Me over here who just liked problem solving and making things.
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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Too many people like this have ruined the field.
If we hadn’t made this all 100% about the money the entire world would be running on the best possible software.
An example I’ll give is ghostty, where 1 guy who got rich enough to cash out gets to spend his time making insanely good software, using a somewhat risky pre 1.0 language that would never get approved by corporate/investors, just because he wants to and enjoys it. And he openly chastises people telling him to enshittify or turn it into a business, because he doesn’t need to.
The entire Web 2.0 was built on the exact same thing with pylons, Django, rails, flask, etc. being born out of people who just wanted to code.
If I had 5-10x more wealth so that I never had to worry about money, this is what I’d be doing too.
Actually, what I’d be doing is attending university classes every day and writing software and doing analysis on the side.
Sir, I need money for food.
Yeah I know. That’s why I work too.
I still think this field has been wrecked with greed and enshittification.
I think that should be directed towards the top, not people working for a living.
Devs who are devs for no other reason than money and who don’t give a shit about the quality of their work are a problem.
ghostty is recently a nonprofit, I didn’t know the creator’s backstory! https://linuxiac.com/ghostty-terminal-emulator-transitions-to-non-profit-status/
Good luck finding a job at all and especially if you're in it only for the money
I wish I could say the same. I didn't get into programming for the money, I got into it because it was the only thing I was any good at and generally wouldn't discriminate against me because of my disability.
Tech workers have historically been respected and well-paid, without unions. The power of tech workers did not come from solidarity, but from scarcity, Doctorow said. The minute bosses ordered tech workers to enshittify the product they were loyally working on, perhaps missing various important social and family events to ship it on time, those workers could say no—perhaps in a much more coarse way. Tech workers could simply walk across the street ""and have a new job by the end of the day"" if the boss persisted.
So labor held off enshittification after competition, regulation, and interoperability were all systematically undermined and did so for quite some time—until the mass tech layoffs. There have been half a million tech workers laid off since 2023, more are announced regularly, sometimes in conjunction with raises for executive salaries and bonuses. Now, workers cannot turn their bosses down because there are ten others out there just waiting to take their job.
Because I thought computers would be less unpleasant to deal with than people.
Turns out they can be just as stupid, and I didn't even get out of having to work with people either.
My intro to computer science professors said the problem with computer (sans the now rare hardware bug not worked around by the OS and lower layers) is that a computer will do exactly what you tell it to... And that's where most bugs come from. I've found computers can do very silly things over the years due to operator error 🤕
For most software engineering jobs it's actually more people work than computer work.
Most of the time you can kick a computer in anger without consequences and that's enough for me. Can't do it with my colleagues without at minimum having to talk with HR. And sometimes it even solves the issue (maybe helps with humans too, but can't legally try it)
In the grand scheme of society, it’s kinda bonkers how there was such a short window to go to learn something like Web Development and get a job before it started being replaced. Basically a job that existed for ~30 years and won’t be around much longer.
(Yes I know AI is dumb, but it doesn’t matter if C-Suite execs think it can do it, they’ll replace jobs with AI)
Even without AI, Web Development was destined to be a short lived industry.
Sure, it will be around in some form, but a lot of that space has been taken over by mobile app development. Another portion of the market has been taken over by social media (your business doesn't need a website anymore; it needs an Instagram/twitter/etc). And yet another portion has been taken over by products like Wix that allow non-experts to make good enough websites themselves (even without AI).
Really, thinking of "web dev" as a profession is a category error. You are a graphical designer and programmer that was working in the web industry. There are plenty of other industries that hire your profession.
You aren’t wrong, but I think web apps would have been more prevalent because you could develop for a single platform (browser) and it would work on most any device that has a browser.
If companies, like Apple didn’t block Progressive Web Apps in order to force App Store usage, I’d disagree, but we just don’t live in that world.
I, too, chose the career where you get paid to google your own problems all day.
To do? Because there's a chance I can do that without meds. To study? Because that's kinda needed.
Yes and no, I don't want to deal with people too much. But I'm in help desk so it's only half true
I thought it was interesting. Then I dropped out because programming was more fulfilling and I didn't need to become a CS major to be a programmer.
Whoooooops!