so what about web dev and js? do you really think he is right in what he is saying about it? it sound very delusional and arrogant... if you are not at least a demigod, you are nothing
I would take advice on how to become a good programmer from Jonathan every day. But don't forget to take advice from someone who also looks like they know happiness.
Jblow has good takes on the surface but an extremely obnoxious personality that manifests as bullying and gaslighting to those around him with good intentions. I’ve seen three or four people very respectfully and kindly correcting him on programming mistakes while he personally insults them and holds on to his wrong argument. Classic Dunning Kruger.
@@drygordspellweaver8761 whole take on "dont be average web dev, get a job at SpaceX" is super weird considering that Tesla and SpaceX are two companies that are known to embrace web tech much more compared to many other companies in the the same industry. SpaceX had built all their UI in Dragon capsule to run on Chrome and I bet same will be in Starship when it starts flying. So good luck avoiding JavaScript in company that decided to bet big on web tech and most open positions include writing JavaScript. It is really nowday's very rare to land a job building user-interfaces that would not be built on web tech, the only alternatives would probably be something like Android, or Swift, or crossplatform UI tools like Flutter, and yet still web tech is most likely to remain the largest segment. Thus it is actually completely reasonable to invest in career as web tech specialist and this would open up doors to one literally anywhere.
I come from games... there is 100% a skill to finishing stuff, and it's not 'just do it' or 'just finish', which I think is the takeaway most people got from the quote... it's actually the opposite: "Failing to plan, is planning to fail". So, what initially comes off as a water is wet truism, I actually appreciate the depth of the notion: "Just do the stuff you say you are going to do". To me, that really speaks to: 1) Plan and execute on those plans (do the stuff you say you're going to do) 2) Don't scope creep, just do what is planned (do the stuff you say you're going to do) 3) stick to milestones and time budgets (do the stuff you say you're going to do), and 4) just, you know, do the stuff and finish it...
I think the most useful generalized advice would be "figure out what's holding you back, and work on eleminating those things". I don't like it when people say the usual "just do it", everyone already knows that you "just have to do it". There is always a reason why they're not "just doing the thing". But the reason is often psychological, combined with their own habits, scheduling, ongoing responsibilites, etc, activities that are occupying their days and thoughts that occupy their minds. Useful advice is not really generalizable and really depends on the person, which you can't give in a 10 minute YT algorithm optimized video, or just generally if you don't know the person who asks that question. While the ultimate solution is in fact "'just doing it", but the thing that will lead people to success is how they are going to get to the point when they can actively and consistently engage with the thing they set out to do. Your advice for example is an important pillar, but it's not everything.
@@jonnyjoker01 "Your advice for example is an important pillar, but it's not everything." I can't agree more; my shitpost in a comment section is just the tip of the iceberg on project management and properly planning a project.
It's not just the scope of that one thing but also the total number of things. For "I will do X" to have meaning it has to be correct 80%+ of the time which means you really have to be careful what you say you will do either to yourself or to others.
It's ironic that Jon also complains about burnout and doing so much for so little. Much easier to do recreational programming when your bills are taken care of in the first week of the month
Everyone has off days. When you're doing hard work for a future payoff all it takes is a small shift in perception to make it feel pointless. Consistency over time is the important bit, and Jon most certainly has that
He has been working on his next game and his own programming language for what, 7 years now? He feels burnout because both of those are still not ready to be shipped. After that he is gonna feel much much better.
The thing about the "take risks" advice is that it ignores realities like wealth, student debt, location. Taking the same type of risk doesn't have the same consequences for everyone. The key is managing risk without letting it paralyze you.
@@chrisnelson414 Did you listen to the part where he talked about people who sabotaged their own success and made excuses for why they didn't succeed? He's talking about you guys.
@@VACatholicIt's easy to take risks if you have a support network and other people don't rely on you. It's a very dumb take to say "just take the risk" if the risk of failure is not just your ass on the street and your health potentially wrecked, but also your kids out of a home, without food, shelter, clothes, food, etc. Very 20s take to think that risks are always worth the potential failure
@@VACatholic both of these things can be true: some people who can take risks talk themselves out of it, and some people are not in a position to take risks that others are in a position to take.
@@VACatholic There is taking risks and being a complete moron and losing everything while you have a family to provide for, unless you're suggesting in getting rid of said family.
Vast majority of jobs in IT are either web dev or mobile dev. There are simply not nearly enough positions in companies like SpaceX or similar ones that do more challenging engineering. Yes, it is much more exciting and better to work on a rockets than to make websites in React (won't even mention WordPress and stuff like that) but it is really hard to land one of those jobs. It's like playing in the NBA compared to playing at a local gym.
Or rather... there are simply not enough companies like SpaceX because the people building the teams at all the other companies choose to follow trends rather than pursue skillful engineering. You ever think of that? The places known for good engineering are known for good engineering because they are doing good engineering? Which means that its obvious how much better they are at engineering compared to other places because the other places aren't as good at engineering? :O :O :O
@@nanthilrodriguez And you would know? Your other comments on the video are you lamenting the fact that you, yourself, are trapped in a 'mediocre shop' with 'mediocre teams' doing web wev. Also believe it or not, spacex also hires web devs, its is simply a ubiquitous need and despite all the issues with the proliferation of frameworks and tooling, 'good' engineering happens in that space just fine. This is 100% a you problem and the fact you wear it so proudly on your sleeve makes you profoundly unhirable.
@@sfulibarri Yes, I would. I have had the opportunity twice to work with genuinely brilliant people solving genuinely difficult problems. Those were both short lived, first due to covid, second due to a hostile buyout. The rest? Literally everywhere the fuck else? Filled with exactly the sort of lackadaisical, thoughtless pile of shit that doesn't care about their craft. Go figure that I fucking hate working with people who don't give a shit, when I know there are quality people doing quality work on hard problems... I'd sure like to be with those instead of the socialistas here for their free lunch and a paycheck.
@@sfulibarri and who the fuck is wearing anything proudly? The very first comment made in the video from JBlow was about how it would have been better for the kid to have found another job when starting out. And that's literally what the fuck I said. It would have been better for me to not have gotten sucked into web dev because I would have become a better engineer in the same amount of time Whatever the fuck else you read into that is on you.
@@nanthilrodriguez My brother in Christ, if your position didn't survive during covid or an acquisition then you were below the bar. Sorry, 100% skill issue and from what I'm reading probably also culture fit lol. Your "I lost my 'good' job because I wasn't good enough to keep it and now I can't get a 'good' job again because there are too many 'bad' jobs" reasoning is fascinating though, have you considered a career swap to gymnastics?.
35 years of programming. One thing I learned hands down. People that started with lower level languages always tend to out perform those that started with higher level languages. There is a reason behind. It they understand better at the hardware level how things work. They are used to doing more with less. They are used to creating solutions rather than expecting libraries or others to have created a solution. They don't have the mentality of throwing hardware to deal with performance issues.
Ehh... it's just a skill. I didn't really understand thinking in the low level until I was into my career by a good clip. You just have to fucking push at the edges. People get tired of pushing themselves. JavaScript is bad because it's an internally incoherent mess, not because it's high level. Scripting languages are usually easy to pick up because most of them aren't implementing any particularly interesting ideas. Go learn an array language if you think there's nothing interesting to learn from scripting languages. uiua is a newer one that has some pretty interesting innovations on the general concepts that array languages focus on. Or if you think the syntax is too annoying, maybe try datalog or some other logic programming language. At the end of the day, a programming languages is just a modeling tool focused on one kind of problem or another. Lower level languages tend to be focused on manipulating a model of the physical hardware. Good lower level languages have the capabilities inside them to both model that machine and also let you model the problem you actually need to solve.
I wonder if this might be selection or survivor bias. Learning a lower level language is objectively more demanding. The ones who stick on with it might be the ones who must have a more natural aptitude for it and would go on to be better anyways. Not saying this is the reality. Just pointing out that it’s a possibility. People who have the aptitude for something harder but closer to foundational concepts are going to come out stronger than those who don’t.
@@kiriappeee you are correct intelligence is generic and it's very typical for gifted people to look down on others and claim they just need to work harder it's garbage. They should perform their greatness and let others do what they can in their capacity to the best of their ability. Unfortunately the education system has told everyone that can be whatever they want so now we have loads of people who should not be programmers depressed that they aren't good at it and find it too hard. They should be doing something more creative most probably but they are stuck in shame having chosen a path they can't actually live up to. Especially the ones who were given degrees to ensure next round of funding for the schools. Absolutely criminal the damage they have done.
I did full-stack for understaffed companies for the same wage as retail cashier or fast food cooks. Completely unrealistic projects for one developer to handle and it was living hell, 3 years later im at Microsoft making literally 3x what my last job was and I need to work about 10 hours a week max to accomplish what some of my peers do with over a decade more experience then me, and am often the go to when nobody can answer a more nuianced question.
@@ZephrymWOW by "peers" do you mean your peers at Microsoft ? I am just trying understand your point . Are you saying that you learn a lot in your piror full-stack role so that you have a higher productivity than your current peers now ?
Web dev can be hard if you care about consistency in the face of concurrent data access. Pretty much no framework will help with this. But most web devs are clueless and write code full of race conditions. I've noticed the lack of good, deep advice on the internet. So much is broad strokes. I wouldn't ever claim to be the best programmer, but when I don't understand how something works I investigate it. I have a folder of dozens of investigations, and I've thought of making blog posts out of each one. However, time is a factor. I have a job. And 3 kids. And honestly, I'd rather spend my spare time preparing for the next family D&D session rather than writing a bunch of technical blog posts going into details most people aren't gonna care about.
I agree. Not sure why the web is portrayed here to be braindead simple here. I've been learning CQRS, microservices, clean architecture recently and I don't know if that's still supposed to be not substantial to my growth as a developer after listening to his advice. The part I get about working hard, sure. But I can't see how you can't grow all that much as a developer with web technologies. I primarily use TypeScript at the moment at work. I want to genuinely understand how Javascript is so frowned upon by these developers who preach using lower level languages. Are the problems beyond memory management, performance, and concurrency just not real? Do you not encounter architectural problems and race conditions in Rust, C++, or wherever? I sure hope he's only talking about the braindead React and JavaScript here.
Make take on this depends on context: 1. If you want to be a great programmer, it's probably better not to work at a web-dev job using Javascript, and doing 2 hours of work a week. 2. If you aren't that ambitious, have fun with your web dev job, and live your life as you are. Not everyone needs to/should be ambitious. All in all, if you want to improve you have to challenge yourself.
1. doesn't make sense - are you implying to work for just 2 hours a week? That's insane! You can't make a living that way. There simply is no either-or there. That's the mistake to begin with! If you start with a faulty premise, all that follows from it is nonsense. So enlighten me, why can't you work 35-40 hours a week as a webdev while also doing *other* things in the remaining 72 to 77 hours of the week?
@@totalermist People at large web software companies do work 2 hours a week sometimes. Although a lot of the time they work for more than 2 hours a week to do something that should not take more than 2 hours a week.
@@youtubeenjoyer1743lmao, that as at any company and if you think that doesn’t happen at SpaceX, then I got some ocean front property in Arizona for you.
@@totalermist I am afraid, if you spend 40 hours at your main job and another 70 hours on personal projects, you probably burn out very soon. I personally works 35 hours at main jobs and spend around 20 hours on personal projects/study and feel like it can't be much higher number to keep it sustainable.
@@totalermist I am afraid, if you spend 40 hours at your main job and another 70 hours on personal projects, you probably burn out very soon. I personally works 35 hours at main jobs and spend around 20 hours on personal projects/study and feel like it can't be much higher number to keep it sustainable.
Very well said. It's a pity that only IT has such profound understanding of growth and full of these amazing takes. I say we should encourage other industries to keep up with these ideas and have commercial flight pilots dunk on bus drivers. After all who needs stupid boring buses when we have planes. Truckers should be ashamed of themselves for not even trying to get into Boeing. Just go and bring coffee to people at Boeing it will be more beneficial for your career long term. Stupid cabbies settling with their mediocracy. If it wasnt for them we would be flying to work every day.
100% true. I'm a former web dev for 18 years. Started with LAMP back in the late 90s. I tried to migrate to Amazon and Microsoft late in career and didn't make it. I was technically a senior or lead dev on paper, but in an enterprise group I was completely unprepared and lacked real skills. After being a highly productive scrappy web dev, I simply could not get anything done at those companies. I spent my formative years working with sloppy juniors and did not know how to hone my own talents. I now no longer work in the industry, because I'm severely burned out. I cannot go back to web dev because I cannot stand doing it. Just thinking about it makes me ill. Do not waste your early years on trivial programming. I work in the hotel industry, and I'm currently trying my hand at making a game in Godot in my spare time. I'm doing things to fulfill my creative needs. Learning music (piano), art (digital), writing, math, and game dev.
Just because “trivial programming” didn’t work out for you in the end that doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time for other people. People enjoy different thing and people handle similar scenarios differently.
Oh, I misunderstood the question. I would not do web dev. No matter what. In fact, I probably don't have a choice in the matter. My brain shuts down every time I attempt to do it. Believe me, I've tried simply for the money. Severe burnout.@@shrin210
I listened to his great advice. No longer will I suffer anti design patterns by React developers. I just implemented a TempleOS compiler for C89, after playing "The Witness" for the 10th time (my favorite part is that embedded video of him getting out of bed, in a fucking puzzle game).
@@asdqwe4427So yes, there is a difference I totally missed which got cleared up by looking at cia-foundation's GitHub of TempleOS with 64 core support 😅
yeh, I can't stand the guy. It feels like he is still in his "entitled" phase … "the social sciences are not real sciences because they have a process different to my liking" - "I choose the hard path, because I'm hard and people with different live choices are stuuuupid". At the end of the day, Johnathan Blow is a toxic loner. Wonder why people don't see that he is always working by himself.
Yeah his take is just weird. No matter what I believe about the React developers ant antipatterns I bet that these antipatterns all exist in user interface code that runs in SpaceX dragon capsule's user interfaces that all had been built to run in Chrome as is user-interface of any software that is built in Tesla or SpaceX. So yeah good luck avoiding web tech in companies like SpaceX where majority of software engineering jobs are to write web apps. At this point if one doesn't like web tech then I don't know maybe consider changing career to something like forestry maybe taking care of forests will include bit less of interaction with web but even then a lot reports to write which all will be done through web browser.
I got pigeonholed into frontend because I started out as a JavaScript developer. Took me 2 years of self-studying to claw my way into computer graphics 😅
@@aylazer23 following Blow's advice: don't listen pals on the internet. Come up with problems and solve them for yourself. Make a spinning cube appear on the screen, color it blue, use keys to move it around.
SpaceX had built all their user-interfaces in Dragon capsule to run on Chrome. Both SpaceX and Tesla literally build almost everything what is possible on web tech. This idea that web frontend somehow is a dead end is the most idiotic take that I ever heard in this industry. JavaScript certainly isn't pretty and comfortable tool but reality is that all big industry tools are not pretty and not really comfortable.
Or I could get an easy, high paying webdev job and spend the rest of my time with my friends and family instead of trying to get 2% better at moving pixels around on a monitor.
Well then it’s clear Jon’s advice isn’t for you, because you’re clearly only in it for the money. His advice is for people that actually CARE about programming, unlike you
@@TestChannelWow-bh7ys that’s your problem buddy. Some of us are actually passionate about this field. I’m not rocking on you for only being in it for the money (although I suspect that will severely bite you in the ass in the next decade) but the point is that a lot of us do this because we love it and want to improve, not just because of the money that’s tied to programming. If you can’t understand that I genuinely don’t know what else to tell you
@@UrienOld what part of this is my problem? I create a lot of value for my employer and I get paid a ton of money for it. Why would I spend extra time becoming fractionally better at programming when I could spend that time with my friends and family? Some of you guys need to touch grass once in a while
I prefer comfort and I survive just fine in the industry and do cool shit as well. The logic that you have to get out of your comfort zone is weird. Learn to be the best in your comfort zone. That's all
@@squ34ky Of course you need much more than just an impulse or a whim. You need a plan and true commitment. In the case (and I'm not saying this is always the case) that you're in a job where you don't have the opportunity to grow and learn new things, you have no choice but to go elsewhere.
Elitism and over-simplification, classic Jonathan Blow. This just reinforces my ideas of going the way of people like Pieter Levels or Luke Smith. Fix problems for individuals or small businesses using what ever means you have available to you. You don't need to be a ground breaking, ultra competent super dev. A single PHP file, a dream, and the money go brrrrrrrrrrt.
