100% on the low-level languages. I started with ASM, moved on to C, then C++ so i could comfortably hate Java, JS, front-end in general and complain about un-optimized programs and languages for the rest of my life.
number 9 is so important. I have started swimming, boxing, and running. And my life only got better. I always thought I can start after I make myself better at something and I have money. But now I am making more money and improving as developer. Physical health is soo important folks. Be healthy :)
a wise told man me once "go out and get f cked", going out makes things happened or you can stay inside and gets bitter from what you see on the internet
your comment might as well save my life, so you have that for your change. I always thought that i will not go out, will not have friends, will not indulge in any activity except coding so i can earn but if it is true that you are also making money even after prioritising things other than coding then, ill just leave now i was seriously fed up with the coding grind, i enjoy it but it is so stressful, thanks man
The final point hits hard. The other day I was leaving a concert with a group of friends and an old lady fell from the front stairs of the theater as she was leaving and hit her head hard on the ground. This girl from our group rushed to her as 50 people watched and applied the first aid (bandages to her head etc. as she was bleeding a lot) and helped the old lady untill the ambulance arrived, then just went to us for dinner like nothing had happened. She just helped save a person in time of need. Something very primal. And then there was me, with knowledge in fking javascript. Edit: She was a nurse.
Javascript can be valuable too. Entering patient data into a web app, or making it possible to view your x rays within a few minutes of taking them, for example. Lots of things contribute to society in various ways. Not everything has to be literally saving someone's life. Even improving the quality of life is valuable. I am not saying every programming project does this, but it CAN.
Well, if you live long enough for humans to be replaced with synths (if we haven't already), you might one day write an api call that saves a life. You never know.
Trust me, we have a much, much easier job than nurses or paramedics. I'll take writing code for money, and having hobby interests any day over the meat grinder that is healthcare
Dear programmers - start working out. Genuinely. I started waking up super early to lift in the morning, and I'd never skip it now. You feel WAY BETTER and look your absolute best. Just fuckin do it.
Exactly, you make enough money to buy the membership at the gym that's next to the office or your home and hit an hour or two there every day before going to the first meeting and eating the protein bars meant for snacks. It's the perfect time because most people won't be there while you can just flex your hours. Also, check the free-for-all fridge that's anyway packed with drinks for quarks, greek yoghurt and/or protein puddings to get the protein in. There's no reason not to be the biggest at the office.
I also work out 5 days a week. Most of us really have time to do this, but we find ways to make excuses. A planet fitness membership. I believe costs between $10 and $20 depending on the tier that you get
I started working out at night after going to random stuff classes I signed for, then transitionated to going right after lunch, it's so effing hard for me to wake up early in the morning :c
As a former paramedic, it really annoys me to hear people say how I had a real job. A real job where I was underpaid and had to see a lot of blood and guts 12 hours a day. It’s grunt work and a lot of people who get into the job don’t last longer than six months because they can’t handle the stress, low pay, and the emotional toll. You get to hear a lot of last words and you end up becoming very jaded real quick. You also work with a lot of people who simply stop caring because they see death day in day out. After becoming a web developer, I had to do some recovery and I’m glad I got out of it. I feel my quality of life is much better now.
I think all kids should have a "real job" at some point before going on to their desk career. Will give them a greater appreciation for it (and a greater appreciation for those who stay in those jobs for life).
I bet paramedics also depend on devices which are connected to the internet at times, using software programmers wrote. Some of us write really stupid programs for stupid reasons and that's a bummer, but so much of the world really is dependent on web infrastructure and the applications running on it, day in and day out. That's fairly real, right? Having said that, I don't regret working awful trades jobs and working for my programming career. I appreciate it more than I would have.
But what you did objectively improved the world for many people and minimized an enormous amount of suffering. You actually mattered. If I disappear, some people will have slightly lower quality or have to wait a bit longer for some entertainment.
You created a UA-cam channel that influenced millions and showed the world the beauty of programming and software development, your children and grandchildren will be proud of you.
Absolutely right! Love this guy's energy and passion! He keeps me inspired in my journey of breaking into the tech industry and becoming a developer. Well said, @matanp103!
I'm 49 and have been in the game programming world (car racing sims mostly) for about 25 years. Started programming at probably age 7 or 8 in Basic back in the good old days of DOS. My biggest regret is not learning C much earlier. For 14 years I wrote nothing but PowerBasic procedural code (what's that? Exactly.) Then moved on to C# in Unity for a few years, then C++. I'm doing fine, but think I'd be better off today had I started with C as a kid, and moved onto C++ early on. By the way, I'm a lot more capable today than I was 20 years ago. Today I'm writing a DirectX12 racing simulator on my own, something I couldn't have dreamed of doing 20 years ago solo. So don't worry, kids, your brain won't fall apart when you hit 30 or 40. I'm stronger now than I ever was. You will be too. 👍
One thing I would add though, is try to do as much as you can before you have children. I was on a good upward trajectory transitioning from data analytics to engineering, but it completely bricked out as soon as I had kids, was perpetually exhausted and had almost no free time left to spend on projects or at least no time where my brain wasn't fried enough from dealing with baby/toddler from 6.30am to work-start, work-end to 9pm and all weekend. Now I just wish I either did a LOT more before I had kids, or that I just stayed happy as an analyst with much less post-work hour study requirements as I can't keep up in the slightest. I just do not have the time.
00:35 01. Written less code 01:48 02. Started earlier 03:15 03. Finished more projects 04:07 04. Completed a computer science degree 04:47 05. Bought bitcoin 05:09 06. Learned lower-level language (like C) 05:51 07. Not using javascript for everything 06:23 08. Not spending so much time on LEETCODE 06:51 09. Prioritized my health 07:32 10. Never learned to code
I regret that by the time I got really effective at programming I started getting jobs at places that were toxic and had little interest in actually solving programming problems.
i just started on a new project and found a class /w 850 lines of code in Angular. I was able to reduce it to 25 lines by using RxJs. This is how you optimize! The only downside is, that nothings works anymore.
I'm 67 and severely disabled (since 52). I programmed professionally in Assembly, C, C++, C#, and Visual Basic (yuck). In 2021, I taught myself Python and have completed several projects for my own use. Keeps my mind sharp. I'm contemplating learning a new programming language now. It's much more fun now than when I did it for a living.
Programming for 42 years now and still loving it as i enjoy looking for the simplest ways to solve complex problems. Programming brings your ideas to life.
I've met two programmers who have been at it for around 60 years.. I sometimes check their github to see if they are still alive.. best people I've met in the industry by far! and I love how they are just like you (and me) still absolutely in love with it all!
You've been programming for 42 years and you're not a gajillionaire? Shouldn't you be out there outperforming entire departments and shipping precision guided missiles to the BRICS?
True wealth is being able to do what you need when you need to do it, so I have more than enough :) Knowing 1000s of people everyday are using my apps all over the world gives me a great sense of satisfaction (I would not develop to harm anyone (Missiles or drones)). Money is important but bettering yourself and others through your work is a real bonus for me. But people are free to decide what works for them :)
My biggest regret is trying to make a career out of programming. It went from an interest, to a hobby, to an education, to a job. Somewhere along the line (roughly at 'education'), I realized the parts of programming I enjoy the most are also the parts that employers don't pay me for. I've switched careers now, and that old unfinished Javascript game that's bitrotting on my harddrive is starting to look like a pretty fun project again. At least, until I look at the code. Man, what was I thinking.
Same, I want to make visualizations for weird algorithms in JS/CSS but no one wants to pay for eye candy they don't necessarily understand or have any use for
@@pieterjanspoelders8636 Apologies for the wall of text. Just scrolled up after writing all this to let you know I got a bit carried away. I work at the service desk for a company that provides temporary security software/hardware (for construction sites, for example). We have a webapp for registering and managing who can access the construction site, which company they work for, when they clock in/out, etc. We also provide turnstiles and the like that are connected to the registration environment. (Our company also provides cameras, but that's a separate department). I help end-users when they're having problems with the software and/or hardware, or when they need to do or change something in the system that they don't have permission to change themselves. I like how I no longer need to plan and manage my time with long-term projects. I get a phone call, help the person, and file the ticket. When there's no phonecalls waiting, I open an email, help the person, and file the ticket. When there's no unassigned emails left either, I have some time to relax. I can work at my own pace (mostly), and I don't have to worry about schedule slip, because there _is_ no schedule. It's nice to be not just caught up, but _done_ at times, instead of always having several new features waiting to be implemented. One downside is, when the software is broken or malfunctioning in some way, I have to wait for Product Management to fix the code. I can't dive in to discover the cause. Sometimes I use the browser devtools to temporarily fix something on my own end, and whatever PHP nightmare they have on the backend shines through. Judging by the wildly jumping indentation of the resulting HTML, there's some pretty complex stuff going on there. Kinda glad I don't have to deal with that, because I just _know_ I wouldn't be able to stop myself from trying to refactor that. Also, the fact that I'm the only one on the service desk team with programming knowledge means I can contribute in unique ways. For example, one part of the webapp consists of multiple nested accordion menus, and there's no search bar. If you need to find something, and it's not on the "top layer", you're gonna have to open the options one by one until you find it. Better hope it's not multiple layers deep. I didn't want to deal with that, so I wrote a quick bookmarklet that finds the right item in the html code, unfolds all of the necessary layers above it, and then scrolls the item into view. I wrote it over a lunch break, but my colleagues had been waiting for that kind of functionality for months if not years. Now they have my bodged together solution until PM makes something better.
I felt point 10 really well. These thoughts also come to me every few months when my current project gets more boring or my current job gets on my nerves.
A good analogy I heard for 3:15 was: "Learning while programming something is like trying to pack a kitchen, except every cabinet has a chance to also contain another kitchen." I've lost count of the number of times I've lost days of research and experimenting on a minor feature.
This morning I spent 3 hours learning how to write a one-liner script file to output a value of something because the current way requires 3 clicks and about 5 seconds total wait time.
I took about two months break from programming, During the break I felt so good doing completely different things. My mind was relaxed. There was no pressure. I didn't realize how stressing programming was until I took the break. The relief that I experienced showed me that programming had robbed my peace. All along I thought that the stress that comes with programing was normal, but now my definition of normal must have peace.
@@Andrew-pd6ey Lots of fulfilling work. Especially when you start using efficient methods like hydroponics for veges together with organic waste management strategies like black Soldier fly farming for livestock feed. There's nothing I look forward to than abandoning society and go live on my own 😂
@@davinmars5177 Well this doesn't sound super simple to me. farming really is just put it in the ground and see what happens. It can be hard to get right, but it's simple to do. living off grid seems like a mammoth task.
My family and I bought a farm and have 146 animals on some land. My life partner just passed suddenly, and he was a programmer. He has left me my dream farm to continue to raise our kids and pets. He did it though. He has left us a legacy.
"I wish I did (or didn't) such and such when I was young." is the setup for severe anxiety and depression....don't go there. Ever. Regrets are futile, the past is gone.
I'm 35yo and coding since my 14'. I loved doing that for opensource and contributed vastly and then made my career on programming. my last company was almost perfect and I made myself extensively motivated and invested then an older one gets hired and disliked most of the thing I've designed. all of the things I've made was working, fully documented, rigorously tested and carefully formatted. cloc shown half of the lines were comments. then this individual made pressure and humiliated me on the very minimal error he could find that I would fix in 10 minutes at most and eventually he even managed to get me fired from the company. now I'm in the process of changing my whole life and searching in which area I could enjoy working again. It's terrible how the hell someone can manage you to hate your initial passion. the last point of the video is definitely for me. because of that individual I feel like programming is useless and that I don't provide anything meaningful for people and for the society. for those who starts, take fucking care of your mental health.
