its the things I hear from real software developers that concern me:

• You will spend your entire career chasing trends.
• The market is volatile. People are constantly getting abruptly laid off. SD has never been very stable, so you should plan on getting a new job every few years.
• Software companies are constantly looking for ways to make SD easier. As a result, your value will decrease over time, in preference for bootcampers and 2 year degree graduates.
• Nobody listens to developers. Your manager’s beliefs about SD come entirely from consultants, magazines, and Elon Musk tweets.
• Nobody cares about quality software. If you take the time to make your code efficient and lightweight, all your manager sees is you taking longer to make something than your peers. After all, we can just raise hardware requirements if the software is slow.

the more i learn about software development, the more i feel I’ve dodged a bullet by changing my major to electrical engineering.

You know, when I typically ask a question on SO, its because I want to learn how that thing works, or how to write it myself. I usually say as much, but the SO folks are too focused on the ends, they completely neglect the means. Chances are I’m already aware of that no-code solution, but that’s not what I’m asking for.

SO in a nutshell:

“I need to do X”

“Have you tried Y?”

“No, because I don’t need Y, I need X.”

“Well you can do Z if you can’t do Y.”

“OK, sure. But how do I do X?”

“Why do you need to do X?”

(Explains why in my hyper-specific situation, I need to do X, and Y and Z won’t work)

This question has been marked as a duplicate of “How to do Y”

at least then you’re dealing with the laws of nature instead of man-made BS. if you’re like me and have 0 tolerance for BS, it’s an absolute win.

come into the light, my child. become an electrical engineer.

alright, if python is a regular screwdriver, what is C? a single iron filing?

edit: I’m starting to doubt any of you have ever used C

are you sure python is a screwdriver? Its not the all new AI-driven Smart screwdriver that requires an account, wifi connection, and for you to input the name of your project before you can use it?

that may be true for CS and software development, but I think that has ended up being more harmful for other fields like electrical engineering. Kind of like how non STEM majors are too afraid to try engineering or sciences, because they all think calculus is this big scary incomprehensible thing that only einstein-level geniuses can learn. I’m seeing that same kind of fear preventing students from going into engineering because they don’t want to learn anything besides python.

there are unofficial dotnet compilers on linux, but I honestly c is just better.

buy yourself a copy of K&R 2e (The C programming language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie). Its not only a good c book, but a great beginner programming book in general. If you’re a learn by doing guy, it has a lot of exercises you do.

i normally don’t learn by reading textsbooks myself, but this book proved an exception. its inexpensive too.

Sure python may be easier to learn, but it makes learning actual programming more difficult. Ever since the CS department switched to python, my workload as a computer systems TA has doubled.

that explains why the idea to replace engineers would enter peoples minds, but not why they would try so, so hard to get people to believe it.

sometimes, it feels like managers hate engineers, and are constantly plotting their replacement. maybe its because it hurts their ego to know that the engineers they manage worked harder to get there and deserve a higher salary.

or else, it could be office politics. anyone who can claim to have removed an entire department from payroll is due a huge raise.

oh, well then that explains why Python is a joke.

its even worse that they hat to ruin a beautiful existing language to do it.

not really, imo. its more like a sequenced list of pointers to various instruction sets.

can you really call python programming though? The reason why python is so quick to write is because its so-called libraries are pre-compiled C programs. so you’re not writing new programs, you’re scripting existing ones.

you ever get the feeling that programming has gotten way too overbloated? that good old fashioned engineering has been buried under miles of industry standards, best practices, enterprise services, business methodologies, and managers trying to justify their paychecks?

feels like a giant bubble way too overdue for a needle.

I’m still curious what the reason is, even if its clown logic.