His take of getting internship at SpaceX rather than doing webdeb is rather comedic considering that at SpaceX very likely most of software engineering is on top of webtech - all their user interface for Dragon capsule was built to run on Chrome - and Tesla and SpaceX are well known to make extensive use of web tech and indeed promote the exact attitude of "whatever gets the job done" as opposed to being overly picky and opinionated about the tools used.
Old Hungarian saying: "Always aim higher with your bow than where your target lies". Its not only physics - but more importantly trajectory. When he says spacex - what he says "aim for not the easy path if you can try anything harder"... It does not need be spacex, there are bunch of stuff to aim higher than you currently do!
Jonathan's argument is quite solid as, to an average dev or corporate suck-up, that sounds like a load of uneducated bs when in reality it's about "going for something you are not qualified for / taking chances"... but they'd rather takes his point literally and spout some crap against it.
@@davidorbang7152 That is just because web dev makes you more shit developer - there is nothing personal in it or towards web pages, just fact of life ;-)
Does it ? Do you have any arguments to back up this claim or are you just accepting everything coming out of his mouth ? So what everybody who is in web dev is beneath game devs for ex ? (cuz I've seen recent AAA releases )@@u9vata
So the first thing he says is to get away from JavaScript . . . It's like another one of those "Learn to Code" moments, Learn to Code . . . without JavaScript the question is, will there come a day . . . when JavaScript becomes the graveyard slot . . .
Here is my advice as a grizzled veteran. Be a mediocre programmer. Get a job as a bank or an insurance company or something. Go to work at 9:00 and leave your work at 5:00 and leave your work behind. Enjoy your family and weekends. Don't chase trying to be Jonathan Blow or a Primagen. It's just not worth it. First of all the chances of you becoming one of them are slim anyway and you are going to wreck your body, your health, your relationships and yes your career working ten hour a day and then coming home and putting in another five trying to learn the next new thing. You are going to bounce from job to job and each one will be more stressful than the next because you are a rockstar and you get called at 3:00 in the morning when the app is crashing. Oddly enough you'll probably end up making even more money in the long run by working on boring ass enterprise apps instead of joining one failed startup after another and sleeping under your desk in the weekend because it's got to ship by monday.
you can be aspirational and not overwork yourself at the same time though, don't stop learning and remember that raises in this industry is mostly switching jobs. even if you do the same thing.
As another ACTUAL software engineer, this is the best advice in this thread. Channels like these are teaching young kids to make software their entire lives. There has to be nothing is sadder than looking back and realizing how much time you put into moving pixels around on a monitor that you could have spent with friends and family
Agree 100% Prime and JB assume you want to be 10x engineers which the vast majority of the audience will never be, and that's fine. If you look at Prime's advice for getting a job, it's polar opposite to what JB said in this video. There's more to life than work.
The best advice is to try to get a job for the government. At least in the US they come with very good pension programs. The private sector pretty much offers no pension program. The best you'll get is some 401k matching but it depends on your financial input to it which will affect your take home pay. A pension program is pretty much all employer funded; you keep your take home pay. Look at IT jobs in your local municipality and neighboring ones.
As I've aged, my enthusiasm to power things has gone down, but my ability to stick through it has gone up. So I pick my battles, but I can fight them for longer.
@deadchannel8431 yeah it is. It really fucking is. Look at any of primes HTMX videos. The amount of mess we have got ourselves into when trying to simply render a document is obscene. Just look at the fucking build pipeline of modern javascript frameworks and tooling. This doesn't exist for backend.
When I had been in a company that trained for web development it was like half and half the group sorted into front end or backend oriented, where I mean the people naturally seem to like one or the other at a split rate
5:18 I honestly don't like this take. I understand the logic but still... Nobody is perfect. People are stupid and do stupid things. Does that mean that EVERYONE should just quit their job because they do not know what they are doing? NO! It is perfectly normal to not know what you are doing. It means you are pushing yourself out of the comfort zone and it is necessary to grow as a human being. If everyone would just stick to what they know we would still live like monkeys, only guided by instincts that we know out of the womb. It is necessary for civilization to go out and learn new things, and by definition you will not know what you are doing. The feeling that people get, that they are not worth it - "the impostor syndrome" is just that - the feeling that you are worse than the others around you. While the reality is that almost everybody feel the same as you and almost everybody is genuinely shit. And while it is true judgment that most people are shit at their job, the syndrome is about wrongly perceiving your position in the equation. That you are somehow not qualified compared to others. If nobody is qualified - everybody is.
Also the delusional take "go work at SpaceX". Yeah sure. It is such a bad and discouraging take. Just like telling poor people to go and just be born to a rich family. Not everyone can work at such companies. Not everyone can have fulfilling carrier and this is without any fault of their own. Some people really get bad start in life and will never be able to reach your status. Purely because where they were born. And some people are not even meant to do this, because of the genetics. Some people are build to develop new things, others to maintain the old order. Both are perfectly valid and NECESSARY lives. The one takeaway that I would recommend is to try and not settle early in live in a comfortable position. It is good to try and challenge yourself. But if you tried and that feels very wrong - you don't have to. Life is not a race. You can also get a fulfilling life not tearing yourself apart. Be honest, speak truth and live peacefully knowing that you did the right things.
He's saying that too many people nowadays get the feeling of the impostor syndrome, and I think that number of people is going to grow much more in the future, especially with all the tools and new ways of passing classes without actually learning. I think he's right about this, I think it is the case that, more often than not, the impostor syndrome that's talked about so often is actually people just being incompetent at their jobs and then managing to learn it on the way. (which is okay, depending on the job). "The subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one's abilities and accomplishments compared with others, despite evidence to suggest the contrary" The key sentence in that quote is "despite evidence to suggest the contrary." What Jonathan is saying is people would rather lie to themselves, and others, that they aren't actually incompetent, but it's just a fake feeling they're getting. When in reality, it is the case that they are bad at their jobs, and it took a month or two, more or less, for them to understand what it is that they should be doing, etc. Instead of just being honest with themselves and accepting the fact that they in fact ARE bad on the job and should do something about it, instead of just blaming it on impostor syndrome. I have no idea where you got the idea that Jonathan said that if you are bad at your job, you should QUIT ? He literally said, and I quote, "People want to pretend it's not true that they're bad at their job. They want to pretend that they are actually good, and it's just a mental issue. It's just confidence, or something. Right ? No, it's just that if you're bad at your job, and your brain is telling you- you're bad at your job, then just pay attention to that, and try to figure out how to get better-" Cuts off here, but it's obvious what he was going to say. After writing all of this out. I realize that your comment is 7 months old. But, I think it's important to say this anyway.
I think the most rewarding project I worked on was a Game Boy emulator. It sucks and doesn't fully work, but I learned a lot doing it and it opened my eyes on how interpreters work.
I'm curious. Were you familiar with the Gameboy architecture beforehand at all? I've sometimes entertained the idea of writing an emulator but was intimidated.
@@vaxrvaxr I wasn't familiar with it at all. What made it difficult was there was no single document that had 100% accurate information on how it all works when I worked on it back in 2015. I'm not sure if such a doc exists now. I think starting with a Chip8 emulator would be good. The games are super basic and it can be completed pretty quickly, removing that intimidation barrier to try more interesting systems.
Though I take a lot of what Jon Blow says with a large grain of salt I am a huge fan of his and I actually took this advice from him. I did my masters project at a company doing network programming in C with amazing programmers to learn from and really deep tech and good practices to follow (C with all the sanetizers and checks) and I applied there as I realized this was a perfect place to learn good coding in practice after uni.
"[Don't do the thing everyone pays money for.]" -Jonathan Blow "For the past seven and a half years, i've been working so hard for so little reward, that it kind of starts taking the desire to work hard out of my soul any more." -Also Jonathan Blow I think you should just do what you want that makes money, and try to solve the hardest problems while you're at it.
Here is my problem with this: I think an important part of the struggle early in your career is learning to think for yourself, learning how to handle autonomy, learning that there are no experts and that the world is not actually a series of scripts that you can just follow. Simply getting "a hard job" is not enough to learn those lessons. Interning at SpaceX or Apple or some of these notoriously difficult companies will give you no autonomy, will teach you simply to put your head down and do the thing you were told to do, will teach you how to try to read your boss's mind. I think those lessons are just as bad as getting a cushy job that teaches you how to be lazy and program poorly. And at least the cushy JS job doesn't lead to an incredibly high burn out & even suicide rate. I normally agree with JBlow, but I think his advice for young people is a bit off the mark. It fails to take into account the importance of doing work you actually care about to make the struggle worth it, or you won't learn to think for yourself, you'll just learn how to be abused.
@@nanthilrodriguez You do understand that most devs are mediocre? If you want to be some coding genius then be one but don't insult the majority of IT space, which built everything you use
I said “not enough”. That means you do have to do hard work. I’ve just easy to over-rotate on “this is hard so worthwhile” when you are young and dumb. I think providing guidance on what kind of “hard” is good, and what kind of “hard” is bad, is a super important part of giving this advice. Like prime says, it’s about trying to better yourself and your skills.
Spot on IMO. This rhetoric is kind of the same ive heard from the red pill community. It panders to young people with a lack of purpose, inferiority complexes, relentless self-criticism, etc. I think this kind of talk can lead to people not living their own lifes. They fill their mind with what they "should" do and "need" to do, because else your wasting time, its not gonna matter, its not impactful. Everyone has a different idea of what matters, getting that from someone else is just self-imposing restrictions.
@@FirstYokai yes, and that's the problem. What are you doing here if you choosing before you start that you will remain mediocre? maybe any effort is warranted, or fucking go home?
5:00-7:00 There is another possibility... The job is just that hard. I work on embedded systems. I've been doing it for 12 years. Yet every so often I feel like I suck at my job. Then I find out my colleagues are struggling with the same issues. In this case our brains are not giving us accurate assessments. The job is just that difficult.
The difficulty of a task does not implicate the level of skill of the person trying to complete it. NASA engineers when trying to figure out a breathing apparatus for Apollo 13 didn't wallow in imposter's syndrome. They were all very skilled engineers, worked with what they had, and created a solution, because they were skilled engineers. If they had been programmers in 2023, they would have looked for a Stack Overflow article, and failing to find one, they would tell the astronauts that there is no way to solve the problem.
you sound like you don't actually have any code in production. there are plenty of things in any dev job you will not be able to find on google@@nanthilrodriguez
1. Don't use languages that hold your hand (e.g. Javascript) or work easy jobs because it will suppress your progress as an engineer. 2. Your imposter syndrome probably isn't real. Your feeling of inadequacy is valid and you should spend some time trying to figure out why. 3. Be careful with who you surround yourself with, especially when your young, as it will set the trajectory of your future. 4. Take the right risks in your youth. As you age, your responsibilities will most likely be higher making it harder to take risks. 5. The investment with the greatest potential return is in yourself. Index funds are for boomers. 6. Don't be afraid to stand out. People are constantly talking themselves out of success because of the opinions of others. 7. The best way to do the things you say you are going to do? Just do it. That is the secret. 8. Good programmers are busy so aren't free to give good advice on the internet. Therefore, the majority of advice on the internet is given by those who aren't good. Final comment is an emphasis on how more time in the saddle is the best way to improve at something.
I swear that 90% of IT takes are utterly insane and completely removed from reality. Guess what - mediocrity is OK. Sorry to break it to you, but not everyone can be top 10%. Statistically, you're gonna be average. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong in being content with your middle-of-the-road WEB dev position. Saying insane stuff like 'go work at spacex' is like saying to a homeless person 'just buy a house'.
Yes it's crazy to think that you need to spend 100% of your time to become some coding wizard. Most of us want to enjoy our life outside of our job. We work to provide.
Exactly. Also, vast majority of the jobs ion IT are either web dev or mobile dev. There are simply not nearly enough positions in companies like SpaceX or similar ones that do more challenging engineering.
Well, I both agree and disagree depending on the context. If you are talented enough to become a great programmer, you're probably better off using something other than Javascript, and "Go work at space x" isn't meant to be taken literally. Imo, what he is saying is that if you want to be a great programmer, you probably aren't going to get there working at a dead-end web-dev job.
Yes, not everyone can be in the top 10% even if they tried their best. The truth is that many people are *not* trying their best, so you doing it would allow you to get ahead.
@@FractalWanderer > If you are talented enough to become a great programmer, you're probably better off using something other than Javascript, and "Go work at space x" isn't meant to be taken literally. Who stops you working with a different toolset and on different projects in your spare time? Clowns like this Blow bloke fall into the trap of creating the strawman of a false dichotomy and then just rolling with that from their high horse of financial stability and privilege. Telling people to aim for the Moon even if that means not actually working on the job is the same insanity that the prosperity gospel preaches. No, great talent and expertise doesn't just magically rub off on you just by surrounding yourself with people that are great at their profession. If you want to do something else, just do it on your own time and use the job to - you know - pay the bills 'n shit.
I have worked in IT for nearly 40 years. To survive, you have to keep learning. Best work as a contractor (if you're brave enough) and set aside time every week to learn something or improve. Think of it more like a martial art. Practice, learn, do side projects etc. Also don't just do software, learn Business, Accounting, Soft Skills, Devops or Unix, Cyber, Ai, Database admin etc. If you find you are not learning (or stagnating) on a contract, consider moving on. If you follow what I have said you will have a long career in IT.
My problem with guys like Blow is that they're absolute sociopaths. His take is ignoring the fact that 90% of ideas and ambitions are failures. I also find it mighty disconnected from reality and very arrogant to just assume that "taking risks" is always a viable option. Most of us have to pay bills, raise families, eat and have a place to live. That takes priority over lofty ambitions. Not everyone can become a rockstar and not being a rockstar is perfectly fine, too. It's also completely ridiculous to think in extremes (is he actually a Sith Lord?) - what exactly stops you from having a day job while working on other stuff on the side?
If he's got fireyArms (yep, actually see his latest streams), he's prepping for those "whiney soycialist leeches" calling him a feeescist Sith Lord who want to take all his precious things
JB loves his god complex, anyone that doesn't do what he does is taking the easy path. He also thinks 1996 was the hardest year to start a game company - which by compete coincidence is also the year that he founded his game company. Amazing that he doesn't need a fishbowl lens to fit his head into the stream
@@jameshasswell8976 She's right though. JBlow loves to call others out for being bad programmers but he doesn't even understand the very basics of C++, ostensibly the language he's used in most of his projects
He is stating truth and hard cold facts. As a developer I know everything he is saying about BAD developer like me is true. But I hate his complaining attitude and he is wrong to blame bad developer. Many of us are just working to survive by earning money and do not care about corporates at all. I'm just hearing JB's complain, improve my skills as much as I can and do not follow him at all. Rather would Andrew Kelly's opinion than JB's.
I understand his points and I (mostly) agree with him, but its so easy to misunderstand it with how little nuance he adds. It wouldnt surprise me if a good portion of people just brushed this off as a boomer take.
I've always wanted to do graphics programming... but aside from dappling with it here and there I've never actually gotten to the point where I've actually made anything... that's not a great feeling. I had to think about it quite a while, but this is what stood out the most for me on the topic of "People talking themselves out of success." Resonates.
I listened to this earlier and been thinking about it during the day and had to come back to comment. I always have to qualify any hot take by pointing out that I have only been in the industry for a year. So I’d be the first to say that maybe I’m missing something. But how in the hell is any other form of development better or harder than web? If by web, he only means frontend, then alright I can see how there are many easy frontend jobs. Although, I’d even argue against that. Frontend doesn’t come natural for me. Maybe it does for everyone else. But how is scaling Facebook or Google to millions of users mediocre work? Netflix scaling streaming services to millions? The DB design and server infrastructure that comes with that are not trivial. If by real work he means embed systems like writing code for drones (and even mentioned SpaceX) then that sounds like bullshit. They’re just hard in different ways. This is a case where you just have to choose your hard. Which difficulty do you prefer? If you’re building software for a drone or something, then you’re probably writing C, so you’ll have the added complexity of memory management. You’ll also be in a situation where memory is limited so you’ll have to manage those resources wisely. The big scaling problem will have to be resolved by various types of hardware engineers in trying to figure out how to manufacture a drone, plane, or something else at high volume and do it in a cost-efficient way. But do the software engineers working on that same product face any scaling problems on the level of highly distributed systems in enterprise backends? If so, let me know. And if he means video game development is where the real work is, I’d rather stay doing the mediocre work. Game development is already underpaid and overworked, imagine if we all tried to get into game development? Sometimes, smart people can make dumb life decisions. And at that point, it doesn’t even matter how smart or skilled you are. Still a dumb ass decision.
