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The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

Would you still be a developer?  Or would you have gotten into another field? 

I can't say I regret getting into development.  I'm nearly 30 and I've made a decent living developing so far but at the same time, I can't see doing this for another 40 years.  I doubt I would have done anything different though.  It's allowed me to save some cash so I have the flexibility to do something else if I choose.

Personally I'd do the same thing over again. I think that I have been particularly fortunate to find something I happen to be good at which companies are willing to pay decent money for.

I doubt I'd be even close to as successful in another field...

I would choose my birth very very carefully this time!

this is me doing it all over again.  I started off working as a labourer until I reached 27, then moved into computer programming by accident and because it looked a hell of a lot easier than working for a living.

it is :)



but there are multiple downsides that mean Im now looking around for something else:

(1) physical fitness...Im not a gym person, and if I dont have exercise built into my day I can be a bit slack. 

(2) the fucking job never ends.  if you aren't writing code you are thinking about writing code.

(3) the loneliness.  at first I loved it, Ive never been a people person.  but now after 7 years I hate it.  I prefer working with people to working with computers.  computers suck away all your time and give you nothing back except the sterile satisfaction of a completed project.

(4) kind of related but different.  I cannot talk about my work anymore with anyone except another computer person.  nothing like telling a group that you are attempting to get some java threads to play nicely with some sites web interface to get someone to change the subject.

(5) the rate of change.  its insane. for the first 5 years I loved learning all this cool new stuff.  then it slowly dawned on me that learning cool new stuff isn't something you do at the beginning of a computer career, its something you do throughout your programming career.  screw that, I want to stay with something long enough to become deeply expert at it.  as a consultant thats bloody hard to do.

so my next career is going to be as a mathematician.  now _that_ looks like fun.

:)

Things I would change would refer to relationships or the dumb things you do as you grow up. Becoming a developer is not one of them. I absolutely love my job and the work is very rewarding.

(There are some things you're born for, and everything else you try to muddle through)

I'd just choose to be born into an insanely wealthy family ... then I could spend my time coding what I want to code when I want to code :)

I would have dedicated more of my time to open source software early on, because the knowledge lasts longer. I wouldn't have learned anything about Java, though. I would have preferred to learn about C, JavaScript and Ruby. :-) Yeah, and run Linux as much as possible.

Commercial software development is very volatile and "dangerous". :-)

That way, I could save me a few years worth of study and still keep most of the knowledge.

It all sounds so silly, though.

But it could have some truth in it and it could work out well (or not...)

Don't Repeat Yourself. ;)

Learn to program with some introduction-to-programming book on C, instead of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Visual Basic.

On the downside, doing so would prevent me from experiencing the warm fuzzy feeling I'm getting at the moment, having discovered the ability to combine C's string functions with pointer arithmetic.



I'm a shoo-in for the OMGWTF programming contest, I can feel it in my bones.

I'd have gone into development again... but I'd have bought stock in Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc this time around.  :)

I would have eaten more bacon and bought Microsoft stock and had a life as a well-paid rich person.

I would have gotten into IT/Development right out of high school, rather than a couple years later.  I'd also have gone straight for the bachelor's I want instead of flitting about and ending up with only an associates.

"Would you still be a developer?  Or would you have gotten into another field?"

Moved into another field.  If I had the do over switch I would go into Finance and Real Estate and maybe marketing.  Hard core Software Development is mostly a young mans game.  Plus it is socially isolating.

When you are young everything is fun and "kwel".  As you get older the fun wears off and you are less competitive.  You want to have a life outside of coding.  Basically you grow out of the job.  If you don't change you end up the greybeard arguing with mgt about timelines and code quality.  Here's a hint, they don't care, they want the job done. 

I'm only 32 and fell like I have been through the meat grinder in this career.

"I'm nearly 30 and I've made a decent living developing so far but at the same time, I can't see doing this for another 40 years."

You sound like me at 30.  You need to do some soul searching and find something you can do.  Speaking from experience, it is very painful working a job in which you lack interest in.

Also, around your age employers are expecting to see some longevity in your resume.  You will be less desirable If you are bouncing jobs every couple of years.

Like another person mentioned I would have gotten into development right after University instead of spending ten years in the military. The military experience has benefited me a lot but it was a long time to spend at relatively low pay compared to development.

The only other thing I wish is that I had attempted to start a company when I was young and single and able to live cheaply.

Buck: Right, as a developer, you can make a decent living & save some cash. It's great to start with. I am 26, and am running a one-man software company for 2 years now. I like software design and IT in general, but also can't see being a software developer for the rest of my life.

workingHard: I agree with you on points 2, 4, and 5. Any good profession requires you to learn new stuff, but programming related knowledge outdates so quickly.

