Is there any joy left in this industry?

[David Rosenstrauch]

On 10/27/2010 10:40 PM, Mark Woodward wrote:
> Here's my rant.
>
> I've been a software developer for over 25 years. When I started, it was
> a cool profession. We were creative and we had options. We got paid well
> and we did amazing things.
>
> 25 years later.....
>
>
> The "cloud echo chamber" makes it impossible to do anything that make
> sense.
>
> The "agile" development process is nothing more than code for
> micro-management.
>
> Are there any good places to work? Are there any really interesting
> projects to work on? If so, how does one find them?

Can't say I share this dismal view of the industry.  Yes, the industry 
has changed, but as long as you keep changing along with it there's 
interesting places to work at and interesting technology to work with.

Much of what was "the software industry" has morphed and changed.  There 
is still some "for-profit consumer software" being written (e.g., MS 
Office), but not much.  Much of that has either become open source 
software (e.g., Firefox), or has become web-based (i.e., Saas).

Similarly there is still some "enterprise software" being written, but 
far less of it (since it's hard to sell expensive software these days), 
and again much of that has also become web-based/SaaS.

My personal opinion is that much of the exciting, interesting work these 
days is either at Internet/startup companies (e.g., working with 
large-scale data), or in mobile (e.g., iPhone) - or a combination of the 
two.

I've personally gotten involved in the former (in the form of Apache 
Hadoop / Map-reduce), and I'm finding it exciting and interesting, as 
well as having lots of opportunity.  Hadoop is such a hot skill right 
now that at the startup I work for we can't find many good developers 
who have experience with it - and I get contacted several times a week 
by recruiters looking to poach me because I've worked with it.

So from where I sit there's joy left in the industry.  I guess the way I 
see it is that you just have to be in the right parts of the industry - 
and working with the right technologies - to be feeling it.

HTH,

DR