From keeping up to date on the news, I always feel as if we're on the brink of the end of the world, massive recessions, and war so I've almost normalized the current state. However, the current political tone feels similar to the preamble to the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11.
How does one cut through all the noise or can you even?
Reading history helps put it in context. I've been consuming writings on the last ~150 years voraciously over the past few years, as well as talking to any of my relatives still alive from some of those eras.
The political tone feels similar to the preamble to Afghanistan because it's not even been 20 years, and most of the actors are still in comparable position. Time moves very slowly, and we're still watching the slow play-out of a "new cold war" primarily acted out through economic interference and proxies.
The current state has definitely gotten normalized. Think back to the responses vs. Rodney King. But then think back further to Kent State, and the fact that much of the nation thought the national guard was _justified_ to kill innocent students. There's some sort of a sine-wave there, and I think it has to do with personal exposure to Real Suffering and Loss, and the lack thereof in recent memory has innured public perception to the cost of our action, and as such we're willing to fight eternal wars, bluster about destroying our enemies, and engineer the economy past realistic growth.
At the end of the Vietnam war, not even 50 years ago, a communication was sent by the final CIA officials evacuating Saigon. "It has been a long fight and we have lost. . . . Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson. Saigon signing off."
Cutting through the noise: The world won't end, history shows we're quite good at brinksmanship, but this is not an optimistic statement. We have not learned our lesson. I doubt we ever will.
Treat everything you read as an opinion unless it actually provides raw evidence / data. The mainstream media across the Western world at least is a total sham.
I posted once from an old account but never received any responses. Most of the jobs at the time were for web developers in the US. I'm a devops/systems engineer (AWS/Security/Scaling so whatever the new title is for that) so my skills don't seem to be in very much demand.
It would be nice if we could maybe break up the threads into different types of roles perhaps?
You may have just helped me identify celiac disease. I've had gastro issues for over 10 years. I've also experienced the DH symptoms with no resolution. Tuesday I have a gastro/endoscopy scheduled to check for issues. This feels like another clue on the long road to figuring this all out. Thank you!
Take your well earned upvote! I've had many a person say the same thing to me about Vim and despite the fact that I like it, I can't see myself being as productive as I am in a normal IDE.
Genuinely curious if someone can explain how they're more productive in Vim than say Sublime? Take for example syntax highlight. If these things are feasible and easier, I'd really like to know.
People like the actual text editing environment and either don't care about the extra functionality an IDE would provide or just add such functionality as plugins. Since text editing speed isn't the primary limiting factor in producing software you may realistically not be much or even any faster whichever environment you choose unless the environment is actively horrible.
Fair enough. I would never argue that Vim's text editing functionality wasn't superior. However, the advocates I've encountered all touted it as superior, "...in every way." and I just haven't seen that.
As a systems engineer, I struggle with this virtually every day. We're called 'DevOps' by most and anytime we encounter a new problem, everyone invariably screams for containers. Containers aren't a magic bullet.
My favourite example is when our AWS TAMs offer a solution, knowing we have ZERO pipeline/infrastructure setup for supporting containers. They always push containers. We don't use containers, stop forcing them down our throat. We've tried, we've been burned, VMs work for us. Stop!
When did containers become perceived as the end-all solution? I see their value and uses but they don't meet ours so why have we started ignoring the right solution for the job? I see this everywhere I go.
But you don't need k8s or containers for orchestration.
I chose Hashicorp's Nomad (I'm the dev lead for our company) precisely because I didn't want to commit to Docker from day one but I did want to leave that option open. Nomad works with everything - Docker containers, jar files, shell scripts, raw executables, etc and is dead simple to set up - one < 20Mb self contained executable that works as a client, server and as a member of a cluster. Configuration is dead simple if you use Consul.
Edit: I'm not knocking either of these products - I actively use Mongodb in production. I like docker/containers/Kubernetes and have used them for various projects. I just take offence with how people have started ignoring common sense, like: we don't have the tooling in place to support this product, or: it doesn't meet our business needs.
I think orchestration is critical. Kubernetes has obviously "won", but we're getting alot of wins from running on ECS that we'd have to rollback and reimplement on K8S, at least until EKS becomes available.
(honestly couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic, so assumed you weren't)
If you aren't currently struggling to manage a large pool of servers / services, then you don't need Kubernetes. Not yet, at least. It's over-complicated overkill if you don't need it yet. So are containers, actually, but the bar is a lot lower for them.
I don't understand the logic of this article. My side projects tend to be efforts in self employment, not 'click bait' for an employer. While not everyone has the same approach, this article seems to imply the only value of side projects is for future employers. I'd hate for people to get the wrong impression about the value of these projects.
And many times, my side projects are my way of relaxing. Some people relax by partying, some relax by walking their dog, some relax by spending time with their kids. And my choice of relaxation time is often just building something interesting that has zero self-employment or market value, but is just funny or cool. It is refreshing to do something for pure happiness and fun, after dealing with the unhappy real world, is all about traction and money and not happiness.