Soon there will be no need of programmers, there will be just reviewers of AI code. So just remember the good all times and find a job dealing with water, it is the new gold, soon people will kill each other for it.
the most regret is not taking algorithm and data structure classes seriously in college. Now I'm learning it to pass coding interviews and it is brutal. Recursion is my new worst enemy.
Why dsa for job tho? I mean, you do need it for job and can just know what exists so you can just use it when needed. But why do you need that do get a job?
The most important thing I've learned is to do activities outside programming. I was very career focused for a while but then I burned out and started hating anything IT related . Now I found balance. Sometimes I say fuck the career let's make something crazy. I hike, climb boulders, travel a lot, go to social 3vents. I've got less money but my life has become much better
I'm quite surprised nobody talks about it but my biggest regret so far after almost 20 years is all that time not enjoying myself much and not having much good time with my colleagues and co-workers. It is always about solving problems, problems everywhere, all the time only problems. Problems, problems, problems. And at some point you get absorbed into it. Days, weeks, months, quarters, years are passing by and when you look back it is important to value our time on this planet. Gosh, I spent more time with my coworkers than with my mother, my dad and my brother, combined! Your team is literally your second family. Like a road trip, the end goal is not what matters most but the adventures you went through and the people you met in between.
you are right. every time I spend more than 2 hours coding I came out more depressed and antisocial. it's all these problems and bugs takes its toll on mental health. I wonder if it's same for police detectives always seeing the worst of people
That is so true! I have these kind of thoughts every day but at the same time if I don't go to work I won't be able to pay my bills, buy my loved ones gifts. I started my game dev careers with a lot of dreams but then I got absorbed into making tons of meaningless casual games with horrendous amount of ads. I can't even remember what I've done in the last 2 years
Man the grass is always greener on the other side my dude. People spending that much time with their friends and family are either incredibly privileged through mostly stupid luck or are miserable because they have no money and skills (ask me how I know). I'd literally kill to trade places with you as a 37-year-old who spent his entire life avoiding work to "enjoy" life. "Life is hard and then you die". This existence is a nightmare no matter what you do, but people seem to not want to acknowledge that. Life is hell. Reproduction is a narcissistic evil.
@@philj9594 Life is hell if you are alone. If you have a wife and a kid and share your time with them supporting, encouraging each other, hugging, kissing, etc. This is beautiful life. And most importantly you can think of it like this. If you were never created by your parents you would never existed, what is worst than knowing you might of never existed this is even worse than the most miserable life.
My best advice for staying healthy and learning quickly as a programmer is working out, especially strength training. Not kidding. When you work out, especially when you're pushing your limits, your neurons race to learn new and more efficient connections and it puts your brain in learning mode for this reason. So you're not only improving your health and strength, and teaching your nervous system to work more efficiently, you're training your brain and making it more pliable. Try taking programming breaks by working out with strenuous weight exercises and vice versa. You will learn better and faster, be healthier, and have a lot more energy and motivation.
Spending a long time in tutorial hell is definitely one my regrets. I squandered 2 years. I could’ve just gone on to get a job and learned on the job and made some money too. Money I could’ve invested that could’ve compounded a lot by now. And of course #9. Many doctors say that sitting in front of computer for work all day is: _the modern day prison._ Also, I don’t envy the paramedic. My buddy is a paramedic and he has PTSD. He doesn’t make much and the stress is insane. He sees a lot of gnarly shit. So much so that he asked me about getting into coding. Guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
Yeah the stories from a ex paramedic friend I know... man, that is horrible. I can't imagine having to see that in my life, let alone everyday. They have to have shut off empathy and sympathy, like their brain has to be wired to be similar to a psychopath's in order to NOT have PTSD. That's basically impossible imho unless they're born that way.
Everything has upsides and downsides, be as informed as you can and be ready for them. Some extra advice I would give is be careful about caffiene intake, make sure you know the effects and are ready to tone it down if it starts affecting you too much.
I’m not a tech programmer, but I program PLCs for a living and let me tell you, when you energize machines and it starts doing exactly what you programmed it to do, it feels amazing! I’ll never get tired of admiring some of the most complex machines, watching them work is just breath taking.
My experience with PLCs is limited and long ago, but I imagine that would be a fine career. Straight, simple, to the point, does what you tell it unless something's broken. Software isn't like that! No layers of useless abstraction built in four different languages, or surprise hidden actions like with C++ constructors. A bit is a bit, a switch is a switch, a motor is a motor, etc. What is the job market like for that kind of work?
Surprisingly deep in places and the last point definitely hits home. Looks like it might be a more common thing than I thought. I think this could be somewhat alleviated by working on meaningful, e.g. something related to energy, medicine or the environment? Too often though I feel like I reduced my life to almost nothing by working remotely for a company that does not impact anything meaningful.
5:08 definitely would agree that my three semesters of community college working pretty much exclusively in C really shifted my mindset from “how do I solve this problem” to “how do I solve this problem in a way the computer can handle it efficiently”. That’s really been a shifting point in my experience as a developer
Exactly, my mates always laugh at me while they code in python and uses library thinking they are smart. Bro python is the least efficient thing if you really want to learn programming.
I've been on youtube since 13 years and this is my first comment. The No. 10 hit me hard. As a developer with more than 15+ years of experience I've had the same thoughts and I believe I'm going thru exactly what you mentioned.
I feel like I have to say something. I worked as an architect for 3 years before I moved on to programming for a living. During those 3 years I have a reasonable doubt my work hardly made anyone's life better (except for the few profiting from it), even though I didn't agree with it, my job (and many other architect's job) was to do shitboxes for people to buy at an astronomical price and spend the rest of their lives paying for them. Then I started programming in a small company where I could see the programs I did had an impact somewhere, be it an automation that saves a coworker time and effort or an application that helps monitor some valuable metric. From there I jump into another company that I believe provides a service fundamental to society. What I am trying to say is you have to find meaning in every job and in everything you do, not everything is saving lives, that's the epitome of doing good but good can also be the app that makes your local hairdresser be more productive and thus earn more for the same effort, being relieved from a repetitive or tiring task.
I regret even choosing this field. Like you don't have to be a leetcode genius and have 500 side projects and 20 internships to be a nurse and make 120k a year right out of school, but you do for a basic entry level programming job. Even today the starting pay has been cut down to like $80k. I sit here today with 2 engineering degrees, a bullshit 'startup' company that doesn't make any money, a bunch of bullshit ass skills, and nothing to my name because there's more supply than demand, and the supply is artificially augmented by generative AI so any jackass can copy and paste some swift and make a crappy SwiftUI app that leaks 2GB of memory everytime the launch screen shows up. Truly. Do not pursue programming at this point in time if you're looking to start a career or change one. Pursue this on the side, and focus on something real if you want to actually be able to live a normal life. I am truly heartbroken in how misguided I was to think life would get easier if I just checked off all of the boxes and kept my head down, but no.
That part about coding not 'feeling real' really hits hard. I wish coding would've always stayed as a nice hobby of mine. I love doing it, but it feels as if it should just be a tool one has in one's belt to actually do 'real' other stuff.
Not a programmer, but I think you may be right. Professional programmer - employed to write code to meet some vague 'deliverable' that may or may not make sense. Other professional with programming skills - uses code to solve the real world problems they encounter in their everyday work.
Yeah, I spent the first fifteen years of my life after high school building and repairing things, and now I move invisible numbers around for a few minutes every day and try to look busy for the remaining 7 hours. I make 3x the money but I still don't know if it's worth it.
As a lifelong developer once again considering a career change, my proudest creation looking back is an electronic door lock I custom-made for my parents' house. Sure, there was more to it than just programming, as I had to read spec sheets of electronics, wire up the microprocessor to a debugger, test out things with my multimeter, and solder it all together in a nice enough package. But it was also a proud programming achievement to cram all that logic (plus an EEPROM code reset feature accessible from inside the house only) into a tiny PIC16F without even using half of its memory. All while delivering a much, much better user experience than most premade locks for someone trying to get the gate open quickly with grocery bags in hand. It's such a simple thing, but it was so tangible. And it worked without a single glitch for almost a decade until the keypad broke down. Another of my proudest creations is a whole wireless sensor logging suite for QAs in a workshop consisting of multiple services (each with their own role ranging from a stable logging core to a high-performance graph visualizer) all running on a single Raspberry Pi plus a few cables and stripboards I soldered together for ADCs and such. I have written far more complex webapps and shit since. Some of them were nice I guess. But nothing beats the satisfaction of handrolling some hardware + software and _making_ something physical with it. That's not to say embedded dev is always best in this regard. You may well find yourself just building the next generation of useless Internet Of Shit smart device in that field. And embedded devs are often engineers with a disdain for CS and a horrendous inability to design any sort of abstraction (similar to but the inverse problem of devs from other fields being unable to build any _useful_ sort of abstraction). But there's sure a lot more potential to build something concrete in embedded.
Moritz, we "embedded" developers do not have have that problem. We plant and raise up a soul in hardware to actually do real-world things. Embedded at chip and device control is very fun, but you have to have an aptitude for both HW and SW, and make them sing in harmony.
Computer Science doesn't really teach programming. At least, my degree didn't. My degree, and who would guess, was about computer *science*. It was a lot about logic, set theory, turning machines, grammars, page caching, machine learning, etc. Yeah, we did programming, but that wasn't the focus. It definitely didn't teach enough to understand any language unless you wrote your own projects on the side (like you should anyway). People were struggling with python though, so that sums up that course...
Mine taught both. I practiced programming enough to be able to learn more on my own, but I feel I benefitted a lot from the theoretical foundations and hardware understanding.
Really? Are out there more crappy things than these: #) highly stressful deadlines, #) carrying your work at home(frequent overtimes), #) getting the middle finger frequently by a random IDE/library error whom the creator never fixed and you will spend countless hours on fixing it by yourself. #) arguing every day to explain to non technical manager clowns that this needs more than "10 minutes of work". #) babysitting juniors for many hours everyday cause they are too lazy to read code before asking for help (by the way this means your own tasks are getting delayed due to this). #) getting "backstabbed" in various ways from coworkers cause they are scared you may take their job sooner or later. This doesn't happen in most fields cause the salaries dont differ that much like they do in IT field. I have worked in retail too, it was paradise compared to the above.
@@John__K Law, business, entrepreneurship. All points except #3, though each have equivalents. I spent a whole of 5 seconds in thinking of these three, and 15 to double check with your list. Thinking a bit more, I just figured that the way to avoid all your points is a trade job or anything that doesn't involve that big city competition (or most things from college). Open a coffee shop in your town. Work retail. Have a workshop. Do manual labor (though not necessarily the intense/rough kind). Humble life, stress free, done by our ancestors, none of that brutal competition among colleagues. I see the appeal. It's that, or becoming a bourgeois elite through some huge success in some company you make. I don't judge if you seek the simple life. It is a good path for good men, tried and tested.
@@John__KYou should really do a 10 minutes think about what other careers do, because is funny you think those "crappy things" are unique to programming jobs.
@@rbasket8 I didn't say all of them are unique, however the unique ones are much worse then the common ones with other fields. Like i said, i have also worked in retail and several big corporate companies.
@@crashingflamingo3028 I coded S some 35 to 40 years ago (Lotus 123 days) on Unix SVR4 IIRC and loved it, albeit the problems tackled were far simplier back then.
I am Egyptian and of course all my studies until I graduated from university were in Egypt. Your words are very true in everything you said about us. Thank you for speaking about this topic. It is good that there is someone who says what is in our hearts.
Reminds me a nice quote I learnt from playing Civ IV: "The designer knows he's achieved perfection not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away"
I had several jobs: Java fullstack developer, penetration tester, and C# fullstack developer. I got a CS master's degree. In the end, I came to conclude that I hate coding. I never actually create anything new or do anything that makes me feel worthy; it's either CRUD or copy-paste. In the end, I'm just a script boy or someone who knows how to use certain frameworks. There's little to no value in my job, and LeetCode is a scam. The tech interview is a scam. LeetCode helps you become familiar with data structures and algorithms, but I'm pretty sure you don't learn any problem-solving skills because many LeetCode problems essentially just apply a very specific solution to a very specific problem which you will never see in your lifetime. And we created this toxic environment.
I feel the "it's either CRUD or copy-paste". I started (more like forced to learn) programming because it is required of me and I feel backed into a corner doing it. Especially in my college Capstone project years where my deadbeat groupmates did not even care touch programming. I feel trapped doing programming and the fact that I also feel "i'm not doing something new or do anything that makes me feel worthy", Like if Wordpress and other CMS can do what I'm doing faster and being up-to-date with syntax might almost be impossible because the framework I'm using is always updating(Laravel), then what is even the point of improving and spending my time with coding?! The "script boy" thing hits hard on me too, I feel that one because I am also one. I guess the silverlining is that now I am competent that I can build a website better than my official university website. And maybe I could slightly impress employers with my coding background, other than that I am starting despise coding too. Web development for me is just CRUD + API Integration/Testing + Web Hosting, that's it. Stoicism is one of the things that helped me in my bittersweet coding journey and made me realize to embrace my fate no matter what, everything else is beyond my control. @elliotanderson1585 I'm sorry your comment just completely resonated with me. If there is any advice you can give me (either programming related or not) I would gladly appreciate it. I'm contemplating learning pentesting or QA Testing but I feel like those are dead end traps as well.
@@pkp4761 I'd suggest you try as many things that you are interested in as possible. Granted, IT is a big field, but sometimes it's just not for everyone. I know I'm doing it because the payment is good, for now, but nobody knows what the market will look like five years later; actually, it's already gone downhill. So, you can try to learn other things like pen testing, which you've mentioned, or AI, or you can try other things that are not related to the field, like writing (I just realized I really enjoy writing fiction novels). But definitely do it in your free time and keep your job before you are certain you want to and can switch careers, as that takes time. and good luck.
@@pkp4761 Hi, for some unknown reasons my replies didn't show up, so I had to type them again. I have to admit, the only reason that I chose programming is because the marketing was good and so is the payment. Though IT is a big field, many subfield jobs do require some highly specialized skills. If you just do coding monkey work, you can be easily replaced, but if you spend many hours just sinking into a field you don't like, it will be miserable and you probably won't last anyway. I can only suggest that you try as many different things that you are interested in as possible. For example, pen testing, which you mentioned, AI technologies, etc. You can also try fields that are not related to CS (I actually found myself quite enjoying writing fiction novels). But before you find the things you love to do, definitely keep the job at hand; it takes time to switch careers. And good luck.
@@pkp4761 just go straight learning cloud, getting some cloud certification from AWS (or Azure depends on your area) and you'll be paid basically doing nothing other than configuring some configs and then you can focus doing fun challenging side projects/contribute to OSS
My best advice as a long time software engineer is to take care of your health if you want to last and stay productive. Programming just isn't a healthy job, it's mentally very intense and a very sedentary activity. I'd also say if by the time you hit mid 30's/40's and are losing the passion for it, just get out and/or get into management, don't kill your brain pushing it to do something it doesn't want to do anymore, it'll only make you very unhappy.
I have graduated college with an IT degree. But after 15 months later (June-December 2023 and January-Present 2024) my experience with IT, especially with lessons in Visual Studio, Object Oriented Programming, Data Structures and Algorithims, XAMPP, and MongoDB are sort of gone. Now my other interests are in video editing, art and music and i am conflicted and probably wondering if lounging at my bed with phone in hand and thinking about money is all what i can think..
Programming today is like being part of an adventuring expedition. You don't know if you're going to be part of something big like finding Machu Picchu, or if you're wandering aimlessly searching for El Dorado.
Maybe back in the '80s. Nowadays, you need insane amounts of money and limitless resources to genuinely hope to make a breakthrough in the industry. Long gone are the days of two college roommates building a multi-million business out of a "Dude, that'd be fucking crazy, but what if we just...?" type idea they came up with during a LAN party over some pizza and weed smoke.
@@yarpen26 That's what people thought back then as well. Sure, if you want to make a breakthrough in a particular field that is already adopted by everybody and their grandmother you're going to have a hard time with limited resources. You have to become a pioneer in something new.
@@sakkii Things ain't that easy anymore though, not least because of the Internet. Whenever a new opportunity arises, you already have thousands of people grilling their brains trying to squeeze it dry and then sell it to the biggest players for a shitload of cash. Back in the early days of IT, there was effort involved in getting hold of those new developments-effort and lots of luck. The further from the US (especially Silicon Valley) you lived, the less likely were you to have a chance to, say, attend a lecture by a promising engineer you could seek partnership with or even have him in the circle of your friends' friends. Between some 1850 and 2000 things were largely beneficial to lone wolves: literacy was common and press available just enough to create big crowds of people skilled in particular fields, but not saturated so as to render individual research worthwhile. With the Internet, the window of opportunity is just so ridiculously narrow, most people can't even properly process the new information before some big fish has patented its fundamentals.
@@sakkii I posted a reply but this app is too fucked up to do something as basic as actually save it so we'll need to leave it at that. (Jesus Christ, this is embarrassing. The biggest IT conglomerate in the world, everybody...)
A lot of engineers put too much emphasis on this and over-do it though. Writing reusable libraries & frameworks is the most productive thing a senior dev can do. But libraries & frameworks are often more complex than the code they replace so many supposedly senior devs fight against re-usability. But building up a sizable library of good quality reusable code not only makes the developer who writes it much faster and better, but it can make all the other developers who use the code faster and better to.
Being a programmer is similar to being an engineer, but not at all identical. As an engineer, your goal should be to build something as cheaply as possible. This is why simple tools and "if it ain't broken don't fix it" prevail. As a programmer, your goal is to build something as cheap, maintainable, and efficient as possible, in the shortest amount of time. You are forced to strive for perfection in basically every scenario, which is why simple tools will never be enough.
@@okie9025 as an engineer, ur goal is to solve a fuckin problem wat u said is for a businessman, which is why the world now sucks, everything is cheap and break within 5 years
Feels good to know that I'm not the only one who loves to code but sometime thinks that these vague digital software that I'm writing aren't a real thing.
It always happens when something works perfectly, then I ask myself why? That essentially comes down to bits. 0s and 1s written using electrons. You're telling me I wasted last few hours of my life for some electrons to go that very specific path in my cpu?
I really like the work of Stephen Wolfram, and I feel the opposite way. Computation is way more awesome and foundational than we appreciate. We do cool stuff on the regular.
@@hetmanfoko Yeah, and your thoughts and ideas are just neurons moving a certain way inside your brain. Just because it’s based on something simple doesn’t mean that it can’t add up to be something meaningful.
Thank you for the inspiration, I really needed it I will now quit my long and successful career as a programmer (3 years of experience) and join my sister, who's becoming a scuba instructor
@@GSBarlev fr, there are no underwater programmers, so when there is no more land and we all live under the sea, all your time spent programming will go to waste
If anyone is having second thoughts about their career just remember, you're not stuck as a programmer just because it's your job title or you have a CS degree. You can swap to other roles or pursue education to supplement your CS background. I started as a Unity dev, now I manage an R&D program's funding, next I'm thinking about going into patent or regulatory law. For all of these my CS background is still useful.
Yea, theres also the option to freelance or Do it Remotely and just like coding was passion and now A job, maybe you will have another passion which you can do at the side I am also starting fear the AI part, but I dont think it will affect my country much. So atleast 10 years and I ll be a senior dev
Yes, thinking as well of trying to move away - but this is not easy - you need to show some experience to move to a new field - its like starting from zero. Best way is to go to a large company and ... drift.
Yep, I'm looking for the exit from the 'tech' industry. Been there in various guises since 2009 and have now had enough - it's not grabbing me anymore and my brain fels like a lump of concrete.
My biggest regret is not focusing on specialization. I began programming in 2009, this year is supposed to be my 15th year of experience. But i still don't know much due to jumping from programming language to another. I regret so much.
This video might cheer you up ua-cam.com/video/_ihX2e9dnYM/v-deo.html , it's from the guy that made the OG Fallout game, and he laments the 'decline of generalists' in favour of everyone being specialists, which he acknowledges is useful and necessary, but there is a loss of interdisciplinary understanding which can slow down the whole project of teams... However, he is talking about generalists mostly regarding understanding of different fields, such as 3d modeling, animation, programming, networks, compiling, etc., not specifically 'generalist in programming languages'.
I'm 46 and I started learning BASIC on my dad's CPM computers when I was maybe 6 in 1984. I soon had my own Commodore VIC-20 and then a C-128, from there PC's. I typed every BASIC game out of the computer magazines of the era, changed and learned more. By 14 I was programming in C thanks to the same book mentioned in the video, and I got Symantec C++ soon after. From there it was Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic 4 and others. I also had learned 6502 assembler and x86 assembly, albeit mostly for inline code functions when I was working on the demo scene in the 90's. I still love coding. I've spent the last 25 years turning people's dreams of software ideas into reality and it's been a great living for me and I've enjoyed it. I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my life.
I've been coding 20+ years. It's a pile of shit working as a programmer because of politics and people. I still enjoy coding and doing technical projects for myself.
Regretting JavaScript on the server is not enough. I regret JavaScript in general. I wish the native language of the web was not stitched together in one week by taking Java and stripping it of the strong typing.
Back in my day code used to weigh about 17 long tonnes, and every day we had to push it to the server, who was a very nice man with a bad limp in his eye.
Number 10 got you the like for this one. I've been writing code for 40 years, professionally for 30 years and when people ask me how to start programming i always say "don't. just learn to weld". I wish I'd become a welder. I started welding when I was 40 and if I'd started that when I was 5 like programming, I'd be a bagillionaire by now.
Tough work tho, bro. I don't fancy the chances of being injury free in 40 years as a welder. As a programmer we can mostly guarantee our own safety, excluding back aches and carpal tunnel.
Side note for anyone wondering, it’s Calcium that Calcifies your glands (even the Tstes over time) but Fluoride binds to the calcium. Which is why if your kid sneaks into the bathroom at night and eats all the toothpaste from the Costco multipack, the Doc’s recommendation is to give the now grounded child some milk.
my biggest regret was starting without a goal in mind. A lot of people who don't have a career in programming instead use programming skills to help them achieve goal, whether it be blender animations, or figuring out how many potatoes you can realistically fit inside of your car. I myself started out with zero objective in mind so over the course of 5 years I never learned anything to its full potential, I'm now sitting today as a jack of all trades and a master of none. My point is figure out what you want to do before you start learning to code, as your going to save yourself a lot of time and stress down the road. Low level engineers don't need to know tailwind, Web Developers don't need to know memory allocation
Due to mismanagement of my class files, my first programming language in college was Assembly. It was tough, but I have always felt like I had a leg up over everyone else. I didn't have to change the way I programmed or tackled problems. It made almost all of my programming classes afterwards easier as a result. I almost cried when I first learned how to print in java lol.
I agree with starting at low level languages, your first language should be something like C/C++ Because even though you might never encounter or care about things like pointers, pointer to pointers, and dynamic memory allocation/deallocation (because garbage collection go brrrrrrr), it's good to understand what is going on behind the scenes and helps to build a good foundation that makes future languages easier to learn
The thing about doing something more real, this came to me a little while ago, though that's when I understood that coding is a means to an end, and the end is what affects real life. Lots of much more exciting projects came to mind when I understood this.
I don't regret learning programming, but I do sometimes regret being a programmer. If I got a job in marketing or accounting i could automate my job rather than automation being my job.
before i was a programmer, i worked in a steel plant. It was absolutely horrible environment for a shy nerdy guy like me. However, if people today ask me what I do for a living, I say "I do IT stuff, but before that I worked at a steel plant. . ." and proceed to tell them about that hell job. Only because that hell job produced things that I can point to in real life and say "People use this".
When you work on a project that no-one use it's hard to tell what you're doing. If you coded/maintained UA-cam, Instagram or anything that people use daily they would know that they wouldn't have been able to watch any videos/photos without your not "real" job. For example properly created banking apps produces real impact on real life of people.
I worked as a municipal arborist for 28 years - trimming trees for public safety and aesthetics, and cutting down hazard/dying trees. It is a satisfying profession, to be sure, but very, very hard work on the body. A neck injury combined with the wear and tear of 3 decades of labor-intensive work has forced me to retire from the profession early. Now, at age 48, and having no marketable skills outside of arboricultural work, I find myself with no choice but to venture into a new career. I'm just now in the beginning stages of making that new career software development, but I hope that eventually I will get to tell people, "I do computer stuff, but I used to cut down trees for a living."
I regret not knowing enough about cool things in math and physics that would give me a much better chance at getting a cool programming job building stuff that goes into space or something. There are a lot of programming jobs out there, but many are in industries that aren't exciting or rewarding.
I regret not having made demo videos of my long dead side projects. They are uninstallable/unusable due to obsolescence and I would be proud today to show what they did.
As a high schooler I regret learning programming during middle school and investing so much time into projects instead of socializing. End result: poor and unsatisfactory social life and social skills, feeling of missing out on teen life.
I'm trying to learn game dev so I can combine programming and art. I don't think being a software engineer for some company will bring me much joy in life, just sitting there editing other people's code everyday. I want to be able to exercise my creativity through programming and art to create something original. Plus all these big game companies are just pumping out generic pay to win trash. Now I just need to learn some C# and the unity engine. I already know C++ and python. Might find some use for C++
If you're good at C++, you could try using Unreal Engine in which you can use c++ for games, which is more performant compared to c#. Or Godot also supports c++ and it's the engine I'm using right now, it's great for indie games and despite it being only 100 MBs in size it has all the features one would need.
I have been developing software for more than 22 years now. The first few years it was really hard for me but now it has become my passion. I love being a software developer.
i share the final regret 100% We can impress most people with what we do as programmers, but it comes nowhere close to people making an actual physical difference to another person.
Yep. I keep telling myself that one day I'll find a job that involves making something real, but seems like there's so few of them and they also require a degree or insane experience. It really makes you wonder how come crucial software projects have no money to spare. Maybe the way we distribute wealth is flawed
@@Shpitzickif you don't like what people in a society prefer to spend their money on, the only "fix" for that is extreme authoritarianism. You can build a society that compromises between millions of peoples values or a society that focuses entirely on your values but you can't have both.
@@Shpitzick I tell you one pro way of thinking good about yourself. You helped your boss help his boss get rich. That is very altruistic of you. (Of us even)
Your take on C is so true imo! I remember thinking "why do I even have to learn this low level language as my first programming language??" when I was in college...and wow, how lucky I feel now to have started this way
I regret going to uni, so the opposite. Gap between what I learned or what it gave me compared to lost time is enormous and I will never get those years back
@@weho_brian i think both of them r fine, but how u can regret programming is beyond me. U have such a good understanding of computers, a thing which everyone uses. I have had experience working for healthcare, semiconductor industries and I could very well see the impact of the products on our customers. Will always love this field!
Thats deep and something i realised recently myself Our chosen technical arts (engineering, medicine, computer science, software etc) Should never dominate our lives. Focus should always have been on friends, girls and family.
@@maalikserebryakov Mmm yea but also no, I got bored out of it and had no interesting new projects to work on (or people to show them to :p) and I found that ever since I stopped programming I replaced it with other rewarding activities which may actually be "cheaper" and more harming like endless scrolling.. having a habit as creative and rewarding as this on the side is something you want in order to have stability in other parts in life, especially if it's a passion; you really would want to invest in it, because you're investing in yourself.
Programming is cool because it's by far not my main source of income. Couple hobby projects and trying to be more efficient at my job, that's all for me.
Programming is cool because it is not my source of income, and it pays far higher than my current job. AI may be here but I am sick of my current job and still wanting the career swap even if it's going to last 3~5 years at most, at which point I would just look for another career swap.
It is cool to me. Not only does it give you a valuable skill so that you can earn money and support yourself, it also opens the door to a million other branches you can do, from iot devices, robotics, apps... If you enjoy coding, you will have a lifetime of new things to learn and discover, and that is pretty damn awesome if you ask me.
An insightful reflection on the many facets of a programmer's journey. I particularly connected with the concept of the 'Universal traps' for developers and how we continuously oscillate between complexity and simplicity. It's a never-ending quest, but isn't that the charm of programming?
1:52 One solution for that problem is consume psychoplastogens, the increased neuroplasticity maybe enhance your abilities for learn things and makes your brain more similar to the "adolescent" brain in terms of learning :3 help i am stuck in a endless trip
@@Hooorse The more I want to do something the less likely it is that I am going to do it. Not sure why that is the case. I like programming, I like reading about it, already got a CS degree, a job in the field that pays above average and almost finished a masters degree. Perhaps I'm somewhat depressed even though I have no real reason to be..
The education regret is something that bit me a few years ago at 35. I started learning on my own, but decided to go back for an associates degree in mobile dev. My idea was going into a specific niche and doubling down instead of learning too broadly.
Here's something you won't regret... Finding the best dev content everyday 👉 daily.dev/fireship
am i first
@@ecodersofficial You are
Bro please read my email😭😭
@@thadeoussnyders5932 NO
@fireship Bro you are the peoples' champion. The peoples' champion reads emails.
100% on the low-level languages.
I started with ASM, moved on to C, then C++ so i could comfortably hate Java, JS, front-end in general and complain about un-optimized programs and languages for the rest of my life.
no need to do ASM to complain with that
Me too. In that order too.
> I started with ASM,
𝚠𝚊𝚒𝚝.
omg
Are you me? Did you also program microcontrollers?
@@deadbeef576 16F88 a lot! Others too, but the 16F denomination will stick with me till I die
number 9 is so important. I have started swimming, boxing, and running. And my life only got better. I always thought I can start after I make myself better at something and I have money. But now I am making more money and improving as developer. Physical health is soo important folks. Be healthy :)
a wise told man me once "go out and get f cked", going out makes things happened or you can stay inside and gets bitter from what you see on the internet
wow the same bruu
A minute spent touching grass is a minute lost that could be used to code.
Yea, i got the nerd neck for looking at the screen for countless hours, i think i should do the same
your comment might as well save my life, so you have that for your change. I always thought that i will not go out, will not have friends, will not indulge in any activity except coding so i can earn but if it is true that you are also making money even after prioritising things other than coding then, ill just leave now i was seriously fed up with the coding grind, i enjoy it but it is so stressful, thanks man
The section: "I wish I would have finished more projects" was left unfinished.
Nice touch!
why no replys let me fixx dat
and ya ur right that was a really nice touch
This comment is a
yeah, that would be me tho
The final point hits hard.
The other day I was leaving a concert with a group of friends and an old lady fell from the front stairs of the theater as she was leaving and hit her head hard on the ground.
This girl from our group rushed to her as 50 people watched and applied the first aid (bandages to her head etc. as she was bleeding a lot) and helped the old lady untill the ambulance arrived, then just went to us for dinner like nothing had happened.
She just helped save a person in time of need. Something very primal. And then there was me, with knowledge in fking javascript.
Edit: She was a nurse.
That 📛 was a pedestrian example. It transpired
Javascript can be valuable too. Entering patient data into a web app, or making it possible to view your x rays within a few minutes of taking them, for example.
Lots of things contribute to society in various ways. Not everything has to be literally saving someone's life. Even improving the quality of life is valuable. I am not saying every programming project does this, but it CAN.
Well, if you live long enough for humans to be replaced with synths (if we haven't already), you might one day write an api call that saves a life. You never know.
Uncaught ReferenceError: savingPeople is not defined...
Trust me, we have a much, much easier job than nurses or paramedics. I'll take writing code for money, and having hobby interests any day over the meat grinder that is healthcare
Dear programmers - start working out. Genuinely. I started waking up super early to lift in the morning, and I'd never skip it now. You feel WAY BETTER and look your absolute best. Just fuckin do it.
Exactly, you make enough money to buy the membership at the gym that's next to the office or your home and hit an hour or two there every day before going to the first meeting and eating the protein bars meant for snacks. It's the perfect time because most people won't be there while you can just flex your hours. Also, check the free-for-all fridge that's anyway packed with drinks for quarks, greek yoghurt and/or protein puddings to get the protein in. There's no reason not to be the biggest at the office.
TRUE
I read Atomic Habits and I literally work out 5 days a week after work now. Has helped a lot with my mental health.
I also work out 5 days a week. Most of us really have time to do this, but we find ways to make excuses. A planet fitness membership. I believe costs between $10 and $20 depending on the tier that you get
I started working out at night after going to random stuff classes I signed for, then transitionated to going right after lunch, it's so effing hard for me to wake up early in the morning :c
As a former paramedic, it really annoys me to hear people say how I had a real job. A real job where I was underpaid and had to see a lot of blood and guts 12 hours a day. It’s grunt work and a lot of people who get into the job don’t last longer than six months because they can’t handle the stress, low pay, and the emotional toll. You get to hear a lot of last words and you end up becoming very jaded real quick. You also work with a lot of people who simply stop caring because they see death day in day out. After becoming a web developer, I had to do some recovery and I’m glad I got out of it. I feel my quality of life is much better now.
I think all kids should have a "real job" at some point before going on to their desk career. Will give them a greater appreciation for it (and a greater appreciation for those who stay in those jobs for life).
@@kyle2034 This is true, well said.
😷
I bet paramedics also depend on devices which are connected to the internet at times, using software programmers wrote. Some of us write really stupid programs for stupid reasons and that's a bummer, but so much of the world really is dependent on web infrastructure and the applications running on it, day in and day out. That's fairly real, right?
Having said that, I don't regret working awful trades jobs and working for my programming career. I appreciate it more than I would have.
But what you did objectively improved the world for many people and minimized an enormous amount of suffering. You actually mattered. If I disappear, some people will have slightly lower quality or have to wait a bit longer for some entertainment.
You created a UA-cam channel that influenced millions and showed the world the beauty of programming and software development, your children and grandchildren will be proud of you.
I got passionate about programming because of him. I only knew the landscape because of him
omg ! this is the best comment so far thanks a lot bro , i can not express my gratitude over you
technically, he is a strong link in a the programming pyramid scheme.
Yeah, but did he centered a div?
Absolutely right! Love this guy's energy and passion! He keeps me inspired in my journey of breaking into the tech industry and becoming a developer. Well said, @matanp103!
I'm 49 and have been in the game programming world (car racing sims mostly) for about 25 years. Started programming at probably age 7 or 8 in Basic back in the good old days of DOS. My biggest regret is not learning C much earlier. For 14 years I wrote nothing but PowerBasic procedural code (what's that? Exactly.) Then moved on to C# in Unity for a few years, then C++. I'm doing fine, but think I'd be better off today had I started with C as a kid, and moved onto C++ early on.