His take is pretty stupid indeed. He seems to think all of web dev work is creating some pages in Javascript frameworks. He ignores all the technical challenges that the area has and elevates all the technical challenges programmers working in embedded and game dev faces. In reality embedded and game dev can be pretty mundane as well, depending on the role you have in your company and the product you are developing.
A big part missing from your comparison is the number of people the work is distributed across. How many hundreds or thousands of employees do these tech companies have? And compare that with the numbers of software engineers at SpaceX or game studios. There's at least an order of magnitude difference.
My hot take about the web is that outside of TCP/IP, https, SSL, RSA and the other base level technologies that run the internet, the software and all the frameworks that gets unleashed on the world is fundamentally crap. We have been ignoring this fact for so many decades that the entirety of computing has suffered because of it
There were some crumbs of good advice, but they did not have to come from him, he just repeated what other people have said. I'd say it might be bad for your mental health to program in Javascript, but it's much worse for your mental health to listen to the advice Jonathan Blow is trying to give you. I mean, the man creates his own programming language (but on the other hand, who doesn't, as a pet project) which he guards as his little secret because somehow he doesn't like open source (although I suspect he doesn't want anybody else to see his strange, convoluted, undocumented source code, now that's taking imposter syndrome to a whole new level), he programs a game that will probably never be finished, and is salty about all the other developers creating code that might be crappy BUT IS BEING USED EVERY F**KING DAY. Me, I am only programming as a hobby - unless you count the scripting related to just about any devops job as programming - but I use frameworks for both backend and frontend. I use database engines. I use frameworks to create CSS for me so the resulting product (even if I'm the only user) doesn't look like crap. And yes, I use libraries. I would never think of writing my own language just for creating one program, the whole GUI, the database layer beneath it, and a portable presentation layer (because, face it, that's what a web browser really is - a portable presentation layer for your software) just because Jonathan Blow sits in his living room and tells me it's the only way to be fulfilled as a human being. No. Also, I have a eating disorder - I'd like to eat a meal or two a day - and a housing addiction. Like most of us. So I do my job, and do it the best I can, and I don't regret that I didn't invest all my non-existent money into my ideas and my project when I was in my 20s. Moving to a (at that time) foreign country was enough of a project. I wonder where Jonathan Blow got his money to invest into himself, to sit in his living room programming a game. Probably not by sitting in his living room and programming a game, is my guess.
I agree with your point and what’s also important to point out is that JBlow is speaking from a very US-specific point of view. For the majority of software engineers, moving to US is not an option. There aren’t as many unicorns or big engineering corporations that focus on other things than web, at least not at the same scale as it is in the US. Also, there can be very complex engineering problems to solve in “web” as well. Web development doesn’t necessarily mean boilerplate front-end development, and I still think there’s so much to learn in front-end as well.
Well Google, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, and PayPal are all "Web" companies that require "Web dev". This is such a ridiculous take that has no foundation in reality
Those parts about "his language code is surely messy" and "his game is never gonna be finished" sounds like projection, but ok. And this entire comment sounds a bit butthurt tbh. Also, he never stated that you have to write everything from scratch, but to write code in accordance to your needs. General purpose frameworks, with their layers and layers of abstraction, are not such tools.
Honestly most of Jblow's comments really aren't that deep or wise. If anything I feel they are a bit narrow minded. For example, the point that younger people are bigger risk takers. Honestly what Primegen says is more correct, that it's more of a case about obligations. Like there is a huge difference in thinking when you are just yourself and all you have to do is satisfy your needs, and when you have 2-3 people depending on you - like a family. I have a relative that has no family or children and even though he is older than me, he doesn't care if he changes a job today or tomorrow. On the same case whenever I think about taking some risk I always have to take into account my kids and my wife. Also choosing a stable income being bad, honestly it depends on your specific case. If there is no one to back you up and pay your bills and put food on your table, while pursuing that dream job, you have no choice but to chose the stable income. A good advice for this case instead is to not forget that your goal for that job is to save enough so you have a good buffer when switching for a better job. Also choosing a higher level language as a starting one isn't a bad thing, but you should try to learn a lower level one once you feel comfortable enough with the higher one. Ideally I would say start with both.
All of these framework hating comments are idiotic. Frameworks are just abstractions. How about you go rewrite your networking layer too, just because "abstractions are bad". There are correct tools for specific jobs. Reinventing the wheel is the hallmark of people who think they are smart, but love to waste time.
Beneath the generally decent advice to push yourself to be better at what you do and to not coddle yourself, is a whole steaming pile of unjustified elitism against front end development and the more ordinary, unglamorous programming that makes the world actually run. It reminds me of art snobs who look down on anything that is comprehensible to the regular person as being automatically lower in skill or merit. Maybe it’s not because he is in these circles, but I’ve been around long enough to see the transformation of web dev from mostly HTML/CSS and design-where I can see why someone would not call that real programming-to something that in more recent years has called upon my experience as a backend .NET dev and computer science education. But there is still this lingering impression that front end work’s just “making websites look pretty” and Jonathan is perpetuating that stereotype. He should try doing a fullstack app for something at scale, not just a small hobby site but performant and hosted on global scale, not to mention accessible. A lot of thought and skill goes into all those parts. It may not fly a rocket to Mars like at SpaceX (I realize he’s only using that company as an example) but it will serve potentially millions, including those with disabilities. To imply that isn’t honorable programming work is wrong.
This happens in every field, unfortunately. Even by school degree representation. A college programmer will be looked down by some bachelors and those by masters and those by phds. Regardless of their respective skills. It's an unfortunate consequence of living in society.
You’re taking copium because you’re not ambitious and that’s ok. You should always push yourself and do better but not judge yourself or be angry at yourself for being below par if everyday you’re trying. You may not land at the “elite level” but you can be happy you didn’t aim for less. But if you want to blame elitism or whatever for your own lack of trying then that’s cope.
The fact that the web is an overdesigned mess where even simple websites take hundreds of megabytes and seconds to load is pretty good evidence that most frontend devs have no idea what they're doing.
@@isodoubIet That is correct to some degree. I just wish these legendary hardcore developers will eventually come and after 30 years of struggling show us, how to make proper web. So far I just hear of thrashing web developers while messing with hobby projects no one will ever use.
This man's ego is as big as the Empire State Building. Why is it so common among video game developers? I'll choose the web developer community any day.
game devs have more knowledge about math/physics/optics, etc, so they think they know more about 'real science'. It also requires one's taste on music/graphcis/game design. Also game community is pretty like movie industry, where you have rockstar game makers. Hence huge ego for game devs.
@@xenoyariin i get the point, but how many game dev today actually do deal with the intricacies of 3D visualizations? i bet _some_ old-schoolers are, but many of them today just use unity (which is closed source) or unreal 3D (which is source available) and they don't understand in depth what they are doing... People actually writing 3D engines have always been a tiny minority. There is a big difference between being able to use a library and being able to write it. It's the same for all kind of fields, be it AI, cryptography, 3D, embedded hardware devs, etc. i think the arrogance has to do with the design thing and the myth of the man in his cave writing games. Also the general population is quick to ditch a game and their developers, and quick to make them heroes. Having your baby "tested" online and given a "score" must feel horrible. Maybe arrogance is a defense mechanism to survive. The weak ones left to more inclusive industries. But objectively, it's absurd to think that there is no complexity in anything outside of game dev. What about developing a browser, scaling a social app, cryptography-oriented applications, or dealing with all the different browser compatibilities... Even regular web dev isn't trivial, whoever says that just never did it professionally. In any case nothing can excuse this level of obnoxiousness imho.
This is about opportunity costs basically. He's a bit harsh on web devs though, much of that now is for a general business information plumbing and it's a good choice.
I am 27 and I am mostly not challenged at work. I still have the drive to try new stuff, so I also create toy projects to learn new languages, new architectures and technologies. Furthermore, I actually agree, and I have found out that none of my toy projects were without benefit. I believe that I am one of the more knowledgeable people in my team and that I am able to keep up with senior devs just because of this. Being challenge makes you better, what you have to avoid is stagnation.
SpaceX was chosen to illustrate a point: Some companies are doing real engineering. If you're working in web development, the likelihood that you're doing genuine engineering is low, so try to find a company that is.
SpaceX doesn't have enough jobs for all webdevs to quit and go work at SpaceX, that wasn't the point. The point was go do something at a good company, where smart people are doing important things. There's a lot of those companies, SpaceX was just an example.
Jonathan Blows just has such an incredible talent to make any otherwise good advice sound like the most pretentious, unrealistic, snobbish shit ever said by anyone in the industry. Genuinely in awe at how he keeps accomplishing this year after year
"Just do it" is something I'm learning with 3D modeling video game building architecture (with interiors). Just not really guides on best practices, so many ways to possibly go about it and really it's come down to analysis paralysis and I just got up make my own discovery.
SpaceX has like 2 open developer positions and maybe like a handful of intern positions in a given year. Its also a notoriously bad company to work for (crunch times, frequent overtime, management has big issues).
Paying the bills and having a roof over your head is very nice. I wonder if some of these people ever imagine other people live in realities different than theirs.
If you just need a job, work at a cash register. Problem solved. If you need a job where you earn good money, than 1. actually learn something, because easy stuff does not pay a lot 2. be a halfway decent guy 3. approach people without being a negative nancy I literally got a few job offers in fields that I have virtually no idea how to do them, but they believe that I have the mindset to fit into the team and learn. If I can do it, you can do that ten times insha Allah. I hope you get the money you need.
> A guy who is successful says try harder Hah, survivorship bias andy > A guy who is not successful says try harder Hah, what do I listen to you, you haven't even done anything
@@meandtheboyz4796 Yes, because you don't prove a rule by giving exemples but you disprove it by giving contre-exemples. That's one of the most basic concept of logical reasoning ...
Nice, I've been a web programmer for over 10 years now, and it's always nice to have someone strait up say that everything I ever programmed was ultra simplistic, complete shit and totally worthless because I used the wrong programming language. So apparently I'm just an idiot who as gone brain-dead all because of javascript... wow. I should learn Assembly like that I could spit on everyone else because they are using such inferior programming languages.
If you're that offended, you seriously need to escape the indoctrination and go try a non-web thing. You'll quickly understand how much more fun it is and why everyone that isn't a web developer shits on web dev so much. I'm sure you've done your best with the tools you were given, but the world is a lot bigger than your current perspective seems to suggest.
@@dandymcgeeyou dont need to try other stuff to understand why everyone who doesnt do web dev shits on webdev. webdev has the spotlight, their pet niche doesnt get any attention.
@@dandymcgee who is the one indoctrinated here? A web dev who says he likes what he's doing and also appreciates the stuff people in the other fields are doing or a C developer who shits on JS/Web devs as being inferiors at coding? "World is a lot bigger" goes both ways, most non web devs have no clue about the nuance of it and shit on the tooling cause they have no idea why thing are the way they are.
Also, if you always leave as soon as you're the smartest person in the room, you don't get to exercise leadership. Sometimes you need to have that experience where there are no training wheels, no daddy there to guide your bike. The problem though, is when you get into that position and succeed well enough, for some, you've "arrived" and never go anywhere else because you're "on top". As Ray Kroc said "when you're green, you grow. When you're ripe, you rot."
3:00 this concept of going to the hardest place possible to force yourself to the challenge.... Its presumes you are capable of that. I've met many many many MANY engineers in my time who on paper have worked out prestigious positions, have bunches of certifications, proport to have done impressive things and have advanced degrees... yet their ability to think critical seems to be dog water. Like if you challenge them to take the time to comprehend even a basic thing, they struggle. So this presumption that just being some where challenging will make you a good engineer, rings really hollow for me. I've met tons of terrible, incompetent -10x engineers who work in challenging environments where there is the opportunity to learn and build new intereting things. Some people... just don't have the capacity to work at a certain level, and that's okay, so long as we don't start going to that person if they can. So quitting your job and running off on a job search to find a challenging place to work because it will magically make you better.... I'm not so sure if that's wise. Ultimately what makes you better is putting your nose to the grind stone working on projects, reading documentation, and providing coherent solutions based on strong critical thinking. Being close to a complex problem does not whimsically grant you critical thinking abilities, you need build some foundational skills first.
JB here is being way too prideful, he is saying web programming is a lowly form of programming that is superceded by almost anything else. Many web programmers out there are struggling to survive, and this guy compares it to a bunch of guys throwing cheetos around? You must not debase an entire chunk of a profession like this, people put their blood and sweat and tears into their work and you must not degrade that. Not everybody has the luxury to go work on some magnificent masterpiece and become a "good programmer". Ultimately if he decides he knows what a good programmer is, and he happens to be one, and he is willing to tell a bunch of people they suck, well maybe he isn't the right guy to listen to
We need those web programmers like we need the janitors of the world. Not everyone can aspire to work tirelessly and get hired in one of the very limited spaces at big tech companies that offers lots of challenges. Jonathan Blow is one of those wayyyyy too smart people for their own good. He has become disconnected from the reality of the average programmer and gives out advice like his audience was composed exclusively of 5.0 gpa kids. There is nothing wrong working in whatever field you like. Just challenge yourself to always get better at what you do. That's it.
Nah. We don't need web programmers. Most of their output is an utter trash perpertuating the users misery. All of it either should not exist at all or better automated with LLMs, for even stochastic parrots are better than code monkeys.
If we tore the whole system down and rebuilt it we could do a much better job. So we don't really need those jobs. He definitely isn't saying go work at big tech companies. He insults microsoft, google, etc all the time. He's more saying find a job that isn't one of these jobs that shouldn't exist and needs to be torn down and replaced. "He has become disconnected from the reality of the average programmer and gives out advice like his audience was composed exclusively of 5.0 gpa kids." - Its better to focus on people with potential than to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator.
I saw some of these many months ago. Since then, I picked web programming back up for a project and started a regular non-js project (a compiler without a tutorial), and turns out I don't actually know which is the hardest. I know the compiler takes longer and is technically more complex, but I don't know if I actually find it harder. It's a weird thing. To me, the compiler tests my logical thinking and analytical ability, but the website is taxing mentally in terms of scale and features. There are so many more little things I do and so many things I need to keep in mind. When working on the compiler, I know I'm doing A then B then C and A goes into B which goes into C, it's very straightforward.
Thank god i've stopped calling myself a "programmer" years ago, otherwise i'd be hurt by all this "do the top stuff" bs 😅 Like most of us, I don't do "programming", i solve business problems, sometimes without writing a line of code, sometimes with removing code, sometimes with talking to stakeholders/ users, and yeah, writing code is also a part of the job now and then. But i think about it as providing solutions to the business, helping a user, making business more effective, etc. Otherwise, don't waste your time in IT, go build bridges, skyscrapers and rockets. If you want to be "great", "respected" or whatever, those are much better choices than moving bits around with any of the shitty tools we've got 🙂
This goes along with a statement i heard tooooo much in my career, "it works, why we need to change it!" maaaan i hate that statement of lazy devs. I get completely his statement, and myself have been in the situation where from 17 to 26 i have been learning from bad devs and on the side i was studying on my own every day to get better cause i knew that they were not so good, and thankfully i did that! now i'm 38 and i'm really confident in my job being a lead engineer, and is so important for my own mental health, cause there is a big difference in knowing what you are doing instead of hoping you will know what you are doing.
Of course John is a great developer, and I don't necessarily disagree with his takes most of the time. But I also find it funny how he's in a perpetual delusion of grandeur just because he knows computer graphics and made two very average games.
Indeed, he is smart, but not near as smart as he thinks (or speaks, at least). As for the athlete comparison, a runner, for example, would do way more things than just run, they would do strength and mobility training, do technique training, incline runs, decline runs, etc. Does the "smart people are too busy to give advice" argument apply to JB's advice too?
10:33 "Birds of a feather flock together" is a law of the universe that would behoove everyone to take extremely seriously. I had to learn this lesson the hard way (a few times) throughout my life.
Imposter syndrome is not about being a bad programmer but thinking that everyone around you is a genius. Work at Spacex is like saying "just get rich bro".
"Imposter syndrome is not about being a bad programmer but thinking that everyone around you is a genius." the most true statement i've ever read, thank you
So he said: "the inaccurate description of Imposter syndrome: that they don't know what they are doing in their job". I have felt imposter syndrome before. not because I don't know what I'm doing, I do know what I'm doing, but feeling like I shouldn't be there. Not being good enough. I turned down a job because I felt like that. I keep in touch with them, because they felt that I would be a good match, and maybe in the future it would feel the same for me.
@@iWhacko that's a stupid reaction to that feeling. If someone is better than you, you should be eager and excited to work with them, not fearful that they would discover that you're not as smart. This is literally how you get better at anything, by being around people you feel are so much better than you, that you'd be embarrassed to speak out of turn. So go do that
@@nanthilrodriguez Nah it's not a feeling that they discover that I'm not as smart. I know I can definitely do the job, just that I decided to learn a proper background in the field first. I'm a programmer of 17 years and the job is for cyber security and pentesting. I just felt I needed to learn a lot more first to at least be comfortable enough with it.
Interestingly, at the age of 44, I find myself diverging from the common notion that people become more conservative as they age; in fact, my views seem to be moving in the opposite direction. It's a reminder that individual experiences can vary significantly from general trends or expectations.
I’m talking more about risking my all free time for creating a startup creating a product putting all money I have and all my free time I’m different now willing to risk I can see in every day choices I make. Yes I’m wiser but also williing to risk more then ever before.
I'm fucking dying over here with react, rekit, typescript, fucking mongodb, goddamn this, godamn that. I started in January at 36 years old and I was looking like a good 26 years old. 4 months later my goddamn hair is falling out.
I'm building my career thinking solely on financial security. Even with that in mind, I still challenge myself whenever possible, since that gives me an edge at keeping my job and finding the next roles much more easily compared to someone who is just riding the wave. This "take risks whenever possible" and "athlete performance goals" rhetoric of JBlow only works if you're keen on mixing work with your life goals, and committing 100% to that. It is not for everyone, and it will bring nothing but misery to anyone who thinks they will be less of a person if they do not succeed. Work does not need to align with your personal goals/entertainment. You don't have to be the best. Heck, you don't even need to be good at work, if that's not your goal. I really dislike this "one size fits all" argument from people who at too high up their shoes to think there are other ways to live life outside of their chosen way. That all being said, knowing how to navigate solutions and how to parse good from bad/irrelevant advice are extremely important skills, key to an outstanding professional career. When you ignore all the entitlement, he has some good advice.
The systems we build in react have hundreds of pages of interconnected business logic. I don't think that the technology defines how ambitious you are.
Yeah, honestly it's a bit annoying that most people think that webdev is just about blogs or simple web pages that just render some text/images. I agree that a lot of companies hire people who do just that and for some of these tasks they use too many abstractions, but there are also a ton of people who work on amazing and complex projects using web technologies
@@missgrimm7359 its not about being easy, its about being specialised in react, wordpress, Shopify etc.. instead of programming. this how devs retires they invest into a niche tool get good at it and slowly became stuck when everyone move on.
A lot of it is very true but with housing how it is it's much riskier and more expensive to try to run your own business. JBlow had a bit more flexibility 15 years ago. Hell, I had more flexibility 10 years ago and over time working in a small company just couldn't pay rent anymore even though I found it 1000x more fulfilling. I do think sometimes about doing it again and just draining my savings trying to make it work, but that's the path where if it doesn't work all that's left is to kms. Maybe worth, I dunno, I'd certainly try if I got laid off since this company f'd up my hands so much I probably couldn't get another grindy job again.
Alright, serious question here. I am 33, and have been in the car industry since I was 20. Within the last 6 months I have changed roles, and realized the current position isn't really gonna work long term for me. I started thinking about other industries, and got some ads for random coding/web dev boot camps etc. I started the long road of learning all of this as a total beginner with no experience about a month or two ago, and basically everyone was saying to start with either JS or Python, I chose JS as it seemed to be the most widely suggested based on my limited knowledge. I haven't signed up for any bootcamps, I don't have the time or money to really go back to a four year program with a wife, two kids, and a full time job. I am basically trying to do the whole thing from scratch on my own. Now this guy and others are saying screw JS, forget it, and learn something else. So genuinely curious, for someone just getting into this (or at least attempting to), where is the best 'Starting point'?
i ackshually really like javascript as a starting point. it gives you the ability to learn front end dev, back end dev, tools, etc etc once you figure out what you like and you want to specialize, then do the research and try out different languages that make sense for that area
You can safely ignore JB, his advise is usually only relevant to himself. JS is fine, whatever language you chose that gets you productive and able to output code that works is good enough, anything after that is just optimising how you solve the problem - and you should avoid premature optimization . Just commit to a path, get to the point you can solve problems with code, then worry about what the best way to solve the problem is
When you just starting you don't learn programing language - you're learning how to program first. So don't worry about that. Also, jumping from one language to another is relatively simple if you know your programing (with some exceptions) so it shouldn't be a big problem to jump from javascript to something else when you have say 3-5 years of expiriense. So good luck in your journey! Also, people usualy hate the language itself (javascript) not webdev in general, I'm not sure if this guy knows what his talking about.
It's amazing. I'm now a principle engineer and I've always found myself learning only from peers and those below me than those above me. I've only ever been given stuff I've had complete ownership of. I would have loved to have had the guidance through my career others speak of but for some reason it never happened.
The abstraction thing is really true, sometime a html css and javascript is much better than all the fucking dependencies and frameworks for a website.
Johnathan just comes off as another self-absorbed person who generalizes his own viewpoints and opinions without any solid basis or evidence. He's also a great example of people who are pretty talented in one field, thinking they're far more gifted in other fields than they really are. He also believes in and espouses objectively silly and harmful beliefs. Further, anyone who unironically follows Chaya Ralchik is an objectively bad person. There is no valid reason to be a bigot, and outmoded values based in silly fairy tales that only serve to perpetuate "traditional lifestyles" are directly harmful and do nothing good for society. All that matters in life is having as good a time as possible while helping others to do the same, loving often and a lot, and learning all you can about the universe and contributing to the compendium of human knowledge.
I think you want to reject his opinion because it conflicts with your own words of comfort that tell you, you can’t do any better. We can always do better, always.
@@isodoubIet you can’t tolerate intolerance or it ends tolerance as a whole. Same thing with fascism and free speech. You can’t allow these things to be abused for harmful ends
For me, the hardest part about web development as a job is not just the opportunity cost of not being able to write code in the way that i actually believe is good and fun during working hours, but the fact that web technology is _so_ poorly designed and frustrating to work on that it actively damages my desire to program good and fun things when i get home from work.
What JB is also saying is that you won't be young forever, you won't have the same mental and physical capacity when you're older. So many people start programming when they are in their 40's. Good for them, but they would never reach what could have been their prime if they started younger.
"web programming is bad and will make you a bad programmer" rewind 20 years "programming C is bad and will make you a bad programmer" rewind 20 years "coding in Assembly is bad and will make you a bad ....mathematician?..." "punching holes in cards is bad go solder some transitors to that PCB"
Nobody said this about C in 2003 when java had already existed for 20 years Coding in assembly is fundamentally different from maths, computer scientists are worse at math than mathematicians, coding in general is barely computer science They didn't use PCBs when they were using punch cards. also, 40 years ago, c had existed for 11 years already.
Another reason why we need to improve the level of skill and conscientiousness across the board: we can’t all get interesting and challenging work, the vast majority is inevitably grunt work. But we owe it to our fellow grunt workers a certain degree of professionalism so they can do their work, get paid and go home to their families without being completely burnt out by gratuitous complexity whether from broken abstractions, management practices or anything else.
but in my experience, when the work is grunt work, isn’t that an indicator that you should do it differently? like there are constraints, but if you take the time to understand the problem you’re solving, you can adjust the abstractions, right? then the “grunt work” can maybe have less boilerplate and take less time?
I have tried to avoid web programming as much as possible. I'm still a collage student and for a nation wide hackathon someone asked me join their team to work on a project. The problem was the project itself. I sat them down over a meeting and then explained better project idea (from a given list of problem to solve). And everyone agreed. I even told them from start to finish how we will solve the problem at hand. I worked on machine learning model needed for the inference and then gave the work of handling the web application to other members. I had to initially take care of the front-end, back-end, design, and the ML model, API integrations, multi-processing all at once. Among all these I didn't enjoy the front-end work which was basically HTML, CSS, and JS. I'm more comfortable with python so Machine Learning was up my ally. We ended up being in the top 5 teams nationwide for that but couldn't go for competing for No1 due to exams falling on the same day as the venue.
I think people miss the point of "work at SpaceX" because they ignore the second part "Bring people fucking coffee". Point there is not "Be qualified to work at SpaceX" it is "Surround yourself with people working on hard problems even if you have to be the person who is only qualified to bring coffee". SpaceX is just a stand in. You can find other places you can get in that is challenging.
You don't have to let your mediocre job force you into a mediocre career. I didn't NEED to learn WASM and rust, but I did. No one told me to rewrite one of our sites in 5 different js frameworks, in golang and in Rust using Dioxus and again using Leptos in order to weigh the benefits... but I did. I used my company education benefits to pay for a machine learning certification where I also had to learn python. I've put myself in a very good position despite my "Job" just being "web dev" on paper. Now I'm a principal engineer. I lead and mentor. I set standards and influence our direction and what technologies my team invests time into. The thing is, I don't think his advice is actually necessary. The people who aren't ok with mediocrity, aren't going sit by and take it, and they certainly aren't waiting for some Jon Blow to tell them and give them permission to not be mediocre.
for the last bit, doing more of whatever task is always the way. you'll know when you have a genuine problem that needs others when you have a real question
Imagine being someone just starting to get productive in web development and then comes this guy with this advice. If you're this person just keep going until you land a job. Don't listen to him cause he lives in another reality.
I've been learning full-stack web dev for about a year, wrote my first html in september 2022. Now two weeks ago I've landed my first job as a nodejs backend dev in some mid-tier company - screw anyone who's gonna tell me I should be doing something else.
I must say, as a slightly above average intelligent person who was always miserable because he couldn't understand quite a lot of things he WANTED to understand, conversations with AI were super useful to kinda cure my bitterness of not understanding back when I was in school. I finally found the time at school to be worthwhile. It always seems to help if I open myself up and if I ask questions instead of Rambling.
It's just a fucking job. Some days, especially after you pass 30 and provided you don't have some kind of hyper autistic brain that needs insane stimulation, you actually don't want to be challenged constantly. Sometimes sure, but not all the time. JavaScript is perfect for most people, since it's straight forward and easy to debug.
@@alpaca_growing_kit if you actually think that, you're more of an imposter than you think you are. you think your company uses javascript so you can have a job? Or you think they're paying you to build some website or application upon which your business hopes to make some kind of profit or provie some service that is going to make the business money? So you're saying that its totally ok to do a terrible job because its just a job and nobody's life is effected? So then the business stagnates and fails to grow, gets outpaced by competition because the competition is young and isn't bogged down by the terrible decisions you all slopped together, and now teams are getting laid off and whole features getting removed because people like you made terrible decisions leading up to this point... So the business is flailing, hemorrhaging customers, all because "javascript devs are not responsible for people's lives". Go home. Nobody wants you here.
I learned C as a first language, that made me learn about the actual computer. Now when im older, i dont think i would learn at the same speed and depth as i did when i was 12-20 years.
We don't need everyone to be launching rockets. We just need good working websites/apps. I rely on apps and websites daily for using public transport, request a visum, pay my taxes, job searching, and altogether too much entertainment. So it's better to work on raising the level of webdev, rather than have all the ambitious webdevs switch to embedded or game-engine-dev.
To the dude's henchman-maxing in the chat @ the Seattle joke, nobody lives in your small broke podunk town that is paid to grow food inefficiently because letting you starve in the cold is immoral, hence, the whole poverty issue.
The day I can no longer find work as a mediocre software engineer, is the day I find something else to do. I’m only in it for the money, and have passions and interests outside of programming that fulfill me and make me 100 times happier.
My only hobby is game development, which is why an easy job is a perfect fit. I go be mediocre for 3 hours a day, get paid, then sit on my ass doing low level C and OpenGL programming for 10 hours. Mediocrity (at your day job) for the win
I've not seen talks about creativity. If you lack creativity, it doesn't matter the programming language. You're not going to challenge yourself and, therefore, hinder your learning.
10:46, whoever said, "that's not true," if they're referring to becoming like the people you spend time with, is a massive self-report. Probably the exact type of person who's a total vacuum vampire of a friend. Everyone who has something to give to their friends knows this feeling, and anyone who gives nothing is lost and thinks this sentiment is not true.
i don't want to work at spacex, but i am going to try to be the best engineer i can be. this usually means doing things that are difficult
Don't quit Netflix. Who is gonna write all that code so we can watch our stuff ? I feel safer when watching knowing you are programming there xD
So my understanding is that you consider everything done in javascript to be basically a walk in the park,... bold.
@@AlexisFinnno, it is like going right throught the mountain in flipflops.
The best I can be is keep supporting my family, this usually means JavaScript
so what about web dev and js? do you really think he is right in what he is saying about it? it sound very delusional and arrogant... if you are not at least a demigod, you are nothing
I would take advice on how to become a good programmer from Jonathan every day. But don't forget to take advice from someone who also looks like they know happiness.
Thats a good point
Haha I was thinking the same… I actually genuinely enjoy making things, bringing boffins at spacex coffee, less so.
😂 brutal takedown
Jblow has good takes on the surface but an extremely obnoxious personality that manifests as bullying and gaslighting to those around him with good intentions.
I’ve seen three or four people very respectfully and kindly correcting him on programming mistakes while he personally insults them and holds on to his wrong argument. Classic Dunning Kruger.
@@drygordspellweaver8761 whole take on "dont be average web dev, get a job at SpaceX" is super weird considering that Tesla and SpaceX are two companies that are known to embrace web tech much more compared to many other companies in the the same industry. SpaceX had built all their UI in Dragon capsule to run on Chrome and I bet same will be in Starship when it starts flying. So good luck avoiding JavaScript in company that decided to bet big on web tech and most open positions include writing JavaScript. It is really nowday's very rare to land a job building user-interfaces that would not be built on web tech, the only alternatives would probably be something like Android, or Swift, or crossplatform UI tools like Flutter, and yet still web tech is most likely to remain the largest segment. Thus it is actually completely reasonable to invest in career as web tech specialist and this would open up doors to one literally anywhere.
I come from games... there is 100% a skill to finishing stuff, and it's not 'just do it' or 'just finish', which I think is the takeaway most people got from the quote... it's actually the opposite: "Failing to plan, is planning to fail".
So, what initially comes off as a water is wet truism, I actually appreciate the depth of the notion: "Just do the stuff you say you are going to do".
To me, that really speaks to: 1) Plan and execute on those plans (do the stuff you say you're going to do) 2) Don't scope creep, just do what is planned (do the stuff you say you're going to do) 3) stick to milestones and time budgets (do the stuff you say you're going to do), and 4) just, you know, do the stuff and finish it...
I think the most useful generalized advice would be "figure out what's holding you back, and work on eleminating those things". I don't like it when people say the usual "just do it", everyone already knows that you "just have to do it". There is always a reason why they're not "just doing the thing". But the reason is often psychological, combined with their own habits, scheduling, ongoing responsibilites, etc, activities that are occupying their days and thoughts that occupy their minds. Useful advice is not really generalizable and really depends on the person, which you can't give in a 10 minute YT algorithm optimized video, or just generally if you don't know the person who asks that question.
While the ultimate solution is in fact "'just doing it", but the thing that will lead people to success is how they are going to get to the point when they can actively and consistently engage with the thing they set out to do. Your advice for example is an important pillar, but it's not everything.
@@jonnyjoker01 "Your advice for example is an important pillar, but it's not everything."
I can't agree more; my shitpost in a comment section is just the tip of the iceberg on project management and properly planning a project.
"Plan your dive and dive your plan" SCUBA wisdom.
I think, the takeaway is: focus and don't get distracted.
It's not just the scope of that one thing but also the total number of things. For "I will do X" to have meaning it has to be correct 80%+ of the time which means you really have to be careful what you say you will do either to yourself or to others.
@@rokker333 never heard that, this coomes from scuba diving?:p
It's ironic that Jon also complains about burnout and doing so much for so little. Much easier to do recreational programming when your bills are taken care of in the first week of the month
Everyone has off days. When you're doing hard work for a future payoff all it takes is a small shift in perception to make it feel pointless. Consistency over time is the important bit, and Jon most certainly has that
the guy is a joke.
He has been working on his next game and his own programming language for what, 7 years now? He feels burnout because both of those are still not ready to be shipped. After that he is gonna feel much much better.
