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Comment by delta_p_delta_x | Hacker News Reader

> WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? What other professions expect you do more work after work as a hobby and show it? Do bus drivers film themselves driving busses after work as a hobby? Do surgeons cut up people in their spare time as a hobby?

I think programming has more commonality with other creative, 'soft' jobs like graphic design (which itself can involve programming), architecture, media, marketing, etc than meets the eye.

Many of these roles require that applicants have some sort of portfolio that can be perused by the interviewer freely. I feel co-opting that word—'portfolio'—would do us software developers a big favour instead of trivialising outside-of-work programming as 'side projects' or 'hobbies'.

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>architecture, media, marketing, etc than meets the eye.

I disagree. Programing is more engineering than art. Art doesn't have source code. You can show the final painting and I can show the final product I worked on but not the source code I wrote as that belongs to my employer. Also, most art like paintings are not done by large teams, so you can show what you did in that painting but in a large SW projects, I can't show what exactly form the final product I did and what else was done by my team.

Most of my valuable work in programing is engineering, especially fixing bugs, not creating portfolios to show off. I have nothing publicly to show off, mostly because firstly, it's private to my former employers, and secondly because code gets outdated and replaced fast, most of what I worte in the past probably doesn't run today anymore, but have made my employers happy and wealthy.

I said neither 'art' nor 'paintings' which you have fixated on for some reason. I mentioned creative endeavours that are generally team-based but all generate some sort of portfolio. Whether that portfolio is from work or done in one's personal time, it is still a portfolio of past work.

Plus, software engineering is absolutely a creative endeavour. And I daresay normal 'engineering' (civil, mechanical, aero, etc) is a creative endeavour too; it's just a matter of egos and that seem to separate STEM versus non-STEM. There are portfolios for everything. I don't understand the desire for software engineers to just waltz into an interview, claim to have done X, Y, Z, with no proof, and secure a job.

The proof part is interesting. Civil is easy to prove because of its artifacts. Someone from Netflix or Meta layoffs, what proof do any of them have? Do some people defensively maintain background proof other than paycheck stubs?

Sounds like you just treat programming more like engineering than art. Some art does have source code, there is plenty of room for creative exploration with code.

>there is plenty of room for creative exploration with code.

That also pays the bills? That's not my experience. That's what hobbies are for. Jobs are for paying bills. Paying bills with hobbies an art are a luxury for privileged.

> Art doesn't have source code.

Drawn art absolutely does have something like it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/learntodraw/comments/nibjjn/any_adv...

It could be considered similar to scaffolding or boilerplate in code, except usually none of this is visible in the end product, while the code boilerplate is always there. These lines are drawn light and completely covered up by the end result - sometimes even manually erased depending on the medium.

I got to see where architects build bridges over weekends as an hobby.

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