By the way, I'm a lot more capable today than I was 20 years ago. Today I'm writing a DirectX12 racing simulator on my own, something I couldn't have dreamed of doing 20 years ago solo. So don't worry, kids, your brain won't fall apart when you hit 30 or 40. I'm stronger now than I ever was. You will be too. 👍
One thing I would add though, is try to do as much as you can before you have children. I was on a good upward trajectory transitioning from data analytics to engineering, but it completely bricked out as soon as I had kids, was perpetually exhausted and had almost no free time left to spend on projects or at least no time where my brain wasn't fried enough from dealing with baby/toddler from 6.30am to work-start, work-end to 9pm and all weekend.
Now I just wish I either did a LOT more before I had kids, or that I just stayed happy as an analyst with much less post-work hour study requirements as I can't keep up in the slightest. I just do not have the time.
@@XTSonic too true. It’s just treading water after procreating. Eventually we all drown
you're not a true game dev until you write your own game engine
Actually the most comforting thing I've heard in life
@@XTSoniccongratulations for the kid
00:35 01. Written less code
01:48 02. Started earlier
03:15 03. Finished more projects
04:07 04. Completed a computer science degree
04:47 05. Bought bitcoin
05:09 06. Learned lower-level language (like C)
05:51 07. Not using javascript for everything
06:23 08. Not spending so much time on LEETCODE
06:51 09. Prioritized my health
07:32 10. Never learned to code
I regret that by the time I got really effective at programming I started getting jobs at places that were toxic and had little interest in actually solving programming problems.
MY MAN!
the amount of toxic jobs that comes with the career that affects your health is not worth the money
Work at a place where the software generates the money, not where software is seen as a cost.
THIS!!!
What was your learning journey like, how long did it take you to get a job and what stacks or languages do you know?
i just started on a new project and found a class /w 850 lines of code in Angular. I was able to reduce it to 25 lines by using RxJs. This is how you optimize! The only downside is, that nothings works anymore.
wow! 😂😂
Very optimal 😂😂
Love your comment :D
I'm 67 and severely disabled (since 52). I programmed professionally in Assembly, C, C++, C#, and Visual Basic (yuck). In 2021, I taught myself Python and have completed several projects for my own use. Keeps my mind sharp. I'm contemplating learning a new programming language now. It's much more fun now than when I did it for a living.
moral of the story, make coding fun :)
👍
Programming for 42 years now and still loving it as i enjoy looking for the simplest ways to solve complex problems. Programming brings your ideas to life.
I've met two programmers who have been at it for around 60 years.. I sometimes check their github to see if they are still alive.. best people I've met in the industry by far! and I love how they are just like you (and me) still absolutely in love with it all!
Yes it does
You've been programming for 42 years and you're not a gajillionaire? Shouldn't you be out there outperforming entire departments and shipping precision guided missiles to the BRICS?
True wealth is being able to do what you need when you need to do it, so I have more than enough :) Knowing 1000s of people everyday are using my apps all over the world gives me a great sense of satisfaction (I would not develop to harm anyone (Missiles or drones)). Money is important but bettering yourself and others through your work is a real bonus for me. But people are free to decide what works for them :)
@@ivonvoid in that case you should consider creating a Udemy course. Get rich, and help 1000s of devs
My biggest regret is trying to make a career out of programming. It went from an interest, to a hobby, to an education, to a job. Somewhere along the line (roughly at 'education'), I realized the parts of programming I enjoy the most are also the parts that employers don't pay me for.
I've switched careers now, and that old unfinished Javascript game that's bitrotting on my harddrive is starting to look like a pretty fun project again. At least, until I look at the code. Man, what was I thinking.
Same, I want to make visualizations for weird algorithms in JS/CSS but no one wants to pay for eye candy they don't necessarily understand or have any use for
What are you doing nowadays? What's the new career look like?
@@pieterjanspoelders8636 Apologies for the wall of text. Just scrolled up after writing all this to let you know I got a bit carried away.
I work at the service desk for a company that provides temporary security software/hardware (for construction sites, for example). We have a webapp for registering and managing who can access the construction site, which company they work for, when they clock in/out, etc. We also provide turnstiles and the like that are connected to the registration environment. (Our company also provides cameras, but that's a separate department). I help end-users when they're having problems with the software and/or hardware, or when they need to do or change something in the system that they don't have permission to change themselves.
I like how I no longer need to plan and manage my time with long-term projects. I get a phone call, help the person, and file the ticket. When there's no phonecalls waiting, I open an email, help the person, and file the ticket. When there's no unassigned emails left either, I have some time to relax. I can work at my own pace (mostly), and I don't have to worry about schedule slip, because there _is_ no schedule. It's nice to be not just caught up, but _done_ at times, instead of always having several new features waiting to be implemented.
One downside is, when the software is broken or malfunctioning in some way, I have to wait for Product Management to fix the code. I can't dive in to discover the cause. Sometimes I use the browser devtools to temporarily fix something on my own end, and whatever PHP nightmare they have on the backend shines through. Judging by the wildly jumping indentation of the resulting HTML, there's some pretty complex stuff going on there. Kinda glad I don't have to deal with that, because I just _know_ I wouldn't be able to stop myself from trying to refactor that.
Also, the fact that I'm the only one on the service desk team with programming knowledge means I can contribute in unique ways. For example, one part of the webapp consists of multiple nested accordion menus, and there's no search bar. If you need to find something, and it's not on the "top layer", you're gonna have to open the options one by one until you find it. Better hope it's not multiple layers deep. I didn't want to deal with that, so I wrote a quick bookmarklet that finds the right item in the html code, unfolds all of the necessary layers above it, and then scrolls the item into view. I wrote it over a lunch break, but my colleagues had been waiting for that kind of functionality for months if not years. Now they have my bodged together solution until PM makes something better.
Dude, just *start over* from scratch.
(You're welcome in advance.)
What are you doing now?
I felt point 10 really well. These thoughts also come to me every few months when my current project gets more boring or my current job gets on my nerves.
A good analogy I heard for 3:15 was: "Learning while programming something is like trying to pack a kitchen, except every cabinet has a chance to also contain another kitchen." I've lost count of the number of times I've lost days of research and experimenting on a minor feature.
This morning I spent 3 hours learning how to write a one-liner script file to output a value of something because the current way requires 3 clicks and about 5 seconds total wait time.
Research and experiments aren't time lost.
such is life.🤣😥
You made me double over laughing with how real that is.
@@gehirndoper unless you forget about it and have to do the exact same research a few years later
The most regret is : Start programming
lol
And didn't think of learning anything else because it was interesting at the beginning and now it's too late to learn anything else and improve on it
That was painful
If still broke then make sense
You can still have a career serving coffee if you want. All is not lost. All those hours drinking the stuff has made you an expert!
I took about two months break from programming, During the break I felt so good doing completely different things. My mind was relaxed. There was no pressure. I didn't realize how stressing programming was until I took the break. The relief that I experienced showed me that programming had robbed my peace. All along I thought that the stress that comes with programing was normal, but now my definition of normal must have peace.
love the “idiot admires complexity” quote from the great Terry Davis
RIP Terry
He died for our sins
Idiot also admires simplicity 😂
truly a programming legend
Terry was that "anomaly" in the system! He was truly one of a kind!
Rest In Peace, Terry! You were too good for this world!
I regret not learning how to farm and live off grid
it's quite simple, it's just lots of work.
@@Andrew-pd6ey Lots of fulfilling work. Especially when you start using efficient methods like hydroponics for veges together with organic waste management strategies like black Soldier fly farming for livestock feed. There's nothing I look forward to than abandoning society and go live on my own 😂
@@davinmars5177 Well this doesn't sound super simple to me. farming really is just put it in the ground and see what happens. It can be hard to get right, but it's simple to do.
living off grid seems like a mammoth task.
Never too late to start learning.
My family and I bought a farm and have 146 animals on some land. My life partner just passed suddenly, and he was a programmer. He has left me my dream farm to continue to raise our kids and pets. He did it though. He has left us a legacy.
Yep 10 is crazy. You see people go from Senior or Principle developer to bee keeping. Its a staple of this industry.
"I wish I did (or didn't) such and such when I was young." is the setup for severe anxiety and depression....don't go there. Ever. Regrets are futile, the past is gone.
Wise words
@@Niconelli12 regret is good for making decisions in the future. It is bad when it waste your time and cause you anxiety
^@@sirsnakeson3599
Can you explain rule 8 plis I don't understand it?
The point tho is, that it helps you adjust your today and tomorrow. Do better and have goals.
I have too many regrets to keep track of
What algorithm are you using to keep track of them?
my biggest regret is that I didn't track my regrets
Keep those regrets in MongoDB. You won't regret it.
what sorting method have you tried to keep track of them
sounds like a project idea for you to work on
that last one made me re-think my career choices ngl
I'm 35yo and coding since my 14'. I loved doing that for opensource and contributed vastly and then made my career on programming. my last company was almost perfect and I made myself extensively motivated and invested then an older one gets hired and disliked most of the thing I've designed. all of the things I've made was working, fully documented, rigorously tested and carefully formatted. cloc shown half of the lines were comments. then this individual made pressure and humiliated me on the very minimal error he could find that I would fix in 10 minutes at most and eventually he even managed to get me fired from the company. now I'm in the process of changing my whole life and searching in which area I could enjoy working again. It's terrible how the hell someone can manage you to hate your initial passion. the last point of the video is definitely for me. because of that individual I feel like programming is useless and that I don't provide anything meaningful for people and for the society.
for those who starts, take fucking care of your mental health.
I'm just sad.. hope you find your path
@@comoyun ❤
This happened to me, All my precious and well optimized code got so much hate from him. So I quit the job.
Soon there will be no need of programmers, there will be just reviewers of AI code. So just remember the good all times and find a job dealing with water, it is the new gold, soon people will kill each other for it.
Wait 10 years as programmer - it gets worse.
the most regret is not taking algorithm and data structure classes seriously in college. Now I'm learning it to pass coding interviews and it is brutal. Recursion is my new worst enemy.
Recursion is merciless when you first start 😂, hang on bro you'll get through it eventually
coding interviews that force you to implement algorithms are so pointless and utterly useless
Why dsa for job tho?
I mean, you do need it for job and can just know what exists so you can just use it when needed. But why do you need that do get a job?
@@CRAETION_I mean if you don't even get recursion... Even FizzBuzz filters out a surprising amount of people.
Paying attention in college wouldn't have saved you from leet code hell. The only way to avoid it is to not go through it. It's what I did. F faang 😂
The most important thing I've learned is to do activities outside programming. I was very career focused for a while but then I burned out and started hating anything IT related . Now I found balance. Sometimes I say fuck the career let's make something crazy. I hike, climb boulders, travel a lot, go to social 3vents. I've got less money but my life has become much better
I'm quite surprised nobody talks about it but my biggest regret so far after almost 20 years is all that time not enjoying myself much and not having much good time with my colleagues and co-workers. It is always about solving problems, problems everywhere, all the time only problems. Problems, problems, problems. And at some point you get absorbed into it. Days, weeks, months, quarters, years are passing by and when you look back it is important to value our time on this planet. Gosh, I spent more time with my coworkers than with my mother, my dad and my brother, combined! Your team is literally your second family.