No, he won't.
who givea a f*ck what he thinks?
The thing about the "take risks" advice is that it ignores realities like wealth, student debt, location. Taking the same type of risk doesn't have the same consequences for everyone. The key is managing risk without letting it paralyze you.
Most of the successful risk takers I've known either had a good support network to help them or were trust funders.
@@chrisnelson414 Did you listen to the part where he talked about people who sabotaged their own success and made excuses for why they didn't succeed? He's talking about you guys.
@@VACatholicIt's easy to take risks if you have a support network and other people don't rely on you. It's a very dumb take to say "just take the risk" if the risk of failure is not just your ass on the street and your health potentially wrecked, but also your kids out of a home, without food, shelter, clothes, food, etc. Very 20s take to think that risks are always worth the potential failure
@@VACatholic both of these things can be true: some people who can take risks talk themselves out of it, and some people are not in a position to take risks that others are in a position to take.
@@VACatholic There is taking risks and being a complete moron and losing everything while you have a family to provide for, unless you're suggesting in getting rid of said family.
Vast majority of jobs in IT are either web dev or mobile dev. There are simply not nearly enough positions in companies like SpaceX or similar ones that do more challenging engineering. Yes, it is much more exciting and better to work on a rockets than to make websites in React (won't even mention WordPress and stuff like that) but it is really hard to land one of those jobs. It's like playing in the NBA compared to playing at a local gym.
Or rather... there are simply not enough companies like SpaceX because the people building the teams at all the other companies choose to follow trends rather than pursue skillful engineering.
You ever think of that? The places known for good engineering are known for good engineering because they are doing good engineering? Which means that its obvious how much better they are at engineering compared to other places because the other places aren't as good at engineering? :O :O :O
@@nanthilrodriguez And you would know? Your other comments on the video are you lamenting the fact that you, yourself, are trapped in a 'mediocre shop' with 'mediocre teams' doing web wev. Also believe it or not, spacex also hires web devs, its is simply a ubiquitous need and despite all the issues with the proliferation of frameworks and tooling, 'good' engineering happens in that space just fine. This is 100% a you problem and the fact you wear it so proudly on your sleeve makes you profoundly unhirable.
@@sfulibarri Yes, I would. I have had the opportunity twice to work with genuinely brilliant people solving genuinely difficult problems. Those were both short lived, first due to covid, second due to a hostile buyout.
The rest? Literally everywhere the fuck else? Filled with exactly the sort of lackadaisical, thoughtless pile of shit that doesn't care about their craft.
Go figure that I fucking hate working with people who don't give a shit, when I know there are quality people doing quality work on hard problems...
I'd sure like to be with those instead of the socialistas here for their free lunch and a paycheck.
@@sfulibarri and who the fuck is wearing anything proudly? The very first comment made in the video from JBlow was about how it would have been better for the kid to have found another job when starting out.
And that's literally what the fuck I said. It would have been better for me to not have gotten sucked into web dev because I would have become a better engineer in the same amount of time
Whatever the fuck else you read into that is on you.
@@nanthilrodriguez My brother in Christ, if your position didn't survive during covid or an acquisition then you were below the bar. Sorry, 100% skill issue and from what I'm reading probably also culture fit lol. Your "I lost my 'good' job because I wasn't good enough to keep it and now I can't get a 'good' job again because there are too many 'bad' jobs" reasoning is fascinating though, have you considered a career swap to gymnastics?.
35 years of programming. One thing I learned hands down. People that started with lower level languages always tend to out perform those that started with higher level languages.
There is a reason behind. It they understand better at the hardware level how things work. They are used to doing more with less. They are used to creating solutions rather than expecting libraries or others to have created a solution. They don't have the mentality of throwing hardware to deal with performance issues.
Ehh... it's just a skill. I didn't really understand thinking in the low level until I was into my career by a good clip. You just have to fucking push at the edges. People get tired of pushing themselves. JavaScript is bad because it's an internally incoherent mess, not because it's high level.
Scripting languages are usually easy to pick up because most of them aren't implementing any particularly interesting ideas. Go learn an array language if you think there's nothing interesting to learn from scripting languages. uiua is a newer one that has some pretty interesting innovations on the general concepts that array languages focus on. Or if you think the syntax is too annoying, maybe try datalog or some other logic programming language.
At the end of the day, a programming languages is just a modeling tool focused on one kind of problem or another. Lower level languages tend to be focused on manipulating a model of the physical hardware. Good lower level languages have the capabilities inside them to both model that machine and also let you model the problem you actually need to solve.
I wonder if this might be selection or survivor bias. Learning a lower level language is objectively more demanding. The ones who stick on with it might be the ones who must have a more natural aptitude for it and would go on to be better anyways. Not saying this is the reality. Just pointing out that it’s a possibility. People who have the aptitude for something harder but closer to foundational concepts are going to come out stronger than those who don’t.
@@kiriappeee you are correct intelligence is generic and it's very typical for gifted people to look down on others and claim they just need to work harder it's garbage. They should perform their greatness and let others do what they can in their capacity to the best of their ability. Unfortunately the education system has told everyone that can be whatever they want so now we have loads of people who should not be programmers depressed that they aren't good at it and find it too hard. They should be doing something more creative most probably but they are stuck in shame having chosen a path they can't actually live up to. Especially the ones who were given degrees to ensure next round of funding for the schools. Absolutely criminal the damage they have done.
As a (mostly) web-dev for 20 years - he's not wrong :D
I did full-stack for understaffed companies for the same wage as retail cashier or fast food cooks. Completely unrealistic projects for one developer to handle and it was living hell, 3 years later im at Microsoft making literally 3x what my last job was and I need to work about 10 hours a week max to accomplish what some of my peers do with over a decade more experience then me, and am often the go to when nobody can answer a more nuianced question.
@@ZephrymWOW by "peers" do you mean your peers at Microsoft ? I am just trying understand your point . Are you saying that you learn a lot in your piror full-stack role so that you have a higher productivity than your current peers now ?
Web dev can be hard if you care about consistency in the face of concurrent data access. Pretty much no framework will help with this. But most web devs are clueless and write code full of race conditions.
I've noticed the lack of good, deep advice on the internet. So much is broad strokes. I wouldn't ever claim to be the best programmer, but when I don't understand how something works I investigate it. I have a folder of dozens of investigations, and I've thought of making blog posts out of each one.
However, time is a factor. I have a job. And 3 kids. And honestly, I'd rather spend my spare time preparing for the next family D&D session rather than writing a bunch of technical blog posts going into details most people aren't gonna care about.
I agree. Not sure why the web is portrayed here to be braindead simple here. I've been learning CQRS, microservices, clean architecture recently and I don't know if that's still supposed to be not substantial to my growth as a developer after listening to his advice. The part I get about working hard, sure. But I can't see how you can't grow all that much as a developer with web technologies.
I primarily use TypeScript at the moment at work. I want to genuinely understand how Javascript is so frowned upon by these developers who preach using lower level languages. Are the problems beyond memory management, performance, and concurrency just not real? Do you not encounter architectural problems and race conditions in Rust, C++, or wherever?
I sure hope he's only talking about the braindead React and JavaScript here.
heck yea, family dnd sessions sound dope
It’s always those random blog posts that come thru when you can’t figure something out tho
Make take on this depends on context:
1. If you want to be a great programmer, it's probably better not to work at a web-dev job using Javascript, and doing 2 hours of work a week.
2. If you aren't that ambitious, have fun with your web dev job, and live your life as you are. Not everyone needs to/should be ambitious.
All in all, if you want to improve you have to challenge yourself.
1. doesn't make sense - are you implying to work for just 2 hours a week? That's insane! You can't make a living that way.
There simply is no either-or there. That's the mistake to begin with! If you start with a faulty premise, all that follows from it is nonsense.
So enlighten me, why can't you work 35-40 hours a week as a webdev while also doing *other* things in the remaining 72 to 77 hours of the week?
@@totalermist People at large web software companies do work 2 hours a week sometimes. Although a lot of the time they work for more than 2 hours a week to do something that should not take more than 2 hours a week.
@@youtubeenjoyer1743lmao, that as at any company and if you think that doesn’t happen at SpaceX, then I got some ocean front property in Arizona for you.
@@totalermist I am afraid, if you spend 40 hours at your main job and another 70 hours on personal projects, you probably burn out very soon.
I personally works 35 hours at main jobs and spend around 20 hours on personal projects/study and feel like it can't be much higher number to keep it sustainable.
@@totalermist I am afraid, if you spend 40 hours at your main job and another 70 hours on personal projects, you probably burn out very soon.
I personally works 35 hours at main jobs and spend around 20 hours on personal projects/study and feel like it can't be much higher number to keep it sustainable.
Very well said. It's a pity that only IT has such profound understanding of growth and full of these amazing takes.
I say we should encourage other industries to keep up with these ideas and have commercial flight pilots dunk on bus drivers. After all who needs stupid boring buses when we have planes. Truckers should be ashamed of themselves for not even trying to get into Boeing. Just go and bring coffee to people at Boeing it will be more beneficial for your career long term.
Stupid cabbies settling with their mediocracy. If it wasnt for them we would be flying to work every day.
100% true. I'm a former web dev for 18 years. Started with LAMP back in the late 90s. I tried to migrate to Amazon and Microsoft late in career and didn't make it. I was technically a senior or lead dev on paper, but in an enterprise group I was completely unprepared and lacked real skills. After being a highly productive scrappy web dev, I simply could not get anything done at those companies. I spent my formative years working with sloppy juniors and did not know how to hone my own talents. I now no longer work in the industry, because I'm severely burned out. I cannot go back to web dev because I cannot stand doing it. Just thinking about it makes me ill. Do not waste your early years on trivial programming.
I work in the hotel industry, and I'm currently trying my hand at making a game in Godot in my spare time. I'm doing things to fulfill my creative needs. Learning music (piano), art (digital), writing, math, and game dev.
If you don't have money to sustain yourselves, would you still do Godot game, music, creatives hobbies etc. or would you do Web Dev?
Just because “trivial programming” didn’t work out for you in the end that doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time for other people.
People enjoy different thing and people handle similar scenarios differently.
You've chosen to ignore multiple dev's opinions on spending a career doing web dev. Ignore at your peril.@@pieflies
I would do Atari, Commodore 64, and NES game programming. Serious. My primary interest is retro game systems.@@shrin210
Oh, I misunderstood the question. I would not do web dev. No matter what. In fact, I probably don't have a choice in the matter. My brain shuts down every time I attempt to do it. Believe me, I've tried simply for the money. Severe burnout.@@shrin210
I listened to his great advice. No longer will I suffer anti design patterns by React developers. I just implemented a TempleOS compiler for C89, after playing "The Witness" for the 10th time (my favorite part is that embedded video of him getting out of bed, in a fucking puzzle game).
There's no such thing as TempleOS compiler; I think you meant HolyC compiler or a C89 compiler written inside of TempleOS?
@@SimGunther you’re a web dev, you wouldn’t understand…
@@asdqwe4427So yes, there is a difference I totally missed which got cleared up by looking at cia-foundation's GitHub of TempleOS with 64 core support 😅
yeh, I can't stand the guy. It feels like he is still in his "entitled" phase … "the social sciences are not real sciences because they have a process different to my liking" - "I choose the hard path, because I'm hard and people with different live choices are stuuuupid".
At the end of the day, Johnathan Blow is a toxic loner. Wonder why people don't see that he is always working by himself.
Yeah his take is just weird. No matter what I believe about the React developers ant antipatterns I bet that these antipatterns all exist in user interface code that runs in SpaceX dragon capsule's user interfaces that all had been built to run in Chrome as is user-interface of any software that is built in Tesla or SpaceX. So yeah good luck avoiding web tech in companies like SpaceX where majority of software engineering jobs are to write web apps. At this point if one doesn't like web tech then I don't know maybe consider changing career to something like forestry maybe taking care of forests will include bit less of interaction with web but even then a lot reports to write which all will be done through web browser.
I got pigeonholed into frontend because I started out as a JavaScript developer. Took me 2 years of self-studying to claw my way into computer graphics 😅
So did you start with a junior engineer position at your graphics job ? Can you recommend some resources to learn
@@aylazer23 following Blow's advice: don't listen pals on the internet. Come up with problems and solve them for yourself. Make a spinning cube appear on the screen, color it blue, use keys to move it around.
A lot more front end job, especially remote job. Its easiest way to start
SpaceX had built all their user-interfaces in Dragon capsule to run on Chrome. Both SpaceX and Tesla literally build almost everything what is possible on web tech. This idea that web frontend somehow is a dead end is the most idiotic take that I ever heard in this industry. JavaScript certainly isn't pretty and comfortable tool but reality is that all big industry tools are not pretty and not really comfortable.
😅@@ivanjermakov
Or I could get an easy, high paying webdev job and spend the rest of my time with my friends and family instead of trying to get 2% better at moving pixels around on a monitor.
He has a winning take, and this is a winning take.
Well then it’s clear Jon’s advice isn’t for you, because you’re clearly only in it for the money. His advice is for people that actually CARE about programming, unlike you
@@UrienOld Why would I care about programming beyond the level that it benefits me? My job is to create value, not to be a “good programmer”.
@@TestChannelWow-bh7ys that’s your problem buddy. Some of us are actually passionate about this field. I’m not rocking on you for only being in it for the money (although I suspect that will severely bite you in the ass in the next decade) but the point is that a lot of us do this because we love it and want to improve, not just because of the money that’s tied to programming. If you can’t understand that I genuinely don’t know what else to tell you
@@UrienOld what part of this is my problem? I create a lot of value for my employer and I get paid a ton of money for it. Why would I spend extra time becoming fractionally better at programming when I could spend that time with my friends and family? Some of you guys need to touch grass once in a while
The entire gist of what Jonathan is saying:
Get away from your comfort zone and always challenge yourself.
But, you don't need to quit your current job to do that. That is extremely unpragmatic.
@@squ34kyno shit, if u quit ur job bcoz of a video on the internet you prolly were never cut out for the job in the first place
@@squ34ky Yeah I agree, it's too reckless. Unless it's an actual terrible job.
I prefer comfort and I survive just fine in the industry and do cool shit as well. The logic that you have to get out of your comfort zone is weird. Learn to be the best in your comfort zone. That's all
@@squ34ky Of course you need much more than just an impulse or a whim. You need a plan and true commitment. In the case (and I'm not saying this is always the case) that you're in a job where you don't have the opportunity to grow and learn new things, you have no choice but to go elsewhere.
Prime has nailed the computer science pod cast format. I've been talking to friends for years about how to engage on similar topics. Now I know.
:)
Elitism and over-simplification, classic Jonathan Blow. This just reinforces my ideas of going the way of people like Pieter Levels or Luke Smith. Fix problems for individuals or small businesses using what ever means you have available to you. You don't need to be a ground breaking, ultra competent super dev. A single PHP file, a dream, and the money go brrrrrrrrrrt.
His take of getting internship at SpaceX rather than doing webdeb is rather comedic considering that at SpaceX very likely most of software engineering is on top of webtech - all their user interface for Dragon capsule was built to run on Chrome - and Tesla and SpaceX are well known to make extensive use of web tech and indeed promote the exact attitude of "whatever gets the job done" as opposed to being overly picky and opinionated about the tools used.
@@sk-sm9sh Exactly. JBlow is an ignorant, out of touch boomer. In his mind, everyone at SpaceX is a tech wizard who codes Ensembly by hand...
Old Hungarian saying: "Always aim higher with your bow than where your target lies". Its not only physics - but more importantly trajectory. When he says spacex - what he says "aim for not the easy path if you can try anything harder"... It does not need be spacex, there are bunch of stuff to aim higher than you currently do!
Jonathan's argument is quite solid as, to an average dev or corporate suck-up, that sounds like a load of uneducated bs when in reality it's about "going for something you are not qualified for / taking chances"... but they'd rather takes his point literally and spout some crap against it.
Yeah but he is just hating on web dev….
@@davidorbang7152 That is just because web dev makes you more shit developer - there is nothing personal in it or towards web pages, just fact of life ;-)
@@u9vata does it though?
Does it ? Do you have any arguments to back up this claim or are you just accepting everything coming out of his mouth ?
So what everybody who is in web dev is beneath game devs for ex ? (cuz I've seen recent AAA releases )@@u9vata
"Don't write JavaScript, work for Space-X." Meanwhile Space-X writes touch interfaces in JavaScript!
