Comment

Comment by goldenshale

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer science while a graduate student is that the poor students think about languages and libraries as key skills, while the better students think about the data structures, algorithms, and design principles. These slightly more meta-level concepts are far more stable and timeless, while the underlying implementations of them are constantly evolving. If you think of each new library as "having to learn a new skill" I can imagine burnout and overload are more likely, but if you figure once you know 3D graphics you can pretty easily pickup any new graphics engine, then it might even seem fun to explore different takes on the same old concepts. It's like hearing a new band in your favorite genre.

As for attributing burnout as the core issue here, I would strongly disagree with this idea. When teaching undergrads I noticed immediately that a good portion of each student cohort was basically there because they were interested in making money in the future rather than exploring the ideas of computer science. They were no doubt going to get frustrated or bored and move into management or some other profession rather than continue to expand as an engineer. This is totally fine, and they are probably richer for having learned what they did, but I don't know why we can't just see this and appreciate it for what it is rather than portraying it as the drama of burnout.

parent goldenshale 4 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton