Posted by venamresm__ 17 hours ago
Software should be about the code, but not for every person on every project for all parts of that project.
It's great to "wake up" and realize that code doesn't have the intrinsic value you might have assumed, but you can also take that knowledge and go right back to writing beautiful code where it best serves the bigger mission.
Now, that is a letter to new developer that I wish I had read when I was a new developer:
Dear new developer,
Be careful when reading blogs. A lot of stuff you'll read online is insightful, informative, innovative, or inspiring. By all means, enrich your life with what you read, but be sure to also re-read "Wind in the Willows" from time to time and reflect on the character of Mr. Toad.
Regards,
Someone Who Made The Mistake of Putting Certain Bloggers on a Pedestal
Then I spent a few years in sales (long story) and flipped 180 degrees. Without salespeople (and the customers they bring in) there would be nobody paying our salaries and we all could just go home.
Without salespeople you can't sell software. Without developers, you can't make software. Since we all have to pay bills, selling software is of crucial importance, but that doesn't make the developers less important. It just means that the society we live in makes those who sell as important as those who make. Just like we strive to evolve software development, we should also strive to evolve the society.
I've made software that people happily used without anyone selling it to them or me earning a single cent off of it. At my age, if I had the luxury of not having to worry about money, that's the kind of thing I would be doing all the time.
A very common approach to sales nowadays is to invent a problem that someone does not have and then try to sell them your tool that fixes the problem
Or they try to map the problem you have to the problem they solve, even if they are actually quite different problems
The biggest problem that sales is trying to solve is that you aren't buying anything from them
It comes across as “everyone else’s work is trivial and low value but my, MY, work is difficult and important”. We shouldn’t be so precious.
Related but not quite the same as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
“Software is about people” argues:
> I used to think software was fundamentally about code. Experience taught me that I was mistaken. Software is fundamentally an artifact made by people, for people’s purposes, and its success depends on them.
“Software ought to be about people” says:
> Software isn’t necessarily about people, but I believe it should be.
You may argue the latter, but I think the OP believes software is already shaped by humans .
But to a degree it is also about the code. Sometimes your requirements are: be fast enough. In which case you need to think about code: instructions and data.
"Software is a just a tool to help accomplish something for people - many programmers never understood that. Keep your eyes on the delivered value, and don't over focus on the specifics of the tools"
That said, I don't think Carmack would ever say that software isn't about code. It's more that code should be written and evaluated based on how much net value it delivers to people, not on arbitrary technical metrics.
The technical means you mention won't give you that. The same people that make the industry "corrupt and incompetent" are leveraging those technical means to make it even more corrupt and less competent. Meanwhile, the rest of us who work in that industry are rapidly losing power to push back.
You can't rely solely on technology to solve problems rooted in human nature. I mean, we have better technology than at any point in human history, and somehow we're regressing on the issue of bodily autonomy.
This is why I'm so frustrated with people who are fanatical about AI adoption. It's not a panacea, it won't usher in some shiny utopia, it's just another technology that can be used both to improve lives and to oppress. If you take a careful look at our society, you can see which of those two uses is currently dominant.
> You can't rely solely on technology to solve problems rooted in human nature.