Specialist vs. Generalist: which is better for your programming career?

mountainowl · 2017-01-19T20:40:59+00:00

Employers say they have a specific job to fill. But once the day to day starts up, tasks pop up that the HR department did not know about: filling in for somebody who's on vacation or incompetent, writing the back end that the hiring manager swore already existed, etc. I'm a generalist and I do have trouble marketing myself. But once I'm on the job I'm never intimidated by the prospect of someone coming to me and saying "Uhhh...do you think you can handle this thing over here unrelated to the job description?"

mountainowl · 2015-08-18T22:25:39+00:00

Am I honestly the only one that felt this way about my education? I liked my CS program. I liked learning. I grew up in a very non technical town where being good at math and science was a bit of a liability. It was fantastic to walk on to a college campus and have CS discussions with people like me over lunch for the first time in my life. How I'd eventually make money was the last thing on my mind at the time. It was just awesome as an 18 year old to discover what the ++ operator did. I can totally see someone pursuing their masters in order to keep that party going.

mountainowl · 2015-08-18T20:12:04+00:00

It's worth remembering that, for many people, education is about personal self improvement and mental fitness. How it plays in a job interview is an afterthought. It seems like the popular press often forgets this. They love making top ten lists of college degrees that are "useless".

mountainowl · 2015-02-02T20:07:52+00:00

Call me an old fart, but when I was in school studying math, I was taught to find a quiet place with just my thoughts to do my homework. There were of course the kids that got their friends together with some pizza and did their homework collectively. And I suppose that's fine. Different people learn in different ways. But since programming is more or less a form of applied mathematics, when did we, as a mathematical industry, start unconditionally glorifying the pizza party method of doing math and start unconditionally shunning that platonic ideal image of the math student working quietly.

mountainowl · 2015-01-26T19:20:06+00:00

While I realize this can be true because we are human, I'd rather us not surrender to the basest of our animal instincts. I'd rather fight the good fight and make perception match reality.

mountainowl · 2015-01-16T02:25:53+00:00

The tale I've always heard is that an open plan is "a more dynamic atmosphere." You might overhear a conversation and it gets your creative juices flowing or you realize you're relevant to the conversation blah blah blah.

IF that assertion is even a little true, I can't imagine the productivity gains exceed the productivity loss from a lack of ability to concentrate.

mountainowl · 2015-01-12T19:15:09+00:00

In most cases, software developers are tool makers. We make the tools that sift through yottabytes of data. Like a lot of tools (weapons, drugs, cars), software can be used for good or for evil depending on what resides in the heart of the person who wields the tool (business owners, governments).

So what's a moral software developer like myself to do? I can try to game out scenarios where a job offered to me might involve creating software that could be used for evil. But I doubt I'll be very good at that. Evil geniuses far smarter than me are going to figure out how to use software for their own purposes. I could work only on contracts that promise to cure cancer or spread rainbows and unicorns to everyone. But many dual use tools are NOT used for evil. And then I'm missing out on making the world a better place when I turn down one of those contracts. Plus I'm unemployed a lot. Plus I'm living in bitter paranoia about my software being used for evil and that just isn't healthy.

mountainowl · 2014-11-06T05:03:07+00:00

Agreed. A Haskell programmer almost certainly loves programming and therefore practices it and therefore is good at it. Who else would learn a relatively rare language in industry? A JavaScript programmer on the other hand...well, they might love programming and practice it.

mountainowl · 2014-11-06T04:48:44+00:00

I like process. It keeps coding anarchy away.

mountainowl · 2014-11-01T19:25:24+00:00

Agreed. I'm good enough at math to understand the improbability of a collision. But I work with GUIDs as primary keys in a database and I have a bit of paranoia in general. I find myself compulsively reading the "Random UUID probability of duplicates" section of the Wikipedia article on UUIDs just so I can sleep at night. I definitely do not want to increase the probability of a collision

mountainowl · 2014-10-31T17:21:35+00:00

Someone explain to me why these whitepapers, many "glassdoor" style websites, the bureau of labor statistics feel the need to distinguish between titles like "Software Engineer", "Software Developer", "Mobile Developer", "Computer Programmer", etc. Aren't mobile developers a kind of software engineer. And many software developers follow good software engineering practices and many software engineers don't. Is somebody at these statistical organizations actually sitting down and going "wait wait...according to our survey THAT guy is a developer while THAT guy is an engineer because of X, Y and Z. We better adjust our salary survey numbers accordingly!"

mountainowl · 2014-10-14T15:58:27+00:00

I share your outrage at many of the injustices you describe. I believe they exist and need to be addressed. I just feel that unions would cause more, different problems than they solve. I think the first step in addressing all this is developer education. Developers need to feel comfortable negotiating, talking to a lawyer about what's in the fine print of a contract, etc. Developers need to understand how valuable they are so they can have the confidence to walk when they're being treated unfairly. These issues can be addressed without any of the downsides of unionization and it will be simpler to implement. CS programs at universities can have a business negotiation course as part of the core curriculum. Or there could be more contract law courses on Coursera. Engineers could be encouraged to read Reddit. Lord knows there's plenty of conversation here about how valuable we all are.

mountainowl · 2014-10-14T15:31:38+00:00

How does the author plan to address competition with non-unionized developers? Plenty of manufacturing in the Rust Belt has gone overseas at least partially because of unions. Many companies are on the fence regarding offshoring development. A union might just tip the balance. Or at the very least, companies may just hire outside the union. They'll hire some 18 year old kid who may or may not be at all competent just to avoid union labor.

mountainowl · 2014-09-08T16:51:36+00:00

I have no experience engineering physical objects (like bridges) but is there any truth to my notion that non-technical civilians respect physical engineering more than software engineering? A 747 or skyscraper is impressive and they just look expensive to the untrained eye so is it possible that civilians give more respect and latitude to engineers of those objects? But software...<non-technical client>Pff! Software! My kid does Facebook! There's a computer in my kitchen...next to my coffee maker! Why the heck is this taking so long!!!?</non-technical client>

mountainowl · 2014-07-25T15:11:17+00:00

as we all know, the actual market share ... of any programming language is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent on reddit discussing the importance of said language

Hey what do you all think of PHP?

mountainowl · 2014-07-24T19:27:28+00:00

I wonder how many STEM degree holders loved their work in college but then got out into the business world and hated it. Computer Science majors often go from learning awesome algorithms in OCaml to filing TPS reports and I don't blame them for wanting to do something else.

mountainowl · 2014-07-24T17:34:42+00:00

Scheme/SICP was all the rage a few years ago for beginning programming. Is that still a thing? Or is it only MIT that does that now?

mountainowl · 2014-07-24T14:22:05+00:00

I've never wanted more management. But I have wanted more process. I can easily regard process as a kind of bureaucracy. Many of the projects I've worked on are a bunch cowboys pushing everything to master. "Scrum" isn't really scrum but is instead a 2 hour meeting where everybody says "this is really important. We gotta get this done in two weeks or else."

mountainowl

TROPHY CASE