Like a road trip, the end goal is not what matters most but the adventures you went through and the people you met in between.
you are right. every time I spend more than 2 hours coding I came out more depressed and antisocial. it's all these problems and bugs takes its toll on mental health. I wonder if it's same for police detectives always seeing the worst of people
That is so true! I have these kind of thoughts every day but at the same time if I don't go to work I won't be able to pay my bills, buy my loved ones gifts. I started my game dev careers with a lot of dreams but then I got absorbed into making tons of meaningless casual games with horrendous amount of ads. I can't even remember what I've done in the last 2 years
Man the grass is always greener on the other side my dude. People spending that much time with their friends and family are either incredibly privileged through mostly stupid luck or are miserable because they have no money and skills (ask me how I know). I'd literally kill to trade places with you as a 37-year-old who spent his entire life avoiding work to "enjoy" life. "Life is hard and then you die". This existence is a nightmare no matter what you do, but people seem to not want to acknowledge that. Life is hell. Reproduction is a narcissistic evil.
@@philj9594 You good my dude?
@@philj9594 Life is hell if you are alone. If you have a wife and a kid and share your time with them supporting, encouraging each other, hugging, kissing, etc. This is beautiful life. And most importantly you can think of it like this. If you were never created by your parents you would never existed, what is worst than knowing you might of never existed this is even worse than the most miserable life.
Thank you for all of your videos. It makes me feel less...alone. especially this one
yoo , no comment ? lemme fix that !
+1
That's nice buddy 👏🏾🚀
My best advice for staying healthy and learning quickly as a programmer is working out, especially strength training. Not kidding.
When you work out, especially when you're pushing your limits, your neurons race to learn new and more efficient connections and it puts your brain in learning mode for this reason. So you're not only improving your health and strength, and teaching your nervous system to work more efficiently, you're training your brain and making it more pliable. Try taking programming breaks by working out with strenuous weight exercises and vice versa. You will learn better and faster, be healthier, and have a lot more energy and motivation.
100% true
Spending a long time in tutorial hell is definitely one my regrets. I squandered 2 years. I could’ve just gone on to get a job and learned on the job and made some money too. Money I could’ve invested that could’ve compounded a lot by now.
And of course #9.
Many doctors say that sitting in front of computer for work all day is: _the modern day prison._
Also, I don’t envy the paramedic. My buddy is a paramedic and he has PTSD. He doesn’t make much and the stress is insane. He sees a lot of gnarly shit. So much so that he asked me about getting into coding.
Guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
Yeah the stories from a ex paramedic friend I know... man, that is horrible. I can't imagine having to see that in my life, let alone everyday. They have to have shut off empathy and sympathy, like their brain has to be wired to be similar to a psychopath's in order to NOT have PTSD. That's basically impossible imho unless they're born that way.
Apparently the Nic Cage film "Bringing Out The Dead" was practically a documentary.
Exactly. Well said. I would never envy someone being a paramedic.
Everything has upsides and downsides, be as informed as you can and be ready for them. Some extra advice I would give is be careful about caffiene intake, make sure you know the effects and are ready to tone it down if it starts affecting you too much.
How do you get a job without tutorials?
I’m not a tech programmer, but I program PLCs for a living and let me tell you, when you energize machines and it starts doing exactly what you programmed it to do, it feels amazing!
I’ll never get tired of admiring some of the most complex machines, watching them work is just breath taking.
My experience with PLCs is limited and long ago, but I imagine that would be a fine career. Straight, simple, to the point, does what you tell it unless something's broken. Software isn't like that! No layers of useless abstraction built in four different languages, or surprise hidden actions like with C++ constructors. A bit is a bit, a switch is a switch, a motor is a motor, etc. What is the job market like for that kind of work?
what the hell is a PLC?
@@phillipanselmo8540its kind of a programming language for robots and machines. PLC short for Programmable Logic Controller
@@phillipanselmo8540 I think it's Programmable Logic Controller?
@@phillipanselmo8540 next u will be asking what is a pld
pld is even cooler than plc
Surprisingly deep in places and the last point definitely hits home. Looks like it might be a more common thing than I thought. I think this could be somewhat alleviated by working on meaningful, e.g. something related to energy, medicine or the environment?
Too often though I feel like I reduced my life to almost nothing by working remotely for a company that does not impact anything meaningful.
5:08 definitely would agree that my three semesters of community college working pretty much exclusively in C really shifted my mindset from “how do I solve this problem” to “how do I solve this problem in a way the computer can handle it efficiently”. That’s really been a shifting point in my experience as a developer
Exactly, my mates always laugh at me while they code in python and uses library thinking they are smart. Bro python is the least efficient thing if you really want to learn programming.
I've been on youtube since 13 years and this is my first comment. The No. 10 hit me hard. As a developer with more than 15+ years of experience I've had the same thoughts and I believe I'm going thru exactly what you mentioned.
I feel like I have to say something. I worked as an architect for 3 years before I moved on to programming for a living. During those 3 years I have a reasonable doubt my work hardly made anyone's life better (except for the few profiting from it), even though I didn't agree with it, my job (and many other architect's job) was to do shitboxes for people to buy at an astronomical price and spend the rest of their lives paying for them.
Then I started programming in a small company where I could see the programs I did had an impact somewhere, be it an automation that saves a coworker time and effort or an application that helps monitor some valuable metric. From there I jump into another company that I believe provides a service fundamental to society.
What I am trying to say is you have to find meaning in every job and in everything you do, not everything is saving lives, that's the epitome of doing good but good can also be the app that makes your local hairdresser be more productive and thus earn more for the same effort, being relieved from a repetitive or tiring task.
I regret even choosing this field. Like you don't have to be a leetcode genius and have 500 side projects and 20 internships to be a nurse and make 120k a year right out of school, but you do for a basic entry level programming job. Even today the starting pay has been cut down to like $80k. I sit here today with 2 engineering degrees, a bullshit 'startup' company that doesn't make any money, a bunch of bullshit ass skills, and nothing to my name because there's more supply than demand, and the supply is artificially augmented by generative AI so any jackass can copy and paste some swift and make a crappy SwiftUI app that leaks 2GB of memory everytime the launch screen shows up.
Truly. Do not pursue programming at this point in time if you're looking to start a career or change one. Pursue this on the side, and focus on something real if you want to actually be able to live a normal life. I am truly heartbroken in how misguided I was to think life would get easier if I just checked off all of the boxes and kept my head down, but no.
That part about coding not 'feeling real' really hits hard. I wish coding would've always stayed as a nice hobby of mine. I love doing it, but it feels as if it should just be a tool one has in one's belt to actually do 'real' other stuff.
Not a programmer, but I think you may be right. Professional programmer - employed to write code to meet some vague 'deliverable' that may or may not make sense. Other professional with programming skills - uses code to solve the real world problems they encounter in their everyday work.
Yeah, I spent the first fifteen years of my life after high school building and repairing things, and now I move invisible numbers around for a few minutes every day and try to look busy for the remaining 7 hours. I make 3x the money but I still don't know if it's worth it.
As a lifelong developer once again considering a career change, my proudest creation looking back is an electronic door lock I custom-made for my parents' house. Sure, there was more to it than just programming, as I had to read spec sheets of electronics, wire up the microprocessor to a debugger, test out things with my multimeter, and solder it all together in a nice enough package. But it was also a proud programming achievement to cram all that logic (plus an EEPROM code reset feature accessible from inside the house only) into a tiny PIC16F without even using half of its memory. All while delivering a much, much better user experience than most premade locks for someone trying to get the gate open quickly with grocery bags in hand. It's such a simple thing, but it was so tangible. And it worked without a single glitch for almost a decade until the keypad broke down.
Another of my proudest creations is a whole wireless sensor logging suite for QAs in a workshop consisting of multiple services (each with their own role ranging from a stable logging core to a high-performance graph visualizer) all running on a single Raspberry Pi plus a few cables and stripboards I soldered together for ADCs and such.
I have written far more complex webapps and shit since. Some of them were nice I guess. But nothing beats the satisfaction of handrolling some hardware + software and _making_ something physical with it.
That's not to say embedded dev is always best in this regard. You may well find yourself just building the next generation of useless Internet Of Shit smart device in that field. And embedded devs are often engineers with a disdain for CS and a horrendous inability to design any sort of abstraction (similar to but the inverse problem of devs from other fields being unable to build any _useful_ sort of abstraction). But there's sure a lot more potential to build something concrete in embedded.
Moritz, we "embedded" developers do not have have that problem. We plant and raise up a soul in hardware to actually do real-world things. Embedded at chip and device control is very fun, but you have to have an aptitude for both HW and SW, and make them sing in harmony.
@@edh6096 Yes, very true. I dabbled in some embedded/IoT dev work, and it was great fun compared to my everyday job of business IT/dev.
Computer Science doesn't really teach programming. At least, my degree didn't. My degree, and who would guess, was about computer *science*. It was a lot about logic, set theory, turning machines, grammars, page caching, machine learning, etc. Yeah, we did programming, but that wasn't the focus. It definitely didn't teach enough to understand any language unless you wrote your own projects on the side (like you should anyway). People were struggling with python though, so that sums up that course...
It's "Turing machine" named after Alan Turing bro, and you can stop spinning that laptop now.
True
Yeah bro I'm getting dizzy please stop
Turning machine isn’t that a lathe?
Mine taught both. I practiced programming enough to be able to learn more on my own, but I feel I benefitted a lot from the theoretical foundations and hardware understanding.
the last regret is so real. Thanks for being around.
As someone who switched careers 3 times, trust me, the crappy things about programming are WAY less crappy than the crappy things about other careers.
Really? Are out there more crappy things than these:
#) highly stressful deadlines,
#) carrying your work at home(frequent overtimes),
#) getting the middle finger frequently by a random IDE/library error whom the creator never fixed and you will spend countless hours on fixing it by yourself.
#) arguing every day to explain to non technical manager clowns that this needs more than "10 minutes of work".
#) babysitting juniors for many hours everyday cause they are too lazy to read code before asking for help (by the way this means your own tasks are getting delayed due to this).
#) getting "backstabbed" in various ways from coworkers cause they are scared you may take their job sooner or later. This doesn't happen in most fields cause the salaries dont differ that much like they do in IT field.
I have worked in retail too, it was paradise compared to the above.
@@John__K Law, business, entrepreneurship. All points except #3, though each have equivalents.
I spent a whole of 5 seconds in thinking of these three, and 15 to double check with your list.
Thinking a bit more, I just figured that the way to avoid all your points is a trade job or anything that doesn't involve that big city competition (or most things from college). Open a coffee shop in your town. Work retail. Have a workshop. Do manual labor (though not necessarily the intense/rough kind). Humble life, stress free, done by our ancestors, none of that brutal competition among colleagues. I see the appeal.
It's that, or becoming a bourgeois elite through some huge success in some company you make.
I don't judge if you seek the simple life. It is a good path for good men, tried and tested.
@@John__KYou should really do a 10 minutes think about what other careers do, because is funny you think those "crappy things" are unique to programming jobs.
@@rbasket8 I didn't say all of them are unique, however the unique ones are much worse then the common ones with other fields. Like i said, i have also worked in retail and several big corporate companies.
This is my take. I have had physical jobs for most of my life. I'll take some stress if I can just sit down the whole time! 😂
I started with borland c++ (hated it) then moved to machine language(hated it even more), then moved to R ; now the hate is infinite
I was really surprised when I realized how bad R actually is.
@@crashingflamingo3028 I coded S some 35 to 40 years ago (Lotus 123 days) on Unix SVR4 IIRC and loved it, albeit the problems tackled were far simplier back then.
And that's why you L❤️V it.....
I am Egyptian and of course all my studies until I graduated from university were in Egypt.
Your words are very true in everything you said about us.
Thank you for speaking about this topic.
It is good that there is someone who says what is in our hearts.