I agree, my company worked on augmented reality while I was doing mediocre things in Python, Ruby and Javascript
well because people who wrote javascript moved to spacex only knowing javascript amirite
@@phitc4242 So spaceX made a mistake hiring them, therefore spaceX bad, don't work at spaceX
I had the same thought...
So the first thing he says is to get away from JavaScript . . .
It's like another one of those "Learn to Code" moments, Learn to Code . . . without JavaScript
the question is, will there come a day . . . when JavaScript becomes the graveyard slot . . .
Here is my advice as a grizzled veteran. Be a mediocre programmer. Get a job as a bank or an insurance company or something. Go to work at 9:00 and leave your work at 5:00 and leave your work behind. Enjoy your family and weekends. Don't chase trying to be Jonathan Blow or a Primagen. It's just not worth it. First of all the chances of you becoming one of them are slim anyway and you are going to wreck your body, your health, your relationships and yes your career working ten hour a day and then coming home and putting in another five trying to learn the next new thing. You are going to bounce from job to job and each one will be more stressful than the next because you are a rockstar and you get called at 3:00 in the morning when the app is crashing.
Oddly enough you'll probably end up making even more money in the long run by working on boring ass enterprise apps instead of joining one failed startup after another and sleeping under your desk in the weekend because it's got to ship by monday.
you can be aspirational and not overwork yourself at the same time though, don't stop learning and remember that raises in this industry is mostly switching jobs. even if you do the same thing.
It depends on the person, the ultimate goal should be to be happy with yourself.
As another ACTUAL software engineer, this is the best advice in this thread. Channels like these are teaching young kids to make software their entire lives.
There has to be nothing is sadder than looking back and realizing how much time you put into moving pixels around on a monitor that you could have spent with friends and family
Agree 100% Prime and JB assume you want to be 10x engineers which the vast majority of the audience will never be, and that's fine. If you look at Prime's advice for getting a job, it's polar opposite to what JB said in this video. There's more to life than work.
The best advice is to try to get a job for the government. At least in the US they come with very good pension programs. The private sector pretty much offers no pension program. The best you'll get is some 401k matching but it depends on your financial input to it which will affect your take home pay. A pension program is pretty much all employer funded; you keep your take home pay. Look at IT jobs in your local municipality and neighboring ones.
As I've aged, my enthusiasm to power things has gone down, but my ability to stick through it has gone up. So I pick my battles, but I can fight them for longer.
Am i the only person who actually like front end development? Not because its easy but because its also pretty creatively satisfying
I'm guessing you just don't know better or have a very simple stack. Frontend development is so full of esoteric bullshit.
@@gdwe1831 yeah idk it’s not that bad
I do a lot of BE but I love FE a lot. Couldn't leave out any of them. FE, when done beautifully, gives such a great feeling. 🔥
@deadchannel8431 yeah it is. It really fucking is. Look at any of primes HTMX videos. The amount of mess we have got ourselves into when trying to simply render a document is obscene.
Just look at the fucking build pipeline of modern javascript frameworks and tooling. This doesn't exist for backend.
When I had been in a company that trained for web development it was like half and half the group sorted into front end or backend oriented, where I mean the people naturally seem to like one or the other at a split rate
5:18 I honestly don't like this take. I understand the logic but still... Nobody is perfect.
People are stupid and do stupid things. Does that mean that EVERYONE should just quit their job because they do not know what they are doing? NO! It is perfectly normal to not know what you are doing. It means you are pushing yourself out of the comfort zone and it is necessary to grow as a human being. If everyone would just stick to what they know we would still live like monkeys, only guided by instincts that we know out of the womb. It is necessary for civilization to go out and learn new things, and by definition you will not know what you are doing.
The feeling that people get, that they are not worth it - "the impostor syndrome" is just that - the feeling that you are worse than the others around you. While the reality is that almost everybody feel the same as you and almost everybody is genuinely shit. And while it is true judgment that most people are shit at their job, the syndrome is about wrongly perceiving your position in the equation. That you are somehow not qualified compared to others. If nobody is qualified - everybody is.
Also the delusional take "go work at SpaceX". Yeah sure. It is such a bad and discouraging take. Just like telling poor people to go and just be born to a rich family.
Not everyone can work at such companies. Not everyone can have fulfilling carrier and this is without any fault of their own. Some people really get bad start in life and will never be able to reach your status. Purely because where they were born. And some people are not even meant to do this, because of the genetics. Some people are build to develop new things, others to maintain the old order. Both are perfectly valid and NECESSARY lives.
The one takeaway that I would recommend is to try and not settle early in live in a comfortable position. It is good to try and challenge yourself. But if you tried and that feels very wrong - you don't have to. Life is not a race. You can also get a fulfilling life not tearing yourself apart. Be honest, speak truth and live peacefully knowing that you did the right things.
He's saying that too many people nowadays get the feeling of the impostor syndrome, and I think that number of people is going to grow much more in the future, especially with all the tools and new ways of passing classes without actually learning. I think he's right about this, I think it is the case that, more often than not, the impostor syndrome that's talked about so often is actually people just being incompetent at their jobs and then managing to learn it on the way. (which is okay, depending on the job).
"The subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one's abilities and accomplishments compared with others, despite evidence to suggest the contrary"
The key sentence in that quote is "despite evidence to suggest the contrary."
What Jonathan is saying is people would rather lie to themselves, and others, that they aren't actually incompetent, but it's just a fake feeling they're getting. When in reality, it is the case that they are bad at their jobs, and it took a month or two, more or less, for them to understand what it is that they should be doing, etc. Instead of just being honest with themselves and accepting the fact that they in fact ARE bad on the job and should do something about it, instead of just blaming it on impostor syndrome.
I have no idea where you got the idea that Jonathan said that if you are bad at your job, you should QUIT ? He literally said, and I quote, "People want to pretend it's not true that they're bad at their job. They want to pretend that they are actually good, and it's just a mental issue. It's just confidence, or something. Right ? No, it's just that if you're bad at your job, and your brain is telling you- you're bad at your job, then just pay attention to that, and try to figure out how to get better-" Cuts off here, but it's obvious what he was going to say.
After writing all of this out. I realize that your comment is 7 months old. But, I think it's important to say this anyway.
I think the most rewarding project I worked on was a Game Boy emulator. It sucks and doesn't fully work, but I learned a lot doing it and it opened my eyes on how interpreters work.
I'm curious. Were you familiar with the Gameboy architecture beforehand at all? I've sometimes entertained the idea of writing an emulator but was intimidated.
@@vaxrvaxr I wasn't familiar with it at all. What made it difficult was there was no single document that had 100% accurate information on how it all works when I worked on it back in 2015. I'm not sure if such a doc exists now.
I think starting with a Chip8 emulator would be good. The games are super basic and it can be completed pretty quickly, removing that intimidation barrier to try more interesting systems.
Though I take a lot of what Jon Blow says with a large grain of salt I am a huge fan of his and I actually took this advice from him. I did my masters project at a company doing network programming in C with amazing programmers to learn from and really deep tech and good practices to follow (C with all the sanetizers and checks) and I applied there as I realized this was a perfect place to learn good coding in practice after uni.
"[Don't do the thing everyone pays money for.]" -Jonathan Blow
"For the past seven and a half years, i've been working so hard for so little reward, that it kind of starts taking the desire to work hard out of my soul any more." -Also Jonathan Blow
I think you should just do what you want that makes money, and try to solve the hardest problems while you're at it.
He has made plenty of money.
imagine writing CRUD apps with javascript instead of creating amazing videogames
@@SrWho1234the Witness is extremely mid and i haven’t heard anyone raving that Braid is somehow on a totally different level to it
@@CHR1SZ7 braid and the witness' reviews are great
You missed the part where he made 5 million from braid and 20+ million from the witness
Here is my problem with this: I think an important part of the struggle early in your career is learning to think for yourself, learning how to handle autonomy, learning that there are no experts and that the world is not actually a series of scripts that you can just follow.
Simply getting "a hard job" is not enough to learn those lessons. Interning at SpaceX or Apple or some of these notoriously difficult companies will give you no autonomy, will teach you simply to put your head down and do the thing you were told to do, will teach you how to try to read your boss's mind. I think those lessons are just as bad as getting a cushy job that teaches you how to be lazy and program poorly. And at least the cushy JS job doesn't lead to an incredibly high burn out & even suicide rate.
I normally agree with JBlow, but I think his advice for young people is a bit off the mark. It fails to take into account the importance of doing work you actually care about to make the struggle worth it, or you won't learn to think for yourself, you'll just learn how to be abused.
Sounds like the mindset of a mediocre web dev
@@nanthilrodriguez You do understand that most devs are mediocre?
If you want to be some coding genius then be one but don't insult the majority of IT space, which built everything you use
I said “not enough”. That means you do have to do hard work. I’ve just easy to over-rotate on “this is hard so worthwhile” when you are young and dumb.
I think providing guidance on what kind of “hard” is good, and what kind of “hard” is bad, is a super important part of giving this advice. Like prime says, it’s about trying to better yourself and your skills.
Spot on IMO. This rhetoric is kind of the same ive heard from the red pill community. It panders to young people with a lack of purpose, inferiority complexes, relentless self-criticism, etc. I think this kind of talk can lead to people not living their own lifes. They fill their mind with what they "should" do and "need" to do, because else your wasting time, its not gonna matter, its not impactful. Everyone has a different idea of what matters, getting that from someone else is just self-imposing restrictions.
@@FirstYokai yes, and that's the problem. What are you doing here if you choosing before you start that you will remain mediocre?
maybe any effort is warranted, or fucking go home?
5:00-7:00 There is another possibility... The job is just that hard. I work on embedded systems. I've been doing it for 12 years. Yet every so often I feel like I suck at my job. Then I find out my colleagues are struggling with the same issues. In this case our brains are not giving us accurate assessments. The job is just that difficult.
The difficulty of a task does not implicate the level of skill of the person trying to complete it. NASA engineers when trying to figure out a breathing apparatus for Apollo 13 didn't wallow in imposter's syndrome. They were all very skilled engineers, worked with what they had, and created a solution, because they were skilled engineers. If they had been programmers in 2023, they would have looked for a Stack Overflow article, and failing to find one, they would tell the astronauts that there is no way to solve the problem.
@@nanthilrodriguezHow do you know what they thought at that time? Don't make baseless assumptions.
@@FirstYokaiThere is no baseless assumption. They solved an impossible task with 0 resources.
Fact
you sound like you don't actually have any code in production. there are plenty of things in any dev job you will not be able to find on google@@nanthilrodriguez
1. Don't use languages that hold your hand (e.g. Javascript) or work easy jobs because it will suppress your progress as an engineer.
2. Your imposter syndrome probably isn't real. Your feeling of inadequacy is valid and you should spend some time trying to figure out why.
3. Be careful with who you surround yourself with, especially when your young, as it will set the trajectory of your future.
4. Take the right risks in your youth. As you age, your responsibilities will most likely be higher making it harder to take risks.
5. The investment with the greatest potential return is in yourself. Index funds are for boomers.
6. Don't be afraid to stand out. People are constantly talking themselves out of success because of the opinions of others.
7. The best way to do the things you say you are going to do? Just do it. That is the secret.
8. Good programmers are busy so aren't free to give good advice on the internet. Therefore, the majority of advice on the internet is given by those who aren't good.
Final comment is an emphasis on how more time in the saddle is the best way to improve at something.
I swear that 90% of IT takes are utterly insane and completely removed from reality. Guess what - mediocrity is OK. Sorry to break it to you, but not everyone can be top 10%. Statistically, you're gonna be average. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong in being content with your middle-of-the-road WEB dev position. Saying insane stuff like 'go work at spacex' is like saying to a homeless person 'just buy a house'.
Yes it's crazy to think that you need to spend 100% of your time to become some coding wizard.
Most of us want to enjoy our life outside of our job. We work to provide.
Exactly. Also, vast majority of the jobs ion IT are either web dev or mobile dev. There are simply not nearly enough positions in companies like SpaceX or similar ones that do more challenging engineering.
Well, I both agree and disagree depending on the context.
If you are talented enough to become a great programmer, you're probably better off using something other than Javascript, and "Go work at space x" isn't meant to be taken literally.
Imo, what he is saying is that if you want to be a great programmer, you probably aren't going to get there working at a dead-end web-dev job.
Yes, not everyone can be in the top 10% even if they tried their best. The truth is that many people are *not* trying their best, so you doing it would allow you to get ahead.
@@FractalWanderer > If you are talented enough to become a great programmer, you're probably better off using something other than Javascript, and "Go work at space x" isn't meant to be taken literally.
Who stops you working with a different toolset and on different projects in your spare time? Clowns like this Blow bloke fall into the trap of creating the strawman of a false dichotomy and then just rolling with that from their high horse of financial stability and privilege. Telling people to aim for the Moon even if that means not actually working on the job is the same insanity that the prosperity gospel preaches. No, great talent and expertise doesn't just magically rub off on you just by surrounding yourself with people that are great at their profession.
If you want to do something else, just do it on your own time and use the job to - you know - pay the bills 'n shit.
I have worked in IT for nearly 40 years. To survive, you have to keep learning. Best work as a contractor (if you're brave enough) and set aside time every week to learn something or improve. Think of it more like a martial art. Practice, learn, do side projects etc. Also don't just do software, learn Business, Accounting, Soft Skills, Devops or Unix, Cyber, Ai, Database admin etc. If you find you are not learning (or stagnating) on a contract, consider moving on. If you follow what I have said you will have a long career in IT.
My problem with guys like Blow is that they're absolute sociopaths. His take is ignoring the fact that 90% of ideas and ambitions are failures. I also find it mighty disconnected from reality and very arrogant to just assume that "taking risks" is always a viable option. Most of us have to pay bills, raise families, eat and have a place to live. That takes priority over lofty ambitions. Not everyone can become a rockstar and not being a rockstar is perfectly fine, too. It's also completely ridiculous to think in extremes (is he actually a Sith Lord?) - what exactly stops you from having a day job while working on other stuff on the side?
Yes, he has problems for sure
If he's got fireyArms (yep, actually see his latest streams), he's prepping for those "whiney soycialist leeches" calling him a feeescist Sith Lord who want to take all his precious things
@@SimGunther That sounds based as fck tho! Whiney soyboy leftists do indeed want my stuff >:->
You don’t even know the Star Wars reference you tried to use, Sith deal in absolutes, not in extremes.
@@JediOfTheRepublic Forgive me for having a life and not memorising cultural references verbatim, oh clearly superior one 😊
"Be in the room where you can learn something new and useful" that puts it better
JB loves his god complex, anyone that doesn't do what he does is taking the easy path. He also thinks 1996 was the hardest year to start a game company - which by compete coincidence is also the year that he founded his game company.
Amazing that he doesn't need a fishbowl lens to fit his head into the stream
Seeth pseudo-intellectual
@@jameshasswell8976 She's right though. JBlow loves to call others out for being bad programmers but he doesn't even understand the very basics of C++, ostensibly the language he's used in most of his projects
He is stating truth and hard cold facts. As a developer I know everything he is saying about BAD developer like me is true.
But I hate his complaining attitude and he is wrong to blame bad developer. Many of us are just working to survive by earning money and do not care about corporates at all.
I'm just hearing JB's complain, improve my skills as much as I can and do not follow him at all. Rather would Andrew Kelly's opinion than JB's.
average idiot@@jameshasswell8976
Jonathan Blow's takes to me are hit or miss, and when they miss they definitely weren't close, but when they hit, they are a definite, critical one.
I understand his points and I (mostly) agree with him, but its so easy to misunderstand it with how little nuance he adds. It wouldnt surprise me if a good portion of people just brushed this off as a boomer take.
just read the comments if you wish to see it happen :)
i do agree with you on this though
I've always wanted to do graphics programming... but aside from dappling with it here and there I've never actually gotten to the point where I've actually made anything... that's not a great feeling. I had to think about it quite a while, but this is what stood out the most for me on the topic of "People talking themselves out of success." Resonates.
I listened to this earlier and been thinking about it during the day and had to come back to comment. I always have to qualify any hot take by pointing out that I have only been in the industry for a year. So I’d be the first to say that maybe I’m missing something.
But how in the hell is any other form of development better or harder than web? If by web, he only means frontend, then alright I can see how there are many easy frontend jobs. Although, I’d even argue against that. Frontend doesn’t come natural for me. Maybe it does for everyone else.
But how is scaling Facebook or Google to millions of users mediocre work? Netflix scaling streaming services to millions? The DB design and server infrastructure that comes with that are not trivial.
