Why is the bar so fucking low in this field?

The constant push for “everyone can code!” and the trend of website builders and “no code” environments.

All of this serves to lower the bar of entry, the average skill and competence levels, and of course the average compensation across the entire field. Congratulations, you’re being turned into a commodity. Do not resist. Big Brother FAANG knows best.

Also, nontechnical managers only care if the committed code fulfills or exceeds the sales team’s requirements, not if the code is elegant and maintainable or performant. They don’t care about these, and will always prefer quick, dirty hacks over slower but objectively better patches. They want instant gratification; any future problems this creates are the devs’ problems, not theirs — and any devs who complain too much can be replaced with devs who complain less.

Everything is about making management look good. The sales pitch is always second, and keeping existing clients happy is a distant third. Keeping the devs happy isn’t even on their radar.

Java

@Root Where I stand, people aren't even making stuff that works. I'm working with two other teams and they hand us shit that is utterly broken.

Schools and code camps churning out mediocre devs, companies desperately needing bodies to punch keys, mistaking years of experience for actual ability, good devs getting burnt out and doing the bare minimum

It's right between foo and baz

believe it or not, it's hard to learn properly, and they need more devs than they're able to produce. also they're too preoccupied with deadlines to care about quality

It's about supply and demand I think. I know people that have gotten a job after 4 weeks of training without any further supervision, simply because there aren't enough people.

It never ceases to amaze me when people comment on the bar being low because it took me a good year to get hired after I quit my last gig (and it wasn’t like I wasn’t trying!). 😅

Because you only need a computer to start coding, even a 300 bucks laptop will serve. Everyone can give it a shot.

So, it may give the wrong impression that writing a small application and putting it in your phone is just the same as creating and maintaining a large codebase.

@ars1 you are soo right, i use to ask myself why people in my country mostly do web development, not many people in AI , crypto and the like, I have come to realize it's because we all underestimate the hardware required to enter into new tech painlessly and most of us cant afford it.

@CaffeinatedCM ‘s and @Root ‘s answers are all this question needs

@Root

Non-tech manager: "Are the tests passing?"

Dev: "No but I need to do some investigation to unders..."

Manager: "Make it pass, high management will review test results and we need good news."

Dev: "Well I can't say if we have good news until..."

Manager: "Just make it pass."

Dev: *sigh* Well let me just say it will bite us back in the ass.

@EpicofGilgamesh I just learned java coming from embedded C, C++ and Python and holy shit most of the code base I have to work with is godawful.

Not sure if it's because of java or because the devs are horrible.

@PepeTheFrog it has always been java, the language does not lend itself well to best practices at all, combine that with stack overflow copy-pasters and ...

@PepeTheFrog From my experience, devs who work in high level languages tend to write significantly worse code.

@Root i think it's a mentality thing, I write shitty code when I use vscode because it's easy to navigate through, whenever I use vim, I find out my code is well structured, because i know it will hell going back and forth through files

I think Java suffers from the colleges pumping meh devs out problem more than most languages since that's primarily what's taught in them

@AmyShackles it depends a great deal of where you live. my hometown is not good for devs, but the city i currently live in is desperate for new hires

@darksideofyay y'all looking for remote hires, my country ain't that great right now (third world and all)

@Root your second post paints the background of why the phenomenon on your first post is happening. So much shitty code slung, people try to solve it with no code environments, but it’s not a silver bullet, they code lots of silly widgets to make it work, companies need silly widget maintainers, pay decent for them, don’t need extensive coding skills, demand created, colleges see folks with shitty widget maintainer skills are getting jobs, clearly no problems in the degree program.

@jeeper some college grads, after cheating their way through CS with grade inflations and freeloading projects with smart students: sweet! Time to apply to Nintendo and make big bux!