I also have another set of side projects with specific intent to learn something new, which I consider an educational time investment in myself.
Neither is "click bait" for employers, and I consider neither to be a "waste of time".
Like you, I find it extremely relaxing to build pointless things. Do you have the same trouble I do in explaining that this isn't "work" to people close to you?
This is why I participate in the Stupid Shit That No One Needs And Terrible Ideas Hackathon every year. It's super fun to build goofy things that you can laugh about with friends.
I can’t tell if you’re saying everyone outside software has goofy hobbies and this is nothing worth writing about, or if you’re trying to say that software-based hobbies stop software developers from doing their day jobs and paying the bills related to your list of other humans.
My "side project" actually pays the bills yet I'm not sure if my wife will ever fully understand that, despite it technically being "work" (and despite some rare complaints/bad days, like anything else), I actually thrive off of the challenges and sincerely enjoy it. And so working >8 hours on it isn't just because I "have" to, it's often because the challenge is so fun & thrilling that I _want_ to.
Of course, balance is important and I won't try to fool anyone -- it's something I'll likely always be working to improve.
> this article seems to imply the only value of side projects is for future employers
It doesn't imply that. When writing about anything, explaining all the things that you're _not_ talking about is a great way to never get to the point.
Determining that the post is about side projects aimed at landing a job is a task left to the reader. If the title didn't get you there, the second sentence is here to help: "For the distinct purpose of getting a job in tech, side projects are either a great use of your time or a great waste of your time."
"Distinct" as in specific — "The following may not apply if you're objective is not specifically to getting a job in the tech industry."
If you'd like to talk about other great uses of side projects, I think that's a completely reasonable discussion to have. Simi-related threads in top-level comments are common: "I know it's a little different form what the article is talking about, but I'd like to talk about…"
Everything that I have, my companies, my capital, my house, comes from my side projects being transformed into self employment, recurring revenue or reputation for me or my team.
You have to consider that side projects will start small, like a plant, they are very easy to squash and destroy, but takes an enormous effort, and your rewards come later, when you have a tree.
Even a company like Apple could not make something like the App Store earn more than a couple millions the first year. Larry and Sergei tried to sell google for just a million dollars and could not.
A side project takes so much effort that I would have never ever considered making the effort just to show off to companies, then abandoning those(as you will be forced as you have a job that takes most of your efforts). Side project is like your children if you create them.
It is a big error to try to make companies value your projects. They will pay you 0$ if they can(even if they know it is a great project, more benefit for them).
There are much better ways to show off in front of companies if that is what you want.
Side projects are more and more being touted as a way to "stand out" from the enormous crowd of people trying to get tech jobs. A company choosing among 100 candidates, all things being equal, may bias towards the few with active interesting side projects. If you accept that, then starting some kind of side project would be worth it.
Side projects got me jobs and when I do side projects sometime they are for fun and sometimes they aren’t . I think a better objective is to do fun / cool side projects and try to align them when you want to.
Most of them couldn't tell the difference, so they pick some internet advice like "hire people with many side projects!", which is why job seekers are told to create side projects to improve their chances.
Hedging risk by doing a side project relevant to your employment interests is perfectly valid. If you are employed you have the luxury of doing something random in your off hours. If not, you need to be very mindful of what happens if your side project goes nowhere and your savings run out.
Yeah, side projects should be for pursuing personal interests... which has the side benefit that if you happen to later be interviewing for a job and mention your side project it will be much easier to talk about.
As someone with the 6,1 and a recently upgraded 5,1 (single CPU tray to dual, GPU, RAM, SSD), I hope you're right. I like the idea of the 6,1 but in reality the 5,1 is what I'd expect from a pro machine. The upgrade procedures for a 6,1 are not ideal and in some cases almost impossible. That's not a 'pro'duct.
I worked on contract at this department and was declined a contract renewal when I was reprimanded for identifying a DOCUMENTED zero-day in of our scripts that managed some lofty systems. I was also reprimanded by the same manager for suggesting configuration management tools since he couldn't bill out the build time for that service vs. my time building each machine by hand.
The corporate structure is incredibly heavy on management and lacks communication. You could have more managers than you knew and it wasn't unusual to be told to work on something else by someone you'd never met, which put you at odds with your known managers...
When I was working on The Sims 1, Luc Barthelet [1] was the VP who was closely shepherding the project, and he just loves to code his ideas up in Mathematica. (He later became executive director at Wolfram|Alpha.)
He would come over to my desk and show me some cool character animation trick he'd coded up in Mathematica, and suggest I implement it.
He had it reading in the Sims character animation files that I was exporting from 3D Studio Max, blending them together, drawing stick figures, and exporting web pages with animated gifs.
It's quite impressive what he can do with Mathematica, and of course I felt compelled to take some of his suggestions to heart and work on implementing them in the game.
But of course that pissed my direct manager off to no end, who insisted that Luc stop putting things on my plate without going through him first.
How does one cut through all the noise or can you even?