If by real work he means embed systems like writing code for drones (and even mentioned SpaceX) then that sounds like bullshit. They’re just hard in different ways. This is a case where you just have to choose your hard. Which difficulty do you prefer? If you’re building software for a drone or something, then you’re probably writing C, so you’ll have the added complexity of memory management. You’ll also be in a situation where memory is limited so you’ll have to manage those resources wisely. The big scaling problem will have to be resolved by various types of hardware engineers in trying to figure out how to manufacture a drone, plane, or something else at high volume and do it in a cost-efficient way. But do the software engineers working on that same product face any scaling problems on the level of highly distributed systems in enterprise backends? If so, let me know.
And if he means video game development is where the real work is, I’d rather stay doing the mediocre work. Game development is already underpaid and overworked, imagine if we all tried to get into game development? Sometimes, smart people can make dumb life decisions. And at that point, it doesn’t even matter how smart or skilled you are. Still a dumb ass decision.
His take is pretty stupid indeed. He seems to think all of web dev work is creating some pages in Javascript frameworks. He ignores all the technical challenges that the area has and elevates all the technical challenges programmers working in embedded and game dev faces. In reality embedded and game dev can be pretty mundane as well, depending on the role you have in your company and the product you are developing.
A big part missing from your comparison is the number of people the work is distributed across. How many hundreds or thousands of employees do these tech companies have? And compare that with the numbers of software engineers at SpaceX or game studios. There's at least an order of magnitude difference.
My hot take about the web is that outside of TCP/IP, https, SSL, RSA and the other base level technologies that run the internet, the software and all the frameworks that gets unleashed on the world is fundamentally crap.
We have been ignoring this fact for so many decades that the entirety of computing has suffered because of it
There were some crumbs of good advice, but they did not have to come from him, he just repeated what other people have said.
I'd say it might be bad for your mental health to program in Javascript, but it's much worse for your mental health to listen to the advice Jonathan Blow is trying to give you. I mean, the man creates his own programming language (but on the other hand, who doesn't, as a pet project) which he guards as his little secret because somehow he doesn't like open source (although I suspect he doesn't want anybody else to see his strange, convoluted, undocumented source code, now that's taking imposter syndrome to a whole new level), he programs a game that will probably never be finished, and is salty about all the other developers creating code that might be crappy BUT IS BEING USED EVERY F**KING DAY.
Me, I am only programming as a hobby - unless you count the scripting related to just about any devops job as programming - but I use frameworks for both backend and frontend. I use database engines. I use frameworks to create CSS for me so the resulting product (even if I'm the only user) doesn't look like crap. And yes, I use libraries. I would never think of writing my own language just for creating one program, the whole GUI, the database layer beneath it, and a portable presentation layer (because, face it, that's what a web browser really is - a portable presentation layer for your software) just because Jonathan Blow sits in his living room and tells me it's the only way to be fulfilled as a human being. No.
Also, I have a eating disorder - I'd like to eat a meal or two a day - and a housing addiction. Like most of us. So I do my job, and do it the best I can, and I don't regret that I didn't invest all my non-existent money into my ideas and my project when I was in my 20s. Moving to a (at that time) foreign country was enough of a project.
I wonder where Jonathan Blow got his money to invest into himself, to sit in his living room programming a game. Probably not by sitting in his living room and programming a game, is my guess.
I agree with your point and what’s also important to point out is that JBlow is speaking from a very US-specific point of view. For the majority of software engineers, moving to US is not an option. There aren’t as many unicorns or big engineering corporations that focus on other things than web, at least not at the same scale as it is in the US.
Also, there can be very complex engineering problems to solve in “web” as well. Web development doesn’t necessarily mean boilerplate front-end development, and I still think there’s so much to learn in front-end as well.
Well Google, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, and PayPal are all "Web" companies that require "Web dev". This is such a ridiculous take that has no foundation in reality
Those parts about "his language code is surely messy" and "his game is never gonna be finished" sounds like projection, but ok. And this entire comment sounds a bit butthurt tbh.
Also, he never stated that you have to write everything from scratch, but to write code in accordance to your needs. General purpose frameworks, with their layers and layers of abstraction, are not such tools.
Honestly most of Jblow's comments really aren't that deep or wise. If anything I feel they are a bit narrow minded.
For example, the point that younger people are bigger risk takers. Honestly what Primegen says is more correct, that it's more of a case about obligations. Like there is a huge difference in thinking when you are just yourself and all you have to do is satisfy your needs, and when you have 2-3 people depending on you - like a family. I have a relative that has no family or children and even though he is older than me, he doesn't care if he changes a job today or tomorrow. On the same case whenever I think about taking some risk I always have to take into account my kids and my wife.
Also choosing a stable income being bad, honestly it depends on your specific case. If there is no one to back you up and pay your bills and put food on your table, while pursuing that dream job, you have no choice but to chose the stable income. A good advice for this case instead is to not forget that your goal for that job is to save enough so you have a good buffer when switching for a better job.
Also choosing a higher level language as a starting one isn't a bad thing, but you should try to learn a lower level one once you feel comfortable enough with the higher one. Ideally I would say start with both.
All of these framework hating comments are idiotic. Frameworks are just abstractions. How about you go rewrite your networking layer too, just because "abstractions are bad".
There are correct tools for specific jobs. Reinventing the wheel is the hallmark of people who think they are smart, but love to waste time.
Beneath the generally decent advice to push yourself to be better at what you do and to not coddle yourself, is a whole steaming pile of unjustified elitism against front end development and the more ordinary, unglamorous programming that makes the world actually run. It reminds me of art snobs who look down on anything that is comprehensible to the regular person as being automatically lower in skill or merit.
Maybe it’s not because he is in these circles, but I’ve been around long enough to see the transformation of web dev from mostly HTML/CSS and design-where I can see why someone would not call that real programming-to something that in more recent years has called upon my experience as a backend .NET dev and computer science education. But there is still this lingering impression that front end work’s just “making websites look pretty” and Jonathan is perpetuating that stereotype.
He should try doing a fullstack app for something at scale, not just a small hobby site but performant and hosted on global scale, not to mention accessible. A lot of thought and skill goes into all those parts. It may not fly a rocket to Mars like at SpaceX (I realize he’s only using that company as an example) but it will serve potentially millions, including those with disabilities. To imply that isn’t honorable programming work is wrong.
This happens in every field, unfortunately.
Even by school degree representation.
A college programmer will be looked down by some bachelors and those by masters and those by phds. Regardless of their respective skills.
It's an unfortunate consequence of living in society.
This is cope
You’re taking copium because you’re not ambitious and that’s ok. You should always push yourself and do better but not judge yourself or be angry at yourself for being below par if everyday you’re trying. You may not land at the “elite level” but you can be happy you didn’t aim for less. But if you want to blame elitism or whatever for your own lack of trying then that’s cope.
The fact that the web is an overdesigned mess where even simple websites take hundreds of megabytes and seconds to load is pretty good evidence that most frontend devs have no idea what they're doing.
@@isodoubIet That is correct to some degree. I just wish these legendary hardcore developers will eventually come and after 30 years of struggling show us, how to make proper web.
So far I just hear of thrashing web developers while messing with hobby projects no one will ever use.
This man's ego is as big as the Empire State Building. Why is it so common among video game developers? I'll choose the web developer community any day.
game devs have more knowledge about math/physics/optics, etc, so they think they know more about 'real science'. It also requires one's taste on music/graphcis/game design. Also game community is pretty like movie industry, where you have rockstar game makers. Hence huge ego for game devs.
@@xenoyariin
i get the point, but how many game dev today actually do deal with the intricacies of 3D visualizations? i bet _some_ old-schoolers are, but many of them today just use unity (which is closed source) or unreal 3D (which is source available) and they don't understand in depth what they are doing... People actually writing 3D engines have always been a tiny minority. There is a big difference between being able to use a library and being able to write it. It's the same for all kind of fields, be it AI, cryptography, 3D, embedded hardware devs, etc.
i think the arrogance has to do with the design thing and the myth of the man in his cave writing games. Also the general population is quick to ditch a game and their developers, and quick to make them heroes. Having your baby "tested" online and given a "score" must feel horrible. Maybe arrogance is a defense mechanism to survive. The weak ones left to more inclusive industries.
But objectively, it's absurd to think that there is no complexity in anything outside of game dev. What about developing a browser, scaling a social app, cryptography-oriented applications, or dealing with all the different browser compatibilities... Even regular web dev isn't trivial, whoever says that just never did it professionally.
In any case nothing can excuse this level of obnoxiousness imho.
@@LeBossuMauvewhole lotta yapping
This is about opportunity costs basically.
He's a bit harsh on web devs though, much of that now is for a general business information plumbing and it's a good choice.
I am 27 and I am mostly not challenged at work. I still have the drive to try new stuff, so I also create toy projects to learn new languages, new architectures and technologies. Furthermore, I actually agree, and I have found out that none of my toy projects were without benefit. I believe that I am one of the more knowledgeable people in my team and that I am able to keep up with senior devs just because of this. Being challenge makes you better, what you have to avoid is stagnation.
"Go work at spaceX" is not a reality for most though. Not only because of where you live (non-USA) but because of entry point skill required
Entry points required to fetch coffees?
SpaceX was chosen to illustrate a point: Some companies are doing real engineering. If you're working in web development, the likelihood that you're doing genuine engineering is low, so try to find a company that is.
SpaceX doesn't have enough jobs for all webdevs to quit and go work at SpaceX, that wasn't the point. The point was go do something at a good company, where smart people are doing important things. There's a lot of those companies, SpaceX was just an example.
@@nanthilrodriguezso what everyone in web dev is under these supreme game devs ? Xd
I think it requires Green Card, right?
Jonathan Blows just has such an incredible talent to make any otherwise good advice sound like the most pretentious, unrealistic, snobbish shit ever said by anyone in the industry. Genuinely in awe at how he keeps accomplishing this year after year
"Just do it" is something I'm learning with 3D modeling video game building architecture (with interiors). Just not really guides on best practices, so many ways to possibly go about it and really it's come down to analysis paralysis and I just got up make my own discovery.
"Go be an intern at SpaceX" As if getting a job period isn't nearly impossible for a junior dev rn.
SpaceX has like 2 open developer positions and maybe like a handful of intern positions in a given year.
Its also a notoriously bad company to work for (crunch times, frequent overtime, management has big issues).
serving coffee?
Success is for losers I just need a fuckin job.
Paying the bills and having a roof over your head is very nice. I wonder if some of these people ever imagine other people live in realities different than theirs.
@@infrofl6557 Too many responsibilities, eh? No girl, no job, no money - no problem.
@@infrofl6557 Yeah, he's assuming that most people who watch programming streams on twitch aren't homeless.
What a completely unhinged assumption.
If you just need a job, work at a cash register. Problem solved. If you need a job where you earn good money, than
1. actually learn something, because easy stuff does not pay a lot
2. be a halfway decent guy
3. approach people without being a negative nancy
I literally got a few job offers in fields that I have virtually no idea how to do them, but they believe that I have the mindset to fit into the team and learn.
If I can do it, you can do that ten times insha Allah.
I hope you get the money you need.
lower men
This whole segment is the living embodiment of survivorship bias trying to sell you grindset philosophy.
> A guy who is successful says try harder
Hah, survivorship bias andy
> A guy who is not successful says try harder
Hah, what do I listen to you, you haven't even done anything
@@meandtheboyz4796 Yes, because you don't prove a rule by giving exemples but you disprove it by giving contre-exemples.
That's one of the most basic concept of logical reasoning ...
This is the right take
Nice, I've been a web programmer for over 10 years now, and it's always nice to have someone strait up say that everything I ever programmed was ultra simplistic, complete shit and totally worthless because I used the wrong programming language. So apparently I'm just an idiot who as gone brain-dead all because of javascript... wow. I should learn Assembly like that I could spit on everyone else because they are using such inferior programming languages.
Just learn something other than javashit mate...
His take is stupid though.
If you're that offended, you seriously need to escape the indoctrination and go try a non-web thing. You'll quickly understand how much more fun it is and why everyone that isn't a web developer shits on web dev so much. I'm sure you've done your best with the tools you were given, but the world is a lot bigger than your current perspective seems to suggest.
@@dandymcgeeyou dont need to try other stuff to understand why everyone who doesnt do web dev shits on webdev.
webdev has the spotlight, their pet niche doesnt get any attention.
You should learn Assembly
@@dandymcgee who is the one indoctrinated here? A web dev who says he likes what he's doing and also appreciates the stuff people in the other fields are doing or a C developer who shits on JS/Web devs as being inferiors at coding?
"World is a lot bigger" goes both ways, most non web devs have no clue about the nuance of it and shit on the tooling cause they have no idea why thing are the way they are.
what is it about Rust foundation that refers to 'seizing defeat from the clutches of victory' kinda behaviour? any rustaceans out here?
Also, if you always leave as soon as you're the smartest person in the room, you don't get to exercise leadership. Sometimes you need to have that experience where there are no training wheels, no daddy there to guide your bike. The problem though, is when you get into that position and succeed well enough, for some, you've "arrived" and never go anywhere else because you're "on top". As Ray Kroc said "when you're green, you grow. When you're ripe, you rot."
It's a stupid premise in the first place. If the rest would want to apply the same principle, then they wouldn't be in the same room with you either.
3:00 this concept of going to the hardest place possible to force yourself to the challenge.... Its presumes you are capable of that. I've met many many many MANY engineers in my time who on paper have worked out prestigious positions, have bunches of certifications, proport to have done impressive things and have advanced degrees... yet their ability to think critical seems to be dog water. Like if you challenge them to take the time to comprehend even a basic thing, they struggle. So this presumption that just being some where challenging will make you a good engineer, rings really hollow for me. I've met tons of terrible, incompetent -10x engineers who work in challenging environments where there is the opportunity to learn and build new intereting things. Some people... just don't have the capacity to work at a certain level, and that's okay, so long as we don't start going to that person if they can. So quitting your job and running off on a job search to find a challenging place to work because it will magically make you better.... I'm not so sure if that's wise. Ultimately what makes you better is putting your nose to the grind stone working on projects, reading documentation, and providing coherent solutions based on strong critical thinking. Being close to a complex problem does not whimsically grant you critical thinking abilities, you need build some foundational skills first.
The same guy that shipped a dead on arrival, closed source, memelanguage (“Jai”). Are all game devs this insufferable?
JB here is being way too prideful, he is saying web programming is a lowly form of programming that is superceded by almost anything else. Many web programmers out there are struggling to survive, and this guy compares it to a bunch of guys throwing cheetos around?
You must not debase an entire chunk of a profession like this, people put their blood and sweat and tears into their work and you must not degrade that. Not everybody has the luxury to go work on some magnificent masterpiece and become a "good programmer".
Ultimately if he decides he knows what a good programmer is, and he happens to be one, and he is willing to tell a bunch of people they suck, well maybe he isn't the right guy to listen to
We need those web programmers like we need the janitors of the world.
Not everyone can aspire to work tirelessly and get hired in one of the very limited spaces at big tech companies that offers lots of challenges.
Jonathan Blow is one of those wayyyyy too smart people for their own good. He has become disconnected from the reality of the average programmer and gives out advice like his audience was composed exclusively of 5.0 gpa kids.
There is nothing wrong working in whatever field you like.
Just challenge yourself to always get better at what you do.
That's it.
Nah. We don't need web programmers. Most of their output is an utter trash perpertuating the users misery. All of it either should not exist at all or better automated with LLMs, for even stochastic parrots are better than code monkeys.
If we tore the whole system down and rebuilt it we could do a much better job. So we don't really need those jobs. He definitely isn't saying go work at big tech companies. He insults microsoft, google, etc all the time. He's more saying find a job that isn't one of these jobs that shouldn't exist and needs to be torn down and replaced.
"He has become disconnected from the reality of the average programmer and gives out advice like his audience was composed exclusively of 5.0 gpa kids."
-
Its better to focus on people with potential than to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator.
I saw some of these many months ago. Since then, I picked web programming back up for a project and started a regular non-js project (a compiler without a tutorial), and turns out I don't actually know which is the hardest. I know the compiler takes longer and is technically more complex, but I don't know if I actually find it harder. It's a weird thing. To me, the compiler tests my logical thinking and analytical ability, but the website is taxing mentally in terms of scale and features. There are so many more little things I do and so many things I need to keep in mind. When working on the compiler, I know I'm doing A then B then C and A goes into B which goes into C, it's very straightforward.
