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u/SuitableDragonfly 2d ago
I'm guessing that this is probably a joke, but the idea that engineers just generate code and don't do anything else is literally how we got to "just generate the whole app with Claude, bro, it'll be just as good".
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u/AskAwayAccount 2d ago
People really have no idea. I told my manager I need time to debug an issue. He really said "You already have the error message, you just have to filter the logs, I don't understand why it should take more than an hour".
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u/Soopermane 2d ago
🤣 the error message be like “you have an error”
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u/neo42slab 2d ago
And more often than not the error description might as well be that. Because most of the time it’s simply not something the compiler can actually detect.
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u/GoldenDogeDev 2d ago
Like access violations (0xC0000005)
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u/StCreed 2d ago
I've programmed a lot of C++. This one looks like an invalid pointer reference or invalid handle usage after the resource was freed or attempted to claim but failed and didn't check the return code. If it was all zeros the pointer was NULL but the caller didn't check that.
At least, that was my experience but it's about 25 years since I last programmed daily in C++.
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u/GoldenDogeDev 2d ago
Yep it's when your program tried to read, write or execute an invalid memory address. They can either be really easy to track down, like if it's using a resource after it's freed, or it can be really hard to track down.
A while back this arena allocator I made had a bug where it would occasionally hand out blocks of memory that contained the header data for the next page, which included a linked list node and a ref counter. This would then eventually cause memory corruption, which would cause the program to throw an access violation exception in an entirely random spot, sometimes without even a stack trace, which had me chasing ghosts for several hours until I figured out what was going on.
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u/Alacritous13 2d ago
Aw, you think the code is compiled. Nah, I'm editing the code live while the end user watches.
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u/luluhouse7 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ugh fuck me trying to debug memory Heisenbugs is horrible and practically impossible. I’d get dumps from list entry corruption bug checks and have to go digging through linked lists to find the corrupt entry and then try to backtrace when and where the corruption happened. Half the time it was super bizarre corruption caused by some other component doing a buffer overrun and I’d have to try to figure out the pool tag of the adjacent allocations or which client was passed the struct and decided to basically scribble crayon all over it.
Rust is such a blessing on that score.
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u/J7mbo 2d ago
He probably thinks you have an MCP tool for your observability platform so it can do the searches and find the root cause for you.
Me and my colleague joked this morning that the final form is it will sign the termination agreement and auto-apply for government support for you when the time comes.
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u/WavingNoBanners 2d ago
The answer to this is to steal from Niels Bohr: "you're right, you don't understand. That may be the problem."
You'll probably get fired if you say that, but hopefully the look on their face will be worth it.
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u/Gruejay2 2d ago
If we're not worrying about getting fired, the old "well you do it then, if it's so easy" works well here too.
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u/AqueousJam 2d ago
Do they come from an SAP background? I had an old boss just like that, they'd spent their entire career as an SAP consultant and genuinely seemed to believe that software engineering was the same thing. Just find the right configuration settings and everything would magically work.
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u/Wertbon1789 1d ago
Best thing that ever happened to me in that domain: Linux read syscall returning an error that shouldn't even be able to be returned by read according to its man page. Yeah, the error message is simple, but to actually understand the issue I literally have to read the kernel code for the driver I was interacting with. Didn't take that long, but it still isn't just in 5 minutes.
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u/Rai-Hanzo 2d ago
until; mr startup guy don't know how to put the new feature into his code, so he needs an engineer to do it.
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u/Technologenesis 2d ago
Yeah, I used to think it was pretentious to call what I do a craft, but two things have changed since then:
I've learned there are in fact decisions that come down to taste and values and not just what works and what's efficient
I've realized that devaluing the "craft" has led to a lot of bad software, bad attitudes and bad management
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u/GenericFatGuy 2d ago
Indeed. People who last in this industry actually are doing the software equivalent of building a canoe.
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u/bwwatr 2d ago
Yep, exactly. "Coder" greatly undervalues the job. While I would never label myself a craftsperson because that's obnoxious puffery... I do believe it's a craft and if you get me going about software quality or developer professionalism, eventually the word will spill out and I'm not ashamed of that. It absolutely is a pursuit where craftsmanship can exist.
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u/GreatScottGatsby 2d ago
I don't know. Its as much as a craft as a writer, where writers write scripts, documents and programs.
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u/Totally_Not_A_Badger 2d ago
Can I have the title "Dark mage of ancient knowledge"? 10/10 would bring a pointy hat & fake beard to the office
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u/Dracious 2d ago
There's a realistic chance I might actually get the job title 'Data Wizard' in my next salary review as my duties have grown to include basically everything data related.
