<RANT>Most "Software Engineers" AREN'T ACTUALLY ENGINEERS... it's illegal in many states to use that title if you're not licensed with the state's Professional Engineering Board.
If you haven't taken professional engineering exams, and passed, you're not an Engineer.
STOP IT!
</RANT>
dcminter · 9m ago
Upvoted because I disagree with this (I presume your downvoters also disagree).
My degree course actually had the option of converting to a BEng from a BSc if you so chose once you'd done your industry year.
3dsnano · 30m ago
very few of us are engineers or trained to think like one. most of us a tradespeople who know how to make digital things.
as a trade we have gotten lazy and complacent. many of us have figured out how to look the other way while making software that does terrible, terrible things.
we deserve to have our trade destroyed by LLMs.
efortis · 2h ago
My programming font. It’s proportional and uppercase letters have a 1/3 of a space of left padding.
Proportional because they are faster to read in general, and the padding makes reading camel-case faster as well.
Yeah. You're a unicorn. That font hurt my eyes and twitched something in my brain. I often experience something painful in my brain and eyes whenever I switch fonts and theme.
mikewarot · 1h ago
Computer Security was solved in the 1970s with Multilevel Secure Systems and Capability Based Security.
Security doesn't require making computers unusable, either.
If we had the collective will, we could eliminate cyber-security as a profession within a decade, as an un-necessary thing of the past.
But... that's not gonna happen.
d00mB0t · 5h ago
Rust doesn't belong in the Linux kernel. eBPF turned Linux into a microkernel. systemd is terrible and bloated. IPv6 addresses are convoluted. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem proves we'll never have Artificial General Intelligence.
whytevuhuni · 5h ago
> Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem proves we'll never have Artificial General Intelligence.
What is your definition of AGI? Is natural general intelligence something you think brains are physically capable of, or is some non-physical aspect required?
jemiluv8 · 1h ago
Developers are terrible at writing software that solve business problems.
Developers are better at writing software the solves problems for other developers
lemonwaterlime · 1h ago
Software engineers should use formal risk management tools like FMEA (failure mode & effects analysis) like engineers in any other discipline.
croqueton · 4h ago
TypeScript is too much work for not enough reward.
jemiluv8 · 1h ago
Disagree. Try working on a large project with 3-4+ engineers and you'd come round to the conventional wisdom of TS. But yeah, TS is more a developer tool than a language anyways.
bravesoul2 · 1h ago
Typescript is a neat idea running atop a cursed language (JS)
Using Go has been more fun. Where fun means less surprises.
jemiluv8 · 1h ago
I like go a lot. Not just for the lack of surprises but having go-fmt alone
helps avoid a lot of bike shedding that limits extraneous stress.
curtisblaine · 1h ago
I agree re: correctness, but I couldn't live without Code completion.
skydhash · 1h ago
You should be able to prototype with your whole codebase.
eimrine · 6h ago
Lisp is a king of PLs, those who do not write in Lisp are just ruining our world because FOSS values are effectively lost if bad guys can use GPL code which becames elusive after compilation. Lisp program which does not share its source code can not share full set of properties which are expected from Lisp code. Some devs really understand how it is inevitable to be fully FOSS for the sake of preventing digital feudalism, but no one claims that all software must be not only FOSS but also written in Lisp.
drrob · 4h ago
That AI is utterly dreadful at coding, and I can't fathom how anyone is getting any productivity gains out of it.
bravesoul2 · 1h ago
Naming things well (and renaming them as new information evolves) is massively important. As important as tests.
subsection1h · 4h ago
The most useful programming language is Bash.
dcminter · 4h ago
Well, these should get me in trouble here fairly quickly...
• Modern Java is a good language.
• It's ok not to be polyglot.
• Debugging should not start with the debugger.
• If you can't express yourself clearly you probably can't think clearly.
• HN should support Markdown :)
Some exceptions for all of these, of course.
curtisblaine · 59m ago
Law penalties on spam / scamming should 10x harsher.
curtisblaine · 1h ago
DEI hiring mandates destroy teams.
roland35 · 1h ago
Yup this is a dumb one. Dei != mandates or quotas
curtisblaine · 1h ago
We shouldn't only reject bots, we should feed them incorrect information on purpose in order to degrade the systems they are feeding.
curtisblaine · 1h ago
- Code format / conventions should not be customizable
- Commonjs should be actively deprecated
- Dev interviews should have live coding sessions, face to face
MountainMan1312 · 2h ago
I like Free Software / Open Source but I can't stand the idea of companies using my stuff for parasitic purposes, and I can't believe taking a stance against evil gets projects ostracized from the "freedom" community.
oldpersonintx2 · 5h ago
rewrite your code every four years
rewrites are worth it
also: functional programming has never really mattered, and will never matter
If you haven't taken professional engineering exams, and passed, you're not an Engineer.
STOP IT! </RANT>
My degree course actually had the option of converting to a BEng from a BSc if you so chose once you'd done your industry year.
as a trade we have gotten lazy and complacent. many of us have figured out how to look the other way while making software that does terrible, terrible things.
we deserve to have our trade destroyed by LLMs.
Proportional because they are faster to read in general, and the padding makes reading camel-case faster as well.
https://github.com/ericfortis/verdanacamel
Security doesn't require making computers unusable, either.
If we had the collective will, we could eliminate cyber-security as a profession within a decade, as an un-necessary thing of the past.
But... that's not gonna happen.
What is your definition of AGI? Is natural general intelligence something you think brains are physically capable of, or is some non-physical aspect required?
Using Go has been more fun. Where fun means less surprises.
• Modern Java is a good language.
• It's ok not to be polyglot.
• Debugging should not start with the debugger.
• If you can't express yourself clearly you probably can't think clearly.
• HN should support Markdown :)
Some exceptions for all of these, of course.
- Commonjs should be actively deprecated
- Dev interviews should have live coding sessions, face to face
rewrites are worth it
also: functional programming has never really mattered, and will never matter