HN user
This is awesome. I don't do any graphics programming and don't really have any Raylib experience (or keep up with the projects developments) but it inspired me to begin learning C this past few months. I started building my own zero dependency software renderer (all it can do is color the background and render a spinning 2d rectangle). I'm really excited to dig into the rlsw source code later today.
For me it's the people.
I've been at my current company for ~4 years. Every January the upper management folks kick off the same project and every year it dies in the planning/discussion phase. Maybe one or two other "big" projects or initiatives will "start," but it's always the same: lots of meetings between the managers without the engineers or designers, lots of hype about the "big project," meetings start to get delayed, roadmaps and plans never materialize, then people stop talking about the project altogether. Sometimes I buy into the hype because I believe in the projects, other times I try to point out issues/risks. Either way the engineering team as a whole is always ignored.
What keeps me motivated is doing what I can for the people who _actually appreciate_ what I do. I work in manufacturing and spend a lot of time talking to the people on the factory floor. There's nothing better than hearing about their struggles and then a few days or weeks later coming back to them with "Hey, I heard you saying you're having an issue with X, so I made Y. Want to try it out and see if it makes things easier?" And then when they stop by my desk to say "Hey sibit Y is awesome!". That makes the job just tolerable enough to not leave.
I don't need a whole paragraph just: Copilot+ Recall.
I really like the standalone lit-html rendering library but never really saw a need for Lit. Honestly, I find it hard to see a need for more than <any client-side rendering lib> + Web Components when I want client-side rendering.
we have conditioned people to think they need to do side projects outside of working 40 hours a week
If that isn’t available, it’s time to change jobs.
From what I've seen most people want to keep their cake and they want to eat it too. They're not willing to change jobs. They're also not willing to work on anything outside of work. Then they complain that their careers are stagnating.
Then again I'm biased. I work on stuff out side of work and I change jobs every 2-4 years so I can work with new technology.
I feel that the real problem is a lot of people don’t care about collecting requirements.
As someone who _really_ enjoyed requirements gathering for many years and now has become one of the "I don't care let's just build it" people I can assure you that some of us crashed out thanks to Scrum Masters™, Project Managers™, Product Owners™, or any of the other big "A" Agile™ cronies.
5am I go for a 2 mile run with my dog
When I get home I start a pot of coffee
Shower
If it's a work from office day I leave for work at 5:45 (~15 minute drive)
1-2 hours of reading HN, twitter, blogs
I grab my sticky note pad and I create a checkbox list of 3-5 things I want to accomplish
I start working through the list
You didn't explain how the "bootcamp grads" thought process differs from yours.
In my experience, their thought process starts with "I know framework/library X" and ends with "What library/framework solves my specific problem".
In recent years it seems like they've completely outsourced their thought process to tools like ChatGPT. However, it's been a while since I've worked with a recent college graduate so outsourcing ones thought process may be the new normal?
I have worked with a few bootcamp grads who didn't start their thought process this way but that's something they've had to learn on their own.
I have always found articles/discussions of code reviews fascinating. In the 10(ish) years I've been employed as a programmer I've never worked in a department with more than ten people and every time the work is distributed such that each person works as an IC on their own siloed project(s). Receiving anything besides the "LGTM" rubber stamp or nitpick comment seems almost impossible.
I'm working on a Rust library that offers a higher-level API for generating PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript files.
A part of me jokes that Micro$oft only invested in OpenAI because it's the only sensible way to browse .NET/Nuget package(s) documentation. The other part knows it's dreadfully true.
If you have not seen it I'd recommend watching Rich Hickey's talk on Hammock Driven Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
I use tools like a persistence layer for my thoughts. I can "think in words" but my brain defaults to "thinking in pictures" mode. When I think about a database schema I automatically visualize the tables and the connections between columns in a way similar to how most of these tools visualize the schema. My usage of these tools is more or less of me replicating what I see in my mind as a "save state" that I can resume in a day, month, or year.
Pretty much any internal tool/TUI/CLI/library I've created. If I had to guess I'd say at most 25% of the company projects I've worked on have launched AND have consistent usage. Working hard on something just for it to wither crushes my soul but internal projects are different. They're all skunk works projects. No tickets. No project/board. No PM pushing back on how many points (read: hours) something should be. I'm solving real problems that directly impact the quality of life for myself and my coworkers. The best part is getting real, genuine, feedback. If something sucks they'll tell you and they won't sugarcoat it.
I don't think you can compare the productivity of someones passion with someone who's writing code they're told to write at a job.
how do you provide long-term value
You don't. My employer switched to this type of project structure 16 months ago and so far all "projects" have been useless short sighted solo work.
The only benefit I've seen is it's a great for anyone who wants to coast until retirement. For example my current "project" is to stand up our production Kafka cluster. I provisioned and configured the servers within a day and now I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs for the next 89 days.