He was talking abbout I guess studying old Egypt like pharaoh and mummies. Not what you study in Egypt.
@@hanadisoud8547
Notification between this and that
Reminds me a nice quote I learnt from playing Civ IV:
"The designer knows he's achieved perfection not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away"
so eventually you wouldn't have designed anything from the start?
francois de saint exupery:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
@@dmitryjoy I've had that quote displayed since my first "real" programming job twenty four years ago. Been laughing at bad coders ever since.
@@dmitryjoy Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If you chase 2 rabbits, you will lose them both.
I had several jobs: Java fullstack developer, penetration tester, and C# fullstack developer. I got a CS master's degree. In the end, I came to conclude that I hate coding. I never actually create anything new or do anything that makes me feel worthy; it's either CRUD or copy-paste. In the end, I'm just a script boy or someone who knows how to use certain frameworks. There's little to no value in my job, and LeetCode is a scam. The tech interview is a scam. LeetCode helps you become familiar with data structures and algorithms, but I'm pretty sure you don't learn any problem-solving skills because many LeetCode problems essentially just apply a very specific solution to a very specific problem which you will never see in your lifetime. And we created this toxic environment.
I feel the "it's either CRUD or copy-paste". I started (more like forced to learn) programming because it is required of me and I feel backed into a corner doing it. Especially in my college Capstone project years where my deadbeat groupmates did not even care touch programming. I feel trapped doing programming and the fact that I also feel "i'm not doing something new or do anything that makes me feel worthy", Like if Wordpress and other CMS can do what I'm doing faster and being up-to-date with syntax might almost be impossible because the framework I'm using is always updating(Laravel), then what is even the point of improving and spending my time with coding?! The "script boy" thing hits hard on me too, I feel that one because I am also one. I guess the silverlining is that now I am competent that I can build a website better than my official university website. And maybe I could slightly impress employers with my coding background, other than that I am starting despise coding too. Web development for me is just CRUD + API Integration/Testing + Web Hosting, that's it.
Stoicism is one of the things that helped me in my bittersweet coding journey and made me realize to embrace my fate no matter what, everything else is beyond my control.
@elliotanderson1585 I'm sorry your comment just completely resonated with me. If there is any advice you can give me (either programming related or not) I would gladly appreciate it. I'm contemplating learning pentesting or QA Testing but I feel like those are dead end traps as well.
@@pkp4761 I'd suggest you try as many things that you are interested in as possible. Granted, IT is a big field, but sometimes it's just not for everyone. I know I'm doing it because the payment is good, for now, but nobody knows what the market will look like five years later; actually, it's already gone downhill. So, you can try to learn other things like pen testing, which you've mentioned, or AI, or you can try other things that are not related to the field, like writing (I just realized I really enjoy writing fiction novels). But definitely do it in your free time and keep your job before you are certain you want to and can switch careers, as that takes time. and good luck.
@@pkp4761 Hi, for some unknown reasons my replies didn't show up, so I had to type them again. I have to admit, the only reason that I chose programming is because the marketing was good and so is the payment. Though IT is a big field, many subfield jobs do require some highly specialized skills. If you just do coding monkey work, you can be easily replaced, but if you spend many hours just sinking into a field you don't like, it will be miserable and you probably won't last anyway. I can only suggest that you try as many different things that you are interested in as possible. For example, pen testing, which you mentioned, AI technologies, etc. You can also try fields that are not related to CS (I actually found myself quite enjoying writing fiction novels). But before you find the things you love to do, definitely keep the job at hand; it takes time to switch careers. And good luck.
@@pkp4761 just go straight learning cloud, getting some cloud certification from AWS (or Azure depends on your area) and you'll be paid basically doing nothing other than configuring some configs and then you can focus doing fun challenging side projects/contribute to OSS
interesting insight
My best advice as a long time software engineer is to take care of your health if you want to last and stay productive. Programming just isn't a healthy job, it's mentally very intense and a very sedentary activity. I'd also say if by the time you hit mid 30's/40's and are losing the passion for it, just get out and/or get into management, don't kill your brain pushing it to do something it doesn't want to do anymore, it'll only make you very unhappy.
I have graduated college with an IT degree. But after 15 months later (June-December 2023 and January-Present 2024) my experience with IT, especially with lessons in Visual Studio, Object Oriented Programming, Data Structures and Algorithims, XAMPP, and MongoDB are sort of gone. Now my other interests are in video editing, art and music and i am conflicted and probably wondering if lounging at my bed with phone in hand and thinking about money is all what i can think..
Programming today is like being part of an adventuring expedition. You don't know if you're going to be part of something big like finding Machu Picchu, or if you're wandering aimlessly searching for El Dorado.
Bruh!
Maybe back in the '80s. Nowadays, you need insane amounts of money and limitless resources to genuinely hope to make a breakthrough in the industry. Long gone are the days of two college roommates building a multi-million business out of a "Dude, that'd be fucking crazy, but what if we just...?" type idea they came up with during a LAN party over some pizza and weed smoke.
@@yarpen26 That's what people thought back then as well. Sure, if you want to make a breakthrough in a particular field that is already adopted by everybody and their grandmother you're going to have a hard time with limited resources. You have to become a pioneer in something new.
@@sakkii Things ain't that easy anymore though, not least because of the Internet. Whenever a new opportunity arises, you already have thousands of people grilling their brains trying to squeeze it dry and then sell it to the biggest players for a shitload of cash. Back in the early days of IT, there was effort involved in getting hold of those new developments-effort and lots of luck. The further from the US (especially Silicon Valley) you lived, the less likely were you to have a chance to, say, attend a lecture by a promising engineer you could seek partnership with or even have him in the circle of your friends' friends.
Between some 1850 and 2000 things were largely beneficial to lone wolves: literacy was common and press available just enough to create big crowds of people skilled in particular fields, but not saturated so as to render individual research worthwhile. With the Internet, the window of opportunity is just so ridiculously narrow, most people can't even properly process the new information before some big fish has patented its fundamentals.
@@sakkii I posted a reply but this app is too fucked up to do something as basic as actually save it so we'll need to leave it at that.
(Jesus Christ, this is embarrassing. The biggest IT conglomerate in the world, everybody...)
Simplicity is perfection for an Engineer
A lot of engineers put too much emphasis on this and over-do it though. Writing reusable libraries & frameworks is the most productive thing a senior dev can do. But libraries & frameworks are often more complex than the code they replace so many supposedly senior devs fight against re-usability. But building up a sizable library of good quality reusable code not only makes the developer who writes it much faster and better, but it can make all the other developers who use the code faster and better to.
Being a programmer is similar to being an engineer, but not at all identical.
As an engineer, your goal should be to build something as cheaply as possible. This is why simple tools and "if it ain't broken don't fix it" prevail.
As a programmer, your goal is to build something as cheap, maintainable, and efficient as possible, in the shortest amount of time. You are forced to strive for perfection in basically every scenario, which is why simple tools will never be enough.
i like to write the shortest code possible to do the job
but then i realize sometimes making it shorter means sacrificing performance and speed
@@okie9025 software engineer
@@okie9025 as an engineer, ur goal is to solve a fuckin problem
wat u said is for a businessman, which is why the world now sucks, everything is cheap and break within 5 years
Just from looking a video that told me why i shouldn't regret what other people regret before even living it
Low level is the way to go.
I started with punching cards and made my own compiler just in 5 years.
Stay strong guys❤
Feels good to know that I'm not the only one who loves to code but sometime thinks that these vague digital software that I'm writing aren't a real thing.
knowing that what you are spending so much time on is actually creating a difference in the world has a huge impact on being happy with your career
It always happens when something works perfectly, then I ask myself why? That essentially comes down to bits. 0s and 1s written using electrons. You're telling me I wasted last few hours of my life for some electrons to go that very specific path in my cpu?
I really like the work of Stephen Wolfram, and I feel the opposite way. Computation is way more awesome and foundational than we appreciate. We do cool stuff on the regular.
@@hetmanfoko Yeah, and your thoughts and ideas are just neurons moving a certain way inside your brain. Just because it’s based on something simple doesn’t mean that it can’t add up to be something meaningful.
I wonder how deep that rabbit hole goes.
I like how in the beginning you show a mouse trap with react logo on it, that is 100% accurate.
0:36 Albert Einstein once said, if i had more time, i would have written shorter code
Mark Twain: "I apologize for the long pull request-I didn't have time to write a short one."
Nikola Tesla: "If I was paid more, I would've pretended to notice the CVE you introduced in this PR. Having said that, LGTM!"
- Franklin D. Roosevelt: the only thing we have to code is the code itself.
- You must be the diff you wish to see in the world - Mahatma Gitdhi
😂😂😂
"I would have refactored my code prior to committing" -Abraham Lincoln
Thank you for the inspiration, I really needed it
I will now quit my long and successful career as a programmer (3 years of experience) and join my sister, who's becoming a scuba instructor
With how sea levels are rising, that's 💯 the more relevant and marketable skill.
@@GSBarlev fr, there are no underwater programmers, so when there is no more land and we all live under the sea, all your time spent programming will go to waste
What did I accomplish? I made a decent living doing what I enjoy. I can die with that.
I regret watching this video, it gave me deppression
Most of his videos give me depression but I can't stop watching them.
so true
@@wombozomboi seen few content creators that are depressed and into questioning the matrix we live in. FireShip and Daily Dose Of Internet.
same here bro 😔 fr fr
Broo me too I don't know why but just listening my gut
If anyone is having second thoughts about their career just remember, you're not stuck as a programmer just because it's your job title or you have a CS degree. You can swap to other roles or pursue education to supplement your CS background. I started as a Unity dev, now I manage an R&D program's funding, next I'm thinking about going into patent or regulatory law. For all of these my CS background is still useful.
Yea, theres also the option to freelance or Do it Remotely and just like coding was passion and now A job, maybe you will have another passion which you can do at the side
I am also starting
fear the AI part, but I dont think it will affect my country much.
So atleast 10 years and I ll be a senior dev
Yes, thinking as well of trying to move away - but this is not easy - you need to show some experience to move to a new field - its like starting from zero. Best way is to go to a large company and ... drift.
Or, you can move to a new industry where programming is used. Manufacturing, etc.
Yep, I'm looking for the exit from the 'tech' industry. Been there in various guises since 2009 and have now had enough - it's not grabbing me anymore and my brain fels like a lump of concrete.
this thread giving me second guesses
But I ll still code, With a side valueable passion on the side
This channel is sooo good, the tone is hilarious, the jokes and memes are awesome; and most importantly it's all so right on point!! 20/10 and Sub'd!
My biggest regret is not focusing on specialization. I began programming in 2009, this year is supposed to be my 15th year of experience. But i still don't know much due to jumping from programming language to another. I regret so much.
Everything is so interesting that i can't just choose one thing i want to learn
As someone that did specialize, I can tell you the next regret you'd have is what you chose to specialize in.
@@Basoosh Reminds me a lot of that famous quote from Kierkegaard: "Do something or do not do it. You will regret either choice."
This video might cheer you up ua-cam.com/video/_ihX2e9dnYM/v-deo.html , it's from the guy that made the OG Fallout game, and he laments the 'decline of generalists' in favour of everyone being specialists, which he acknowledges is useful and necessary, but there is a loss of interdisciplinary understanding which can slow down the whole project of teams... However, he is talking about generalists mostly regarding understanding of different fields, such as 3d modeling, animation, programming, networks, compiling, etc., not specifically 'generalist in programming languages'.
At least you might have the c++, html, rust, python, react, mongo,, sql, angular, schema and assembly language experiences everyone is looking for.
