ironlake

I'm a senior developer. I'm OK at my job and plan to retire in the next 5-7 years. I focus on delivering quality software that meets the needs of the users that I serve. That's it.

Imposter syndrome is something you should talk about with your therapist. If you want a quick cure, talk to some CEO's in real life.

My day looks like moving software forward: conversations with peers, reading and writing documentation, testing UI, and writing code. (My team is using a lot of AI for code, but it hasn't sped up the delivery of software.) I don't manage humans. It's not something I believe developers should do.

Just because you can't remember the signature for a particular function call or the syntax for a particular language feature doesn't make you an imposter.

Seniors should be good at shipping software. Mid range developers are good at implementing sections of the software that may one day reach a user.

Should all developers have work that is above average quality?

It's OK to meet the standards of the job and not strive for greatness at your day job. The corporation you work for will not care.

IBM PCjr. Not exactly a regret. It was a family computer when I was a tween. They made the best decision they could based on the information available at the time. But it was not a great product.

> settled on racist teachers

If the population of gifted kids is statistically over-represented by white kids, then one of these must be true:

• The test doesn't measure giftedness, but rather level of education. So we would expect kids from worse schools to perform worse. This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal. • Gifted kids from minority communities don't have equal access to the test or the classes. This is institutional racism. The opportunity is not equal. • White kids are smarter. They all took the same test, white kids came out on top. This is a racist belief with a millennia of discredited science to back it up.

No racist teacher required.

Is this another fake like the Google bot that made reservations at a restaurant?

Forth. I learned it very late in my programming career which started with Java. It just feels like home in a way that no other language ever has.

Mostly useless tho

I worked for an international company with more than 100,000 employees. They basically never stopped doing layoffs. It was just background noise all the time. I got laid off after 5+ years, but I was ready to go.

Before that, I was laid off from a company that was rapidly going out of business, no surprise and I was ready to go.

As a data point, I've had 5 software development jobs in 25 years and have been laid off twice.

Sounds like you've had some bad luck, but I suspect things are getting worse.

My experience with over 25 years as a software developer is that the best way to optimize for salary is to switch companies every 3-7 years. There are risks. You either accept the risks or accept that you're not making as much as you could be.

I once worked for a company that had hired mostly people straight out of college. When the company faltered, they started looking for new jobs and were shocked at how much they were underpaid for their positions. But the company had a cool culture so it never occurred to them to test the market.

I almost never switch jobs for money, and for much of my career I've been underpaid. Which is OK. I have other priorities and accept it.

Even so, I'm on my 5th job in 25 years and my current position is the one I've held for the longest.

Both of my adult children have foregone career paths for menial jobs (retail worker and admin stuff). So far, they are both really happy. Living their lives without stress or overtime.

Blue collar work wears out the body. Are you going to be welding at 50? Working as a guide at 60? Tile workers in my family all stopped in their 40s because they could no longer do it.

I could quit my programming job and live on a lot less, as I have savings and already own most of the stuff I need, but health insurance is a problem. (And I like having money).

They did not announce they were working on affordable cars, or at least not a new model that would be more affordable than the models they have now.

Musk pushed all questions about new models to the Robotaxi event in August and the media filled in the blanks and ran with "new, cheaper model" putting words into Musk's mouth.

He did say they weren't going to build a new production line.

Thanks for that perspective. I haven't done any MacOS development.

I am an iOS developer and I haven't used ObjC in over five years. There probably isn't any reason to start a new app or library with anything other than Swift. So it's just going to depend on the legacy code base.

These numbers include upward revisions for past months.

You make a good point about these types of numbers. It's hard to get accurate and timely data in the field of economics, and headlines will never show the revisions, so the information we see will usually be the least accurate (assuming accuracy grows with time).

That said, these are good numbers and there's no reason to suspect they're not real.

The "ignorant hipster" comment is uncalled-for. There's nothing wrong with accessible tools.

But I agree with all your points.

With regard to point 4, if I download a desktop app for my Macbook and it's Electron, I see it as a sign of minimal commitment to user experience. They prioritized cost over my experience and I'm probably not going to choose that app unless there are no other options.

I do the same with iOS apps. If it's not native, I'll usually delete right away.