Still can't figure out why they didn't follow through with Cortana being the OS copilot name and retired it.
I can't figure out why they didn't use it as an opportunity to bring back Clippy.
I think my favourite weekend project I've built was an image transformer plugin for Craft CMS. The popular (and only) free image plugin had been deprecated and the author was only going to continue supporting their paid version so I hacked together an Imgix-inspired plugin called Jitter[0] over the weekend. It's not very popular but I like it and use it frequently.
While it's not a very interesting project it's my favourite because of what happened after I published it. While I was at work I noticed the plugin was installed on one of our new client's websites. I went to my boss and asked him if he installed the plugin and what he thought about it. He said he did and it was better than <old plugin>. AFAIK they're still using it years later and I don't think they ever realized it's my plugin.
It's not a commercial product but I've spent some time building a Magic The Gathering deck builder[0]. I want to build a VTT engine but I feel like if I'm gonna receive a cease and desist letter from Hasbro that'll be the thing that triggers it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it was mostly a 2 week project to learn Go and HTMX anyways....
I help maintain a user-facing ASP.NET project running .NET Framework 4.5 that uses jQuery 1.0 for most of the UI. We launched our first new feature using HTMX back in November and it worked out pretty well for us and we plan to continue using it moving forward.
I also work on a React site and I wouldn't want to move away from it unless someone dared to utter the word rewrite.
My gut says I would use query params though I typically stick with 1 action effects 1 record. I can't recall any specific times when I built bulk item management into an app but I'd say that's a personal preference on my end.
I'm not someone who usually gets excited by new major releases of frameworks/libraries but this one feels different. I got my start with CRUD PHP websites with jQuery. I've been using HTMX for the last year and it fills me with nostalgia while also allowing me to move faster when building UIs.
This is how I've used DELETE. Something like DELETE /users/{uniqueUserId}. In ~10 years of building CRUD apps I don't think I've ever sent a body or query params with a request.
Maybe when solid state batteries make their way into EVs by the end of this decade, that will change.
That'd be nice. I figure I'll revisit EV tech in ~10 years when I'm ready to start shopping again. Fingers crossed.
I just purchased a new truck within the last 6 months and I was considering Ford's F-150 Lightning but ended up going with a diesel 2500 Silverado instead. The lightning boast 350 miles but it's not clear what kind of mileage I would get when pulling my camper. I also like to travel to some of the more remote parts of the US and I just don't have the confidence that it wouldn't become a pain in my butt.
As for anecdotal evidence I don't see a lot of EVs driving around in my mid sized midwest town (~200k pop). At most I notice 2-4 Teslas a week and as of today I've seen my first Rivian. If they're popular they ain't popular around here.
IME there is quite an overlap between the two...
Do you think there is an equation where the larger the company the more they treat the employees like toddlers? I've primarily worked for small companies where management treated the employees like adults. They expected us to be professionals so they treated us as such. Sometimes that meant they provided just enough rope for someone to hang themselves but for the most part, it worked pretty well.
As I've moved to bigger companies it seems as though management treats the employees more and more like children. The HR department is especially notorious for treating people like toddlers. I find it odd and a bit frustrating. I don't think I could be easily convinced that anyone within my team, department, or adjacent departments could be equated to children yet the actions and tone of management makes me think otherwise.
Legacy projects? I maintain an old .NET web app that's ~15 years old and runs on jQuery. While the dream of refactoring or rewriting the entire thing using something more modern (like Web Components) is nice we're never gonna do it.
SMS for anything other than one-time use cases is terrible.
I can agree it's unacceptable for security while also disagreeing with this statement.
I don't know. I like when my ISP or power company let's me opt-into texts about outages and provides periodic updates (as long as you can reply STOP).
I was on a 2 week camping trip and a nasty storm rolled through my home state. Power went out for 5 days and I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the SMS notifications. I immediately cleared out my fridge and freezer when I got back.
I'm not sure that there was an inrush of programmers because "it could make a lot of money".
This is all I've seen within the last 5 years.
For context, I've been working in-industry for ~8 years. I don't live or work in one of the big tech cities in the US nor one of the biggest within my state.
Within the last 5 years, I've worked at two companies and have seen 12 developers join. Of these 12 ten came from various local React bootcamps. When I've asked about their history with creating software it's always the same response: "I've never written any before <insert boot camp name>" and when asked why they decided to get into this industry it's always "<insert tech influences name> said I could make great money with only a 3-month boot camp".
The other two are oddities and also the most recent two hires I've seen. They both had ZERO programming experience before getting the job. No college/university, no at-home learning, no boot camps. Not even a basic printf("hello world") attempt. The company decided they could do 'on-the-job training' by letting them watch Udemy courses for the first 3 months then they just threw them at the senior devs like a grenade with a loose pin.