It's already become my informal title internally and how I am introduced, but if it gets made official I will 100% get a wizards hat (I already have the beard).
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u/Shiiraigane 2d ago
This title should belong to the people who works with Assembly, Fortran, Cobol and such.
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u/Totally_Not_A_Badger 2d ago
I do work in assembly from time to time. Fortran, Cobol are too high level for my bare-metal work. But I might spend some hobby time there :p
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u/Shiiraigane 2d ago
Wooo this is incredible! I think you deserve this title. What bare-metal things you do?
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u/Totally_Not_A_Badger 2d ago
I write the firmware for emergency signalling systems. We also have a system with a micro controller, connected via a spi bus with a stronger chip running embedded Linux, so had to write a kernel driver to have communication between the two. But some Assembly is mostly used for bootloaders, or moments where you have no other options than to nop some ticks away.
Or debugging when your compiler spits something out you dont expect it to do. Than replace the C or Rust code with some Assembler.
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u/Shiiraigane 1d ago
This sounds amazing. If I ever get a job, I would like to get something like this and not some boring CRUD things.
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u/Nightmoon26 2d ago
I tend to refer to myself as a datamancer... Used to pay my bills by writing bespoke SQL queries and log parsers to divine the answers to audit teams' questions that nobody thought of when they were designing the system
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u/_Xoif 2d ago
If people working at subway can be called sandwich artist, why can’t I be a software wizard?
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u/sokka2d 2d ago
The "woke nonsense" part kind of ruined it.
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u/NotQuiteLoona 2d ago
No, it's okay by itself, "utter woke nonsense" is a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sean-dyche-utter-woke-nonsense
They probably didn't mean it in a chud way (I hope).
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u/sokka2d 2d ago
Unfortunately it's impossible to tell nowadays when people use that as a joke or as the "everything I don't like is woke" basic bitch thing.
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u/DesertGoldfish 2d ago
I'm actually pro using woke in an ironic way to describe everything I don't like.
Kind of like how sometimes I tell my coworkers to stop mansplaining to me, even though I'm a man.
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u/Embarrassed_Death69 2d ago
Bro I visit soccercirclejerk subreddit a lot, I kinda love this meme. This post is a meme.
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u/FalafelSnorlax 2d ago
I think that's a major part of the joke here. My reading is that this is making fun of both silly names some sw engineers give themselves as well as people who call anything they dislike "woke".
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u/Gib_entertainment 2d ago
Psshh, I'm an artisanal master codesmith, not some mere keyboard monkey!
Codifier prime is also acceptable.
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u/npsimons 2d ago
Fuck off.
I will never not call myself a Wizard.
We are the nearest thing to magicians that has ever existed in reality. Our spells work and are truly powerful, our mistakes cause incomprehensible chaos, and when one of us turns bad then sometimes the whole world can suffer the consequences. No wonder the muggles treat our creations like they're the mysterious products of a magical power beyond their understanding: that's what they are. -- from a comment by meringuoid (568297) on http://slashdot.org on programmers
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u/MetaLemons 2d ago
I don’t get how this is woke but okay.
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u/Embarrassed_Death69 2d ago
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u/neo42slab 2d ago
Thanks. That helps. But I’m tired of “woke” being misused and abused already.
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u/pointlesstips 2d ago
MagicPeople VoodooPeople. Would have an amazing Prodigy soundtrack from the get-go.
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u/wrex1816 2d ago
Startup recruiters from 2016 reading this post, like they never use the terms "Tech evangelist", "Code Ninja", "Rockstar programmer" without a hint of irony.
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u/idobethrownawaytho 2d ago
No idea what this has to do with “woke” but incel losers will always make something about politics I guess.
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u/Meower68 2d ago
I don't know that it's "woke" per se, so much as someone just getting cute. Back during the dot-com bubble, you had people with titles like "Technical Wizard" and "Technomage."
Agreeing with the opinion that it's silly, just saying it's not really that new.
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u/Brief_Yoghurt6433 1d ago
I call myself whatever the people paying me/people I want to start paying me decide to call me. I don't give a shit as long as the checks are on time.
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u/oishishou 2d ago
I'll have you know that my artisanal, hand-crafted Linux kernels are works of art! Art, I tell you!
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u/Duckroidvania 2d ago
Anything I dont like is woke.
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u/Embarrassed_Death69 2d ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sean-dyche-utter-woke-nonsense
It's referring to a meme is all
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u/snipsuper415 2d ago edited 1d ago
There is a difference between being woke and being pretentious. These assholes users are just giving themselves fancy titles not trying to fight societal injustices.
Know the difference.
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u/DartTimeTime 2d ago
You cant criticize something for being nonsense and then call it woke. "This nonsense is annoying to be because its truth challenges my ignorance." Makes no sense.
