alt Hacker NewsMy intention was actually to inspire others to maybe also start preferring long-term/maintenance work, because I feel there’s a lack of enthusiasm for that.
Almost invariably after submitting, I see how I could clarify and/or expand on my thoughts, so I often do end up editing.
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> Almost invariably after submitting, I see how I could clarify and/or expand on my thoughts, so I often do end up editing.
One of the tricks of HN is the 'delay' setting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231024
> There's a new field in your profile called delay. It's the time delay in minutes between when you create a comment and when it becomes visible to other people. I added this so that when there are rss feeds for comments, users can, if they want, have some time to edit them before they go out in the feed. Many users edit comments after posting them, so it would be bad if the first draft always got shipped.
I've got mine set to 2. It gives me a little bit of time for the "oh no, I need to fix things" or "I didn't mean to say that" and when everyone else can see it.
Business bros will not pay high salaries to maintain software. Software maintenance will always end in India with developers making $20/hr. Or less.
AI makes it look like these developers can do the same job the Americans did building the product to begin with. Even if things fall apart in the end, it won’t stop the attempt to order of magnitude reduce the cost for maintenance.
This seems wrong? Like if you look at a collection of open SWENG positions, most of them are maintenance roles at large companies. Greenfield software doesn't have the revenue needed to justify much headcount.
In my experience separating the roles out is silly if you're an engineer yourself. We do this a lot and that leads to silly mentalities. Greenfield developer vs maintenance engineer, MVP engineer vs Big Tech dev, FOSS hacker vs FOSS maintainer. Each of those dichotomies speaks to cultural differences that we humans amplify for no reason.
In truth the profession needs both and an engineer that can do both is the most effective. The sharpest engineers I've worked with over the years can hack new, greenfield stuff and then go on to maintaining huge projects. Hell Linus Torvalds started out by creating Linux from scratch and now he's a steward of the kernel rather than an author!