Thank god i've stopped calling myself a "programmer" years ago, otherwise i'd be hurt by all this "do the top stuff" bs 😅
Like most of us, I don't do "programming", i solve business problems, sometimes without writing a line of code, sometimes with removing code, sometimes with talking to stakeholders/ users, and yeah, writing code is also a part of the job now and then. But i think about it as providing solutions to the business, helping a user, making business more effective, etc.
Otherwise, don't waste your time in IT, go build bridges, skyscrapers and rockets. If you want to be "great", "respected" or whatever, those are much better choices than moving bits around with any of the shitty tools we've got 🙂
This goes along with a statement i heard tooooo much in my career, "it works, why we need to change it!" maaaan i hate that statement of lazy devs. I get completely his statement, and myself have been in the situation where from 17 to 26 i have been learning from bad devs and on the side i was studying on my own every day to get better cause i knew that they were not so good, and thankfully i did that! now i'm 38 and i'm really confident in my job being a lead engineer, and is so important for my own mental health, cause there is a big difference in knowing what you are doing instead of hoping you will know what you are doing.
Of course John is a great developer, and I don't necessarily disagree with his takes most of the time. But I also find it funny how he's in a perpetual delusion of grandeur just because he knows computer graphics and made two very average games.
Indeed, he is smart, but not near as smart as he thinks (or speaks, at least). As for the athlete comparison, a runner, for example, would do way more things than just run, they would do strength and mobility training, do technique training, incline runs, decline runs, etc.
Does the "smart people are too busy to give advice" argument apply to JB's advice too?
10:33 "Birds of a feather flock together" is a law of the universe that would behoove everyone to take extremely seriously. I had to learn this lesson the hard way (a few times) throughout my life.
Imposter syndrome is not about being a bad programmer but thinking that everyone around you is a genius.
Work at Spacex is like saying "just get rich bro".
"Imposter syndrome is not about being a bad programmer but thinking that everyone around you is a genius."
the most true statement i've ever read, thank you
imposter's syndrome is literally about feeling that you are unqualified for your job.
Sometimes you feel that way... because it is also true.
So he said: "the inaccurate description of Imposter syndrome: that they don't know what they are doing in their job". I have felt imposter syndrome before. not because I don't know what I'm doing, I do know what I'm doing, but feeling like I shouldn't be there. Not being good enough. I turned down a job because I felt like that.
I keep in touch with them, because they felt that I would be a good match, and maybe in the future it would feel the same for me.
@@iWhacko that's a stupid reaction to that feeling. If someone is better than you, you should be eager and excited to work with them, not fearful that they would discover that you're not as smart.
This is literally how you get better at anything, by being around people you feel are so much better than you, that you'd be embarrassed to speak out of turn.
So go do that
@@nanthilrodriguez Nah it's not a feeling that they discover that I'm not as smart. I know I can definitely do the job, just that I decided to learn a proper background in the field first. I'm a programmer of 17 years and the job is for cyber security and pentesting. I just felt I needed to learn a lot more first to at least be comfortable enough with it.
When you mentioned Solomon, the first thing that came to mind was: "There's nothing new under the sun!" Loved the reference!
Interestingly, at the age of 44, I find myself diverging from the common notion that people become more conservative as they age; in fact, my views seem to be moving in the opposite direction. It's a reminder that individual experiences can vary significantly from general trends or expectations.
"conservative" is a very relative term.
I don't think he was talking politically.
you mean conservative as conserving resources and evaluating your options for survival or conservative as posting in twitter
I’m talking more about risking my all free time for creating a startup creating a product putting all money I have and all my free time I’m different now willing to risk I can see in every day choices I make. Yes I’m wiser but also williing to risk more then ever before.
@@nikolamar Cool
I'm fucking dying over here with react, rekit, typescript, fucking mongodb, goddamn this, godamn that. I started in January at 36 years old and I was looking like a good 26 years old. 4 months later my goddamn hair is falling out.
I'm building my career thinking solely on financial security. Even with that in mind, I still challenge myself whenever possible, since that gives me an edge at keeping my job and finding the next roles much more easily compared to someone who is just riding the wave.
This "take risks whenever possible" and "athlete performance goals" rhetoric of JBlow only works if you're keen on mixing work with your life goals, and committing 100% to that. It is not for everyone, and it will bring nothing but misery to anyone who thinks they will be less of a person if they do not succeed.
Work does not need to align with your personal goals/entertainment. You don't have to be the best. Heck, you don't even need to be good at work, if that's not your goal. I really dislike this "one size fits all" argument from people who at too high up their shoes to think there are other ways to live life outside of their chosen way.
That all being said, knowing how to navigate solutions and how to parse good from bad/irrelevant advice are extremely important skills, key to an outstanding professional career. When you ignore all the entitlement, he has some good advice.
The systems we build in react have hundreds of pages of interconnected business logic. I don't think that the technology defines how ambitious you are.
Yeah, honestly it's a bit annoying that most people think that webdev is just about blogs or simple web pages that just render some text/images. I agree that a lot of companies hire people who do just that and for some of these tasks they use too many abstractions, but there are also a ton of people who work on amazing and complex projects using web technologies
@@missgrimm7359 its not about being easy, its about being specialised in react, wordpress, Shopify etc.. instead of programming.
this how devs retires they invest into a niche tool get good at it and slowly became stuck when everyone move on.
A lot of it is very true but with housing how it is it's much riskier and more expensive to try to run your own business. JBlow had a bit more flexibility 15 years ago. Hell, I had more flexibility 10 years ago and over time working in a small company just couldn't pay rent anymore even though I found it 1000x more fulfilling. I do think sometimes about doing it again and just draining my savings trying to make it work, but that's the path where if it doesn't work all that's left is to kms. Maybe worth, I dunno, I'd certainly try if I got laid off since this company f'd up my hands so much I probably couldn't get another grindy job again.
Need to watch this again at the start of the day. Interesting stuff!
Alright, serious question here. I am 33, and have been in the car industry since I was 20. Within the last 6 months I have changed roles, and realized the current position isn't really gonna work long term for me. I started thinking about other industries, and got some ads for random coding/web dev boot camps etc. I started the long road of learning all of this as a total beginner with no experience about a month or two ago, and basically everyone was saying to start with either JS or Python, I chose JS as it seemed to be the most widely suggested based on my limited knowledge. I haven't signed up for any bootcamps, I don't have the time or money to really go back to a four year program with a wife, two kids, and a full time job. I am basically trying to do the whole thing from scratch on my own. Now this guy and others are saying screw JS, forget it, and learn something else. So genuinely curious, for someone just getting into this (or at least attempting to), where is the best 'Starting point'?
i ackshually really like javascript as a starting point. it gives you the ability to learn front end dev, back end dev, tools, etc etc
once you figure out what you like and you want to specialize, then do the research and try out different languages that make sense for that area
@@ThePrimeTimeagen That's a relief, I thought I just wasted like 3 weeks of learning JS. You're awesome. Thank you!
You can safely ignore JB, his advise is usually only relevant to himself. JS is fine, whatever language you chose that gets you productive and able to output code that works is good enough, anything after that is just optimising how you solve the problem - and you should avoid premature optimization . Just commit to a path, get to the point you can solve problems with code, then worry about what the best way to solve the problem is
When you just starting you don't learn programing language - you're learning how to program first. So don't worry about that. Also, jumping from one language to another is relatively simple if you know your programing (with some exceptions) so it shouldn't be a big problem to jump from javascript to something else when you have say 3-5 years of expiriense. So good luck in your journey!
Also, people usualy hate the language itself (javascript) not webdev in general, I'm not sure if this guy knows what his talking about.
@@vagabond887 3 weeks is nothing man
It's amazing. I'm now a principle engineer and I've always found myself learning only from peers and those below me than those above me. I've only ever been given stuff I've had complete ownership of. I would have loved to have had the guidance through my career others speak of but for some reason it never happened.
The abstraction thing is really true, sometime a html css and javascript is much better than all the fucking dependencies and frameworks for a website.
You struggled with robotics at the beginning of your carrier, meanwhile I struggled with VBA 😅
Johnathan just comes off as another self-absorbed person who generalizes his own viewpoints and opinions without any solid basis or evidence. He's also a great example of people who are pretty talented in one field, thinking they're far more gifted in other fields than they really are. He also believes in and espouses objectively silly and harmful beliefs.
Further, anyone who unironically follows Chaya Ralchik is an objectively bad person. There is no valid reason to be a bigot, and outmoded values based in silly fairy tales that only serve to perpetuate "traditional lifestyles" are directly harmful and do nothing good for society. All that matters in life is having as good a time as possible while helping others to do the same, loving often and a lot, and learning all you can about the universe and contributing to the compendium of human knowledge.
I think you want to reject his opinion because it conflicts with your own words of comfort that tell you, you can’t do any better. We can always do better, always.
Jonathan Blow just comes off like an annoying internet celebrity and his hyper fans come off as annoying redditors. His Social politics are fucked.
"Further, anyone who unironically follows Chaya Ralchik is an objectively bad person. There is no valid reason to be a bigot, "
Spot the contradiction
@@isodoubIet what's the contradiction? Chaya praised giving bomb threats. Most of her followers are antisocial borderline schitzo weirdos.
@@isodoubIet you can’t tolerate intolerance or it ends tolerance as a whole. Same thing with fascism and free speech. You can’t allow these things to be abused for harmful ends
For me, the hardest part about web development as a job is not just the opportunity cost of not being able to write code in the way that i actually believe is good and fun during working hours, but the fact that web technology is _so_ poorly designed and frustrating to work on that it actively damages my desire to program good and fun things when i get home from work.
Just go intern brah get it unpaid if you need to brah...
Pffff sure my guy.
What JB is also saying is that you won't be young forever, you won't have the same mental and physical capacity when you're older. So many people start programming when they are in their 40's. Good for them, but they would never reach what could have been their prime if they started younger.
"web programming is bad and will make you a bad programmer"
rewind 20 years
"programming C is bad and will make you a bad programmer"
rewind 20 years
"coding in Assembly is bad and will make you a bad ....mathematician?..."
"punching holes in cards is bad go solder some transitors to that PCB"
Nobody said this about C in 2003 when java had already existed for 20 years
Coding in assembly is fundamentally different from maths, computer scientists are worse at math than mathematicians, coding in general is barely computer science
They didn't use PCBs when they were using punch cards. also, 40 years ago, c had existed for 11 years already.
Another reason why we need to improve the level of skill and conscientiousness across the board: we can’t all get interesting and challenging work, the vast majority is inevitably grunt work. But we owe it to our fellow grunt workers a certain degree of professionalism so they can do their work, get paid and go home to their families without being completely burnt out by gratuitous complexity whether from broken abstractions, management practices or anything else.
but in my experience, when the work is grunt work, isn’t that an indicator that you should do it differently? like there are constraints, but if you take the time to understand the problem you’re solving, you can adjust the abstractions, right? then the “grunt work” can maybe have less boilerplate and take less time?
I love web dev and am happy to have it as my career. Idk what this guy is on about.
I have tried to avoid web programming as much as possible. I'm still a collage student and for a nation wide hackathon someone asked me join their team to work on a project. The problem was the project itself. I sat them down over a meeting and then explained better project idea (from a given list of problem to solve). And everyone agreed. I even told them from start to finish how we will solve the problem at hand. I worked on machine learning model needed for the inference and then gave the work of handling the web application to other members. I had to initially take care of the front-end, back-end, design, and the ML model, API integrations, multi-processing all at once. Among all these I didn't enjoy the front-end work which was basically HTML, CSS, and JS. I'm more comfortable with python so Machine Learning was up my ally. We ended up being in the top 5 teams nationwide for that but couldn't go for competing for No1 due to exams falling on the same day as the venue.
I think people miss the point of "work at SpaceX" because they ignore the second part "Bring people fucking coffee". Point there is not "Be qualified to work at SpaceX" it is "Surround yourself with people working on hard problems even if you have to be the person who is only qualified to bring coffee". SpaceX is just a stand in. You can find other places you can get in that is challenging.
You don't have to let your mediocre job force you into a mediocre career. I didn't NEED to learn WASM and rust, but I did. No one told me to rewrite one of our sites in 5 different js frameworks, in golang and in Rust using Dioxus and again using Leptos in order to weigh the benefits... but I did. I used my company education benefits to pay for a machine learning certification where I also had to learn python. I've put myself in a very good position despite my "Job" just being "web dev" on paper. Now I'm a principal engineer. I lead and mentor. I set standards and influence our direction and what technologies my team invests time into.
The thing is, I don't think his advice is actually necessary. The people who aren't ok with mediocrity, aren't going sit by and take it, and they certainly aren't waiting for some Jon Blow to tell them and give them permission to not be mediocre.
"I can't take risks, I'm too busy with work" -People sitting on TH-cam, watching hours of videos.
for the last bit, doing more of whatever task is always the way. you'll know when you have a genuine problem that needs others when you have a real question
Imagine being someone just starting to get productive in web development and then comes this guy with this advice. If you're this person just keep going until you land a job. Don't listen to him cause he lives in another reality.
Exactly!
I've been learning full-stack web dev for about a year, wrote my first html in september 2022. Now two weeks ago I've landed my first job as a nodejs backend dev in some mid-tier company - screw anyone who's gonna tell me I should be doing something else.
@@huge_letterswhats the tech stack if you dont mind sharing?
I must say, as a slightly above average intelligent person who was always miserable because he couldn't understand quite a lot of things he WANTED to understand, conversations with AI were super useful to kinda cure my bitterness of not understanding back when I was in school. I finally found the time at school to be worthwhile. It always seems to help if I open myself up and if I ask questions instead of Rambling.
It's just a fucking job.
Some days, especially after you pass 30 and provided you don't have some kind of hyper autistic brain that needs insane stimulation, you actually don't want to be challenged constantly. Sometimes sure, but not all the time. JavaScript is perfect for most people, since it's straight forward and easy to debug.
When the bridge collapsed, killing dozens but on and below the bridge, "it's just a job" said the engineer.
JavaScript developers are not responsible for people's lives, calm down lmao
@@alpaca_growing_kit if you actually think that, you're more of an imposter than you think you are.
you think your company uses javascript so you can have a job? Or you think they're paying you to build some website or application upon which your business hopes to make some kind of profit or provie some service that is going to make the business money? So you're saying that its totally ok to do a terrible job because its just a job and nobody's life is effected? So then the business stagnates and fails to grow, gets outpaced by competition because the competition is young and isn't bogged down by the terrible decisions you all slopped together, and now teams are getting laid off and whole features getting removed because people like you made terrible decisions leading up to this point...
So the business is flailing, hemorrhaging customers, all because "javascript devs are not responsible for people's lives". Go home. Nobody wants you here.
@@alpaca_growing_kit there are many lifetimes wasted on the web though.
I learned C as a first language, that made me learn about the actual computer. Now when im older, i dont think i would learn at the same speed and depth as i did when i was 12-20 years.
We don't need everyone to be launching rockets. We just need good working websites/apps. I rely on apps and websites daily for using public transport, request a visum, pay my taxes, job searching, and altogether too much entertainment. So it's better to work on raising the level of webdev, rather than have all the ambitious webdevs switch to embedded or game-engine-dev.
To the dude's henchman-maxing in the chat @ the Seattle joke, nobody lives in your small broke podunk town that is paid to grow food inefficiently because letting you starve in the cold is immoral, hence, the whole poverty issue.
The day I can no longer find work as a mediocre software engineer, is the day I find something else to do. I’m only in it for the money, and have passions and interests outside of programming that fulfill me and make me 100 times happier.
My only hobby is game development, which is why an easy job is a perfect fit. I go be mediocre for 3 hours a day, get paid, then sit on my ass doing low level C and OpenGL programming for 10 hours. Mediocrity (at your day job) for the win
yea JB comes off as a guy who has nothing to his identity other than work.
and you are probably 10 times happier than JB
I've not seen talks about creativity. If you lack creativity, it doesn't matter the programming language. You're not going to challenge yourself and, therefore, hinder your learning.
Some of Blows advice is cool but then i remember that he’s been working on a language for 10 years that will be dead on arrival
hi prime, this os probably the best video u ever reacted to, thanks for this.
Welcome to the age of narcissism. Where everyone thinks they're the exception to the rule.
10:46, whoever said, "that's not true," if they're referring to becoming like the people you spend time with, is a massive self-report. Probably the exact type of person who's a total vacuum vampire of a friend. Everyone who has something to give to their friends knows this feeling, and anyone who gives nothing is lost and thinks this sentiment is not true.