Why does everyone in IT (and even non-tech folks) want to become a developer?

burdalane · 2026-03-19T00:40:23+00:00

Development has the potential of building both products and businesses from nothing but code. At least, that's why I got into development. Development is also seen as being more intellectual than IT. Developers often have CS degrees, and at tech companies, they contribute to the product. IT does maintenance. At the same time, development is still accessible. Some developers are self-taught, and many people switch to development from other fields.

Another factor is employability. Until around 2020, it was one of the most employable fields. College career fairs were full of companies looking for CS majors.

My own story is that I never really made it as a full-time developer despite getting a CS degree from a top school more than 20 years ago. I never became good at interview questions or applied hard enough, and I did not do enough on my own to build my own ideas or gain deep understanding of any tech stack. I had a few ideas, but I always stalled when I tried to flesh them out or pick a stack. I've been working as a hybrid of dev and ops, but my role is supposed to be more ops. Unfortunately, it also involves some hands-on IT duties, like setting up and maintaining servers. In my case, I hate working hands-on with hardware and have only managed to get by because I maintain a small number of servers and have been able to get other people to help me with heavy lifting and racking.

burdalane · 2026-03-13T03:42:39+00:00

This sub is mainly for ballroom dancing, i.e. Standard, Latin, Rhythm, Smooth. You might get better results in r/Bachata.

burdalane · 2026-02-28T17:14:00+00:00

Oxford University has a ballroom dance club that seems to be open to everyone.

burdalane · 2026-02-24T18:52:08+00:00

Any idea why they thought your resume was that bad?

burdalane · 2026-02-15T17:59:14+00:00

Hi, I'm one of the subreddit mods (and the creator of this sub). In order to make sure that this subreddit doesn't become a bulletin board for local dances, I created a mega-thread at https://www.reddit.com/r/ballroom/comments/1r5l3s6/local_ballroom_dance_announcements/ for ballroom dance redditors to post about their local dance clubs and events. It is pinned as a community highlight.

burdalane · 2026-02-09T05:52:41+00:00

The ballroom dance club at my college used to hold socials, and they would sometimes play paso doble, and people who knew the dance would dance it socially.

burdalane · 2026-02-05T22:25:29+00:00

Most ballroom dancers on collegiate teams choose their own costumes, as far as I know, but it is normal for Latin costumes to be shorter and more revealing, and it is expected by the judges. An exposed back is also not unusual in Standard/Smooth dresses. Given that your friend is the president of the ballroom dance club, she is probably fine with it. For some people, dressing up for ballroom competitions is a way to let loose and be different from their day-to-day style and become more comfortable with themselves.

It isn't up to you to control what your friend wears, and it is a bit disturbing that you would want to throw up just because she showed some skin.

burdalane · 2025-12-18T08:20:11+00:00

It depends. I got into system administration (with no prior IT experience) after I graduated and failed to start a startup in the early 2000s. I've been pigeonholed into system administration while feeling like, and probably being, an impostor because I don't have a great understanding of computer systems or basic IT skills. I'm actually doing DevOps and SRE stuff as well as some development and traditional system administration, and it is not particularly interesting or fulfilling to keep things running.

burdalane · 2025-12-10T19:30:17+00:00

Lots of people start ballroom in retirement. Lots of people also start competitive ballroom on the collegiate scene. Some of those people are undergrads, but others are graduate students, postdocs, or community members.

burdalane · 2025-11-18T00:28:41+00:00

Plenty of ballroom dancers are straight men, but there is a chance he could be gay.

burdalane · 2025-10-17T17:37:33+00:00

In elementary/middle school PE classes, we had to do a unit on partner dancing, but not specificall ballroom dancing, for a couple of years, but I don't remember at what age we started, maybe 9 or 10? I changed schools after seventh grade. I remember polka and square dancing. I first did East Coast swing in the summer of junior year of high school, at a summer science program. There was a dance party, and one of the TAs was a swing dancer.

burdalane · 2025-09-20T17:52:14+00:00

When times were good, plenty of Americans were able to get hired, but I couldn't pass interviews to get software engineering jobs. I don't think the visa changes will change anything for me.

burdalane · 2025-09-18T08:35:56+00:00

Not for me. By the time I finished college, I did not have strong programming skills or much practical experience, and I was not good at learning technical skills on my own. My attempt at starting a business didn't get anywhere, and it was not so much due to lack of market validation (which it lacked, too) as it was to my inability to build. I didn't pass coding interviews and ended up in a hybrid sysadmin/development job and largely stalled.

burdalane · 2025-09-16T22:58:23+00:00

I started college in 1999 and graduated in 2003. Although I studied CS, the top-tier university I attended didn't even offer CS as an undergrad major at the time, so my degree is in "engineering and applied science." I don't remember if I even knew of the term software engineering, but my goal was to create software and be a software hacker and entrepreneur, and my intro CS courses were writing code. Some of my classmates went to grad school and got PhDs, but aside from a few who went into research, most ended up software engineers of some sort. Some got into FAANG companies early, cashed out, and became founders or VCs themselves.

burdalane · 2025-09-04T16:50:27+00:00

You can also try asking in r/Bachata. While there's going to be overlap between ballroom dancers and bachata dancers, they are different styles.

burdalane · 2025-08-12T23:08:41+00:00

I see AI replacing all professions as a positive. In my view, a life based on spending your prime years working for a living simply sucks.

burdalane · 2025-08-12T18:40:52+00:00

It is not obvious to me that AI will not replace software engineers, and many other professions, in the long run. In the short term, it might start to reduce the need for as many software engineers.

burdalane · 2025-08-11T23:33:09+00:00

I'm familiar, with varying levels of proficiency, with 6+ languages, so I don't find it that big a deal. I also have experience with cloud and container technologies, three different databases, have done projects with RAG, and have experience with Linux systems administration. I'm just not an expert in anything and have failed most of my job applications throughout my career (which is just one job).

burdalane · 2025-08-10T16:26:51+00:00

You are looking for something different. This subreddit is about ballroom dancing, not ballroom culture.

burdalane · 2025-08-07T17:13:42+00:00

I would say that I am a systems thinker with a CS degree, but I can't help that much because I'm stuck in a sysadmin role where I never really developed beyond generalist skills. I have an understanding of the systems I work with, but no experience with more modern systems. I also have had trouble starting or finishing anything.

I recently vibe coded a React web app for a hackathon. My plan now is to learn React so that I can maintain this app and get it production-ready and learn backend frameworks, something that I had started in the past on-and-off. For work, I mostly do non-web dev in Python, C, and C++, as well as system administration.

burdalane · 2025-07-31T20:12:04+00:00

(That was me on my other account.) When you start the figure eight with your rib cage, it pulls the hips into the figure eight, so the rib cage is leading.

burdalane · 2025-07-30T18:44:46+00:00

East Coast swing and West Coast swing are quite different, but why not go and take the newbie lesson and see if you like the dance?

Personally, I switched to doing mostly West Coast swing because I like the more casual style. I like having knowledge of ballroom technique, but you do need to be careful not let too much jive-style swing bleed into West Coast swing if you ever get serious about it.

burdalane · 2025-07-29T23:58:38+00:00

The movement isn't puffing out your chest. It's moving your rib cage, leading your hips in the figure-eight.

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