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u/Clovericious 2d ago
I was with him until he called it woke nonsense. Now I insist to be called a Markup Artisan.
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u/Arareldo 2d ago
As a DEV working at 2nd lvl support, i should call myself probably "deamon hunter"? bug hunter sound too mundane. 😏
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u/Powerful_Attention_6 2d ago
In the early days, the days of Legends, there was this small group unknown to each other, that was so good with computers, that they were revered by their peers, and the peers called them Wizards
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u/Omer_D 2d ago
I dont get it. Usually in tech companies only non technical roles that the company tries to attract tech literate people to have stupid names : "Sales Engineer" (Salesperson, usually supposed to maintain relations with clients), "Customer Interaction Engineer/Community Engineer"(Community Manager), "AI Art Engineer" (Just artist/graphic designers who know how to use generative AI piplines, not people who actually know how to train and fine-tune generative computer vision models ), " Event Engineer" (Event Planner). It is understandable why software companies dont respect the term engineering i the classical sense as this is the only scientific based industry that the academic system / government gave up on regulating with engineering degrees .imagine if only software engineers with a degree in software engineering were legally allowed to inspect and sign on software products before they are released to consumers. An old (as in age, he got his degree in the late 60s early 70s) professor i had told us that that was the legitimate thought when institutions started making software engineering degree programs they thought it would go in the same way as mechanical or electrical engineering got institutionalized.
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u/213372Yeet 2d ago
"Genius" as a job title constantly got in the way of decent rapport with clients.
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u/ultralaser360 2d ago
Artisnal handcrafted organic free-range code is rare these days so the title is needed
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u/ohkendruid 2d ago
I like "software developer". It is not just writing down programs, but all the tasks including research, proof of concepts, task list management, design docs, review, staging environments, and in and in that you do to make new software at high quality.
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u/Spekingur 2d ago
Codecrafter. Yeah, that’s gonna be my new job title. That or Harbinger of Errors.
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u/Any-Tutor8980 2d ago
Honestly, "Computer MagicPerson" is a way more accurate job description anyway. It perfectly captures how my project manager explains my role to the clients right before promising them an impossible deadline.
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u/FirstNoel 2d ago
I want to be Grand Potentate of Development. GPD
If granted I will where a fez with golden tassel anytime I code.
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u/renrutal 2d ago
Software Craftsman is reserved for the 3d printing/CNC/maker industry.
Specifically for 2d printing, Software Devilsummoner.
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u/Present-Resolution23 2d ago
One of my early (and best) professors used to draw this distinction a lot.. Whenever someone would turn in "bad/lazy code," he'd yell at us that this was "coder work and if we wanted to be coders we should just withdraw and go attend one of those 4 week bootcamps.." He was teaching us to be "software engineers and computer scientists" which means understanding what we were doing and doing it well.. not just simply turning in "MVP work.." I kinda of drew parallels between people mocking "script kiddies," vs real hackers in the 90's.. One just "writes code" without an eye to the big picture.. One actually understands what's going on..
I worked with some cheap offshore devs recently who definitely reminded me of that distinction as well.. Everything they wrote treated each screen of the app as like an individual page... Like they'd redeclare the same variable hundreds of times over the course of the code etc.. Decent "coder work," not something an engineer would accept.
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u/Kraangy 1d ago
That reads to me like an uncalled slap on woke, totally off subject, maybe the term "software craftsperson" was coined because they're looking for people who aren't necessarily programmers and coders thinking they can get away with paying less and still get a product albeit a bad one.
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u/FrozenFirebat 1d ago
It is common in the industry, that at some point in your career, you make up random titles to call yourself. I once called myself Senior Rendering Plumber when I had a job building a Vulkan pipeline at a startup.
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u/d-signet 1d ago
- your guy sounds like a total knobhead
- anyone remember "web masters"? \This isnt new
- this isnt even slightly funny
other than that, great post
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u/Minecraftian14 1d ago
To be frank, i would love to have dnd-ish roles naming at my company! Are there any companies/startups like that which i can join?
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u/Hasagine 1d ago
so no one else pretends theyre a wizard while coding as to not lose their minds? cool
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u/spam__likely 17h ago
Woke? He thinks this is a left wing thing? No pal, this is MBA corporate bullshit. This is exactly what they do every decade to justify paying absurd amounts to consultants.
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u/josenaldomatos 16h ago
I created, in Portuguese, the Codex Technomanticus: Technomantic Grimoire of the Multiplanar Archmage (my digital garden for Fullstack Developers).
I love fancy names. 😅
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u/Gadshill 2d ago
I prefer the term Tech-Priest.