Buddy... The whole point of the post is that he wants his students to question whether "succeeding in this market" is really the right choice.

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2ndorderthought 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's really not though.

The point is to decide what success is for yourself. Learn everything you can about the thing you might decide to automate. But think before you automate and how you do so because it could cause more harm then good.

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dijksterhuis 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i was writing a bit of a lengthy reply, but yeah this is the whole point really.

making that money, getting that job title, being at that company, working on that project -- are these success?

or is success simply doing the best job possible when writing code?

	▲	beej71 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The irony is that writing the best code possible is now a recipe for unemployment.

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lukan 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The right choice is rather to strive for perfect - and be unemployed?

To me it was actually not clear what his point was.

"Above all, be motivated by love instead of fear."

Sounds great. But not that practical.

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fooqux 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Why isn't it practical? In my life, I've encountered many SWEs that have changed careers. I've met them in national parks working as rangers. In real estate, grocery store butchers, and yak ranchers. Yet I've never once encountered a SWE that was once doing something non-technical and decided to switch.

Purely anecdotal, I know. But still, I prefer to think that all those people discovered this practical advice and are far happier for it. I've never met one that regretted their decision.

	▲	lukan 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, I would consider becoming a park ranger as well, but as a european, I also did not had to go deep in dept, to become a SWE. And a professor should take that into account and give practical advice. In the real world, solving haskell challenes (of which the prof is fan of) is unfortunately not that useful. People have real needs for working software to solve their real pain points. Not to worship code quality. Some projects need obviously better code quality (airplanes, medical equipment..) - but not all of them. And if you want to have sacred code when coding a crude throw away app .. you won't get enough money for that. And positions for academics are limited.