg Keogh via ozdotnet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> wrote: > Hello everyone, it's not Friday, but I have an announcement and tale that > might interest you. > > I’m easing into retirement. > > Companies I’ve been working for are being sold, retired or are no longer > developing new software. Running out of legacy work would drive a regular > dev to seek new work, but in my case, I declined to create a LinkedIn page, > or send out feelers through contacts for new work, because… I’m burnt out. > > Why? > > I learned to code in 1975 and became an official programmer in 1981. I > wrote FORTRAN, ALGOL, COBOL, assemblers and various JCLs and scripting > languages on Honeywell, FACOM and IBM mainframes. Things were simpler back > then of course because you moved inside the ecosystem of a particular > manufacturer and had high-level support and voluminous and accurate > documentation. If you wanted to solve a problem or do something edgy, then > an answer was nearby. It was a different simpler world, but … everything > worked. > > Now, well into the 21st century of IT, everything doesn’t work. My wife > often hears me shout from the other end of the house “Everything f***ing > doesn’t work”. I also only semi-jokingly say I’ll have these words carved > into my gravestone: “Everything f***ing doesn’t work all the f***ing time”. > > Overall, what has burnt me out is *complexity *and *instability*. I’ll > break those topics down a bit. > > Everything in modern IT is *complicated *and *fragile*. Every new > toolkit, platform, pattern, library, package, upgrade, etc is unlikely to > install and work first time. I seem to spend more time getting things > working and updated than I do actually writing software. In a typical > working month I might have to juggle Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, > Google, Amazon, Azure, .NET, Python, PowerShell and C++, and they all have > different styles and cultures. Software engineering has fractured into so > many overlapping pieces that I’m tired of trying to maintain competence in > them all. > > That leads naturally to the problem of *dependencies*. Just having so > many moving parts with so many different versions available produces > dependencies more complex than abstract algebra. How many times have you > hit some kind of compile or runtime version conflict and spent hours trying > to dig your way out of it? (A special salute to Mr Newtonsoft there!) Or > you install A, but it needs B, which needs C, and so on. > > I often hit incomprehensible blocker *problems *for which web searches > produce absurd and conflicting suggestions which don’t work anyway. All I > can do is futz around and change things randomly until things work again. I > don’t know what went wrong and I don’t know what went right. > > *The Web* -- Browsers, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the HTTP protocol, JSON and > REST can all burn for eternity in fusing hellfire. About ten years ago I > told my customers I refused to write any more web UI apps. However, I was > forced to do so a few times and I’m still scarred by the horror. It’s just > over 30 years since the web became public and we’re still attempting to > render serious business apps using dumb HTML. HTML5 is the joke of the > century (so far). I still lament the loss of Silverlight. > > *Git *-- Someone is lucky I don’t own a gun. > > *Fads *-- An exercise for the reader: name all the platforms, kits, > patterns and frameworks that you know were once the coolest thing and now > might only be found in history articles. An advanced exercise is to > speculate on which currently cool things will be gone soon. > > Finally, here is a list of typical things that give me the shits, just as > they pop out of my head. > > > - Attempting to compile projects that have been idle for a year or > more will usually fail due to changed dependencies or deprecations and it > can take hours to get them going again. > - I develop and test something with great care, then deploy it and it > crashes. This is part of the general “it works on my machine” disease. > - I can stop successful work on Friday night, then resume on Monday > morning and everything utterly fails. > - My USB microscope and music recording both stopped working recently, > and it took me a week to discover that it was a block by Windows 11 app > security (I thought it was a hardware or incompatibility problem due to > lack of clear error messages). > - Security! Walls, barriers and hurdles of security everywhere to > crash through. Yes, I know we need security everywhere to stop the black > hats, but it’s also stopping developers. Lord knows how many times I’ve hit > run or debug on my own PC and I get “Access denied” and hours of research > will be required. I’m also fed-up with ceaseless 2FA requests via email or > SMS. > - Everything about mobile devices. The ludicrous variety of devices > and brands makes app development a nightmare. Then you must struggle > through the variety of labyrinthine publishing processes. > - My final entry is simply the tiny “thousand cuts” that torture you > during development: version mismatches, inconsistent behaviour, strange > errors, editor quirks, missing files, etc. All the little personal problems > that slip between the cracks of bigger issues I’ve previously mentioned. > Your mileage may vary. > > > In summary, being a software engineer is now so exhausting that after 40+ > years of a generally enjoyable career immersed in programming and computer > science I’ve reached a point I never thought would arrive… I’m burnt out. > Even working on my hobby projects has become a burden because they suffer > from many of the impediments previously mentioned. > > I still plan to attend some upcoming conventions and Meetups, and I’ll be > watching the forum, but my posts will diminish because I’m probably out > trying to prevent the garden and house from disintegrating back into the > earth from whence they came. > > *Greg Keogh* > -- > ozdotnet mailing list > To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/
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