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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2023

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  • a full stack developer sufficient in sql and python

    Ok, let me first try to explain what happens on a good day, before going cynical.

    Let’s assume we have an existing system. You go to what for you appears to be a website, fill some text fields, click on a button, etc. In the background a lot of shit happens. Typically the backend part of the system consists of tens of services each doing it’s own thing. Some participate in returning a response to you, the user. Others just process data further for analytics, security, etc.

    One day someone (in most companies a product manager, or a UX researcher) comes up with an idea for a new feature. A user should be able to do XY. And of course pay for it.

    That’s where you step in. Since you mentioned full stack, you will need to do everything.

    • Create a new page with forms, buttons, nice colors and pictures on the frontend
    • Accept the result of user actions of the above to an API in one of the services mentioned
    • Save the data into a database (this is where SQL comes into play)
    • Retrieve data from a database (SQL again)
    • Emit various events or API calls to other services, informing about what just happened

    This is all done with code. You can copy/paste, vibe code, just type it yourself. Code is the least of your concern. Making sure it all works together is what’s tricky. You will go through several iterations until you get it right. Then you write automated tests for it (TDD people don’t come at me).

    Also you communicate to other people in the company about any dependencies and overlaps with what others are doing. Finally, you can deploy the code to production which will make it available globally to users.

    I just described about 50% of the programmer job. I didn’t mention code reviews, architecture discussions, plannings, retros, communities of practice, incident handling, herding cats…


    This is all valid in a good case scenario. good company and a good organization in it.
    In reality it’s mostly waiting. A lot of waiting. Despair if you can’t make it work. Happiness if you can. Then despair again because all you do is pointless. A lot of fighting against the system designed to make you as unproductive as possible. Or just giving up and faking it for a paycheck.







  • Let’s go one level deeper - people who say “I feel normal” do it because saying it is part of that script of life you’re talking about, not because they believe it deep down.

    Basically internal life of almost any person other than yourself is impossible to know. And you can’t trust what they say, because they might be lying even to themselves or just don’t want to reveal deep inner thoughts to anyone.

    One of the few ways into private thoughts is to get someone blackout drunk. But even that is not 100% reliable.


  • Someone who used to dislike it in school and university here.

    Having to cram a lot of information and formulas, and then reproduce it without error for an exam. None of it made sense, and I wasn’t even aware it was possible for it to make sense.

    Only after many years did I understand it’s all connected, there’s a logic to it. It’s possible to understand rather than just blindly learn.

    Btw the notation really doesn’t help.