I am now thinking to change the career path. Maybe some other kind of business - more people oriented. Also, I'd like to leave something behind - a long-term value, not just an outdated piece of software.

I went from a math major to an econ major to a cs major in college.  The reason I left math is that I was afraid I was doomed to become an actuary.  If I had it all to do over again, I'd look at the obvious overlapping area, keep going with the math, and become a quant, but of course I had no idea that was an option until I was out of school.

"Would you still be a developer?"

With out a question, yes.  I figured that after doing this for over 10 years I would be bored with it, nope, still love it.

Not get married.  Travel more.  Start a business when I was younger.

If I had to do it all over again,

1. I'd have definitely taken up Comp. Engineering., but done more Math subjects.

2. I'd have honed by technical core programming skills a lot more.

3. Would have been on the lookout for entrepreneurial opportunities.

4. Would have moved out of the hostel and started living alone a lot sooner!

Considering that devs make substantially more than the average wage, nobody here should regret being a dev, that just makes you a whiny complainer :)

I don't regret anything I've done in my career; I started with Unix Admin & webdesign in the 90s (Windows wasn't a viable webserver option back then), did ColdFusion -> Perl -> PHP and then moved to ASP.Net as Windows 2003 as on the horizon and Windows 2000 proved MS could provide a quality server grade OS.

What I do next depends on the market but I can safely stay Windows/ASP.Net is here to stay for awhile.

i think the biggest thing that I regret from my career was in Jan 1998-Feb 2001. I was working at my original IBank, supporting a vendor app and doing "Feed" (Sybase Database development/C File formatting) work. Outside of work, I was single and had a lot of FREE time, that I can never get back. I should have been taking Java/J2EE classes and building an application. No, not for the idea of the syntax of Java, but for OOP concepts.

Unfortunately, years later, I'm doing the same sort of thing at work. However, I continue to work approximately 10-15 hours outside of work on ASP.NET

After college i would have stayed around (upstate new york) and taken advantage of the cheap cost of living and given it a go at developing a product with friends.

Even if it went bust after a year, I'd at least have a something to show for it (a product) and a hell of a lot of experience.

That and two chicks at the same time.

About my disliking of Java, here's part of it:

* Dan Creswell: Victims Of J2EE Success - http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=45165

<q>
...programmers have their minds warped into the J2EE way of thinking:

  1. There is nothing beyond the database
  2. POJOs focused purely on business logic
  3. This is distributed programming
  4. Ops is someone elses problem
  5. Deploy more or bigger boxes to scale

Most enterprises can comfortably tolerate systems built this way but what if you're not most enterprises? What if you are an eBay or a MySpace? eBay for example have thrown out almost all of J2EE and built their own libraries to tackle the problems they face around:

  1. Monitoring
  2. Hot Upgrades
  3. Scaling

Basically once you’re beyond a certain level of challenge the J2EE way of thought and patterns of design don’t work. So where does one find Java programmers that can cope with such a challenge?
</q>

I'd do Petroleum Engineering, but continue learning programming on my own time. The salary of Ptroleum Engineer now is just amazing.

I'd go into medicine, which I originally wanted to do anyway.  But this time I'd focus more on that goal, make sure my college grades could support it, and not give up like I did 28 years ago.

Another thing I'd do would be to go find people who were loving doing what I want to do, listen to how they got there, then follow their advice.

Too many people end up in a "career" by accident, then by the time they wake up & realize they don't really enjoy what they're doing it's kinda too late.

Having said all this, I'm almost to my goal now and at this point in my life I'm doing exactly what I want to do - so no further regrets.

Further on and further in!

What would I have done?

1) Something different, I've worn out the software world.
2) Not sell any cars that I bought in the past, I could easily have retired on that one thing.

to respond to the the question about "Would i do software development?" the answer is yes! Like mentioned above, i would have spent more time outside of work. Further, i can think of one situation where I would have at least interviewed sooner. And sometimes i think to myself that i should be interviewing now, but for personal reasons I am not.

I moved from another science field into programming.  I'll never regret the decision.  The previous job required constant travel for long periods.  Often to some nasty or remote areas.  Software development more or less found me and I have no regrets with the merger. :)

I didn't see anyone respond by saying "I've had 4 or 5 careers in my life so far".

That's my story. There's is no logic to asking oneself what I'd do if I had it to do over again. If you're not happy in your current career, have the courage to admit it to yourself, sit down with paper and pencil and write down the things that make you happy, pick one and pursue it.

I started working at 15 years old and today I'm 47 years old. I've been a bus boy, gas pump jockey, carpenter, advertising account manager, general contractor/builder, salesman, bartender, IT consulting account executive, IT data warehousing Owner/President. Christ!! I've got 20+ years of work ahead of me and my enthusiasm to learn new things will never end.

Don't ask "what if" just think, make a decision and keep moving forward.