I'm 46 and I started learning BASIC on my dad's CPM computers when I was maybe 6 in 1984. I soon had my own Commodore VIC-20 and then a C-128, from there PC's. I typed every BASIC game out of the computer magazines of the era, changed and learned more. By 14 I was programming in C thanks to the same book mentioned in the video, and I got Symantec C++ soon after. From there it was Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic 4 and others. I also had learned 6502 assembler and x86 assembly, albeit mostly for inline code functions when I was working on the demo scene in the 90's. I still love coding. I've spent the last 25 years turning people's dreams of software ideas into reality and it's been a great living for me and I've enjoyed it. I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my life.
This sounds wonderful! What type of work allows you to do this? Consulting? Own company? Or being an employee at a great company?
Ура! Снова новая связка, и как всегда рабочая, спасибо, что стараетесь для нас!
I've been coding 20+ years. It's a pile of shit working as a programmer because of politics and people. I still enjoy coding and doing technical projects for myself.
I wish I had know this beforehand.
nothing gayer than a software manager
Regretting JavaScript on the server is not enough. I regret JavaScript in general. I wish the native language of the web was not stitched together in one week by taking Java and stripping it of the strong typing.
Back in my day code used to weigh about 17 long tonnes, and every day we had to push it to the server, who was a very nice man with a bad limp in his eye.
Number 10 got you the like for this one. I've been writing code for 40 years, professionally for 30 years and when people ask me how to start programming i always say "don't. just learn to weld". I wish I'd become a welder. I started welding when I was 40 and if I'd started that when I was 5 like programming, I'd be a bagillionaire by now.
Tough work tho, bro. I don't fancy the chances of being injury free in 40 years as a welder. As a programmer we can mostly guarantee our own safety, excluding back aches and carpal tunnel.
@@applepie9806 My dad did it. Not being an idiot really helps in the "not getting injured" department.
Pineal gland calcification made for an interesting rabbit-hole. Thanks, Fireship.
I paused the video and started googling.
Side note for anyone wondering, it’s Calcium that Calcifies your glands (even the Tstes over time) but Fluoride binds to the calcium.
Which is why if your kid sneaks into the bathroom at night and eats all the toothpaste from the Costco multipack, the Doc’s recommendation is to give the now grounded child some milk.
They feed us poison so we buy their cure
@@CoClock That boy need some milk!
@@CoClock That hit a little too close to home. Speaking from experience?
My own regret: be a Salesforce sysadmin.
"Salesforce" qualifies as a one-word horror story.
my biggest regret was starting without a goal in mind. A lot of people who don't have a career in programming instead use programming skills to help them achieve goal, whether it be blender animations, or figuring out how many potatoes you can realistically fit inside of your car. I myself started out with zero objective in mind so over the course of 5 years I never learned anything to its full potential, I'm now sitting today as a jack of all trades and a master of none.
My point is figure out what you want to do before you start learning to code, as your going to save yourself a lot of time and stress down the road.
Low level engineers don't need to know tailwind, Web Developers don't need to know memory allocation
👏👏👏
Due to mismanagement of my class files, my first programming language in college was Assembly.
It was tough, but I have always felt like I had a leg up over everyone else. I didn't have to change the way I programmed or tackled problems.
It made almost all of my programming classes afterwards easier as a result. I almost cried when I first learned how to print in java lol.
I agree with starting at low level languages, your first language should be something like C/C++
Because even though you might never encounter or care about things like pointers, pointer to pointers, and dynamic memory allocation/deallocation (because garbage collection go brrrrrrr), it's good to understand what is going on behind the scenes and helps to build a good foundation that makes future languages easier to learn
The terry davis quote is gold, honestly. In so many contexts.
The thing about doing something more real, this came to me a little while ago, though that's when I understood that coding is a means to an end, and the end is what affects real life. Lots of much more exciting projects came to mind when I understood this.
Experienced programmers: 'if (only I'd known that earlier) { ... }'
99.8% of programmer's quit programming their current app before it makes goes mainstream.
99.7% of statistics are made up
Guess new comers have alot of chances than.
JUST before*
Oh man, I learned C a few years back and it's the best decision I've had since I started programming.
Assembly is next, but C was a good choice!
Have hobbies outside of programming. Dance, write, hike, play an instrument, paint... Don't spend all of your time in front of a screen
I don't regret learning programming, but I do sometimes regret being a programmer. If I got a job in marketing or accounting i could automate my job rather than automation being my job.
My regret, not sticking with learning Cobol and Fortran while at high school in the 80s/90s.
You would have made BANK in today's job market
the latest regreat is so damn real and I regret about it so damn much, wish I can do smth about it
before i was a programmer, i worked in a steel plant. It was absolutely horrible environment for a shy nerdy guy like me. However, if people today ask me what I do for a living, I say "I do IT stuff, but before that I worked at a steel plant. . ." and proceed to tell them about that hell job. Only because that hell job produced things that I can point to in real life and say "People use this".
When you work on a project that no-one use it's hard to tell what you're doing. If you coded/maintained UA-cam, Instagram or anything that people use daily they would know that they wouldn't have been able to watch any videos/photos without your not "real" job. For example properly created banking apps produces real impact on real life of people.
I worked as a municipal arborist for 28 years - trimming trees for public safety and aesthetics, and cutting down hazard/dying trees. It is a satisfying profession, to be sure, but very, very hard work on the body. A neck injury combined with the wear and tear of 3 decades of labor-intensive work has forced me to retire from the profession early. Now, at age 48, and having no marketable skills outside of arboricultural work, I find myself with no choice but to venture into a new career. I'm just now in the beginning stages of making that new career software development, but I hope that eventually I will get to tell people, "I do computer stuff, but I used to cut down trees for a living."
I regret not knowing enough about cool things in math and physics that would give me a much better chance at getting a cool programming job building stuff that goes into space or something. There are a lot of programming jobs out there, but many are in industries that aren't exciting or rewarding.
I regret not having made demo videos of my long dead side projects. They are uninstallable/unusable due to obsolescence and I would be proud today to show what they did.
As a high schooler I regret learning programming during middle school and investing so much time into projects instead of socializing. End result: poor and unsatisfactory social life and social skills, feeling of missing out on teen life.
I'm trying to learn game dev so I can combine programming and art. I don't think being a software engineer for some company will bring me much joy in life, just sitting there editing other people's code everyday. I want to be able to exercise my creativity through programming and art to create something original. Plus all these big game companies are just pumping out generic pay to win trash. Now I just need to learn some C# and the unity engine. I already know C++ and python. Might find some use for C++
good luck on your programming journey
If you're good at C++, you could try using Unreal Engine in which you can use c++ for games, which is more performant compared to c#. Or Godot also supports c++ and it's the engine I'm using right now, it's great for indie games and despite it being only 100 MBs in size it has all the features one would need.
I have been developing software for more than 22 years now. The first few years it was really hard for me but now it has become my passion. I love being a software developer.
i share the final regret 100%
We can impress most people with what we do as programmers, but it comes nowhere close to people making an actual physical difference to another person.
Yep. I keep telling myself that one day I'll find a job that involves making something real, but seems like there's so few of them and they also require a degree or insane experience. It really makes you wonder how come crucial software projects have no money to spare. Maybe the way we distribute wealth is flawed
You could program prosthetics and things like that tho. The true limitations are 'only' money and time.
@@Shpitzickif you don't like what people in a society prefer to spend their money on, the only "fix" for that is extreme authoritarianism. You can build a society that compromises between millions of peoples values or a society that focuses entirely on your values but you can't have both.
@@Shpitzick I tell you one pro way of thinking good about yourself. You helped your boss help his boss get rich. That is very altruistic of you. (Of us even)
We make physical differences by keeping people out of queues in stores and DMV's & driving the gig economy
I'm regreating getting into this field itself.
why mate?
YOE?
@@Jacktherippler1 Because my musician friends get laid more.
@@Jacktherippler1 doomerism is funny
@@sussusamogus7981 why>
Your take on C is so true imo! I remember thinking "why do I even have to learn this low level language as my first programming language??" when I was in college...and wow, how lucky I feel now to have started this way
I regret going to uni, so the opposite. Gap between what I learned or what it gave me compared to lost time is enormous and I will never get those years back
I'm with you on that. Just lost experience after graduating from college and got my IT degree. All of the IT classes i take are now gone now.
I regret clicking on this video.
Bruh
Well, what can I say... Karma..
Rofl
and I regret subscribing it😂
Head go bonk
As an "old" in the dev field, I felt this video.
Biggest regret: Choosing this field
naw man best job ever
@@weho_brian yeah literally the best❤, wtf r ppl talking about😂
@@Qwerty123zzuy you literally just write code and listen to podcasts and music all day. Imagine if you had to work with people or answer phone calls 😆
@@weho_brian i think both of them r fine, but how u can regret programming is beyond me. U have such a good understanding of computers, a thing which everyone uses.
I have had experience working for healthcare, semiconductor industries and I could very well see the impact of the products on our customers. Will always love this field!
We could always choose less involved fields like dumpster diving and learning how different components fit to create something remotely usable.
Biggest regret: thinking programming is cool.
It’s just a skill to pay the bills so that I can do things with people that mean the most
Thats deep and something i realised recently myself
Our chosen technical arts (engineering, medicine, computer science, software etc)
Should never dominate our lives.
Focus should always have been on friends, girls and family.
@@maalikserebryakov Mmm yea but also no, I got bored out of it and had no interesting new projects to work on (or people to show them to :p) and I found that ever since I stopped programming I replaced it with other rewarding activities which may actually be "cheaper" and more harming like endless scrolling..
having a habit as creative and rewarding as this on the side is something you want in order to have stability in other parts in life, especially if it's a passion; you really would want to invest in it, because you're investing in yourself.
Programming is cool because it's by far not my main source of income. Couple hobby projects and trying to be more efficient at my job, that's all for me.
Programming is cool because it is not my source of income, and it pays far higher than my current job.
AI may be here but I am sick of my current job and still wanting the career swap even if it's going to last 3~5 years at most, at which point I would just look for another career swap.
It is cool to me. Not only does it give you a valuable skill so that you can earn money and support yourself, it also opens the door to a million other branches you can do, from iot devices, robotics, apps... If you enjoy coding, you will have a lifetime of new things to learn and discover, and that is pretty damn awesome if you ask me.
Sounds like a farewell letter. I agree with you 💯That feeling of vapor-existence is getting harder to cope with as we age
An insightful reflection on the many facets of a programmer's journey. I particularly connected with the concept of the 'Universal traps' for developers and how we continuously oscillate between complexity and simplicity. It's a never-ending quest, but isn't that the charm of programming?
Yes. Programming or problem solving in general still has charm for me even thought I’m going through a moment of doubt and regret about it.
4:30 Egytian studies -> Pyramid Scheme has me dead
same xD
mummified*
1:52 One solution for that problem is consume psychoplastogens, the increased neuroplasticity maybe enhance your abilities for learn things and makes your brain more similar to the "adolescent" brain in terms of learning :3 help i am stuck in a endless trip
The last one hits hard
exactly!
The most I regret so far is being too lazy to do stuff.
real
You need prescription stimulants son
I think you might want to look for a different field you are more passionate for then.
@@Hooorse The more I want to do something the less likely it is that I am going to do it. Not sure why that is the case.
I like programming, I like reading about it, already got a CS degree, a job in the field that pays above average and almost finished a masters degree.
Perhaps I'm somewhat depressed even though I have no real reason to be..
@@the-whisper- i feel you bro
The education regret is something that bit me a few years ago at 35. I started learning on my own, but decided to go back for an associates degree in mobile dev. My idea was going into a specific niche and doubling down instead of learning too broadly.