A developer's view of the development profession

What's that? What do you mean "I like thorny subjects"? Well, no ... it's just that I'm tired of reading anything ...
Otherwise, how are you? Do you "coo" (yes, from the verb "coo"...) quietly during your vacations? Oh, no vacation? Well, so much the worse?
Well, back to the point (big, big expression...), this article came to me from the realization that my job is often misunderstood and often I see things ... it's complicated.

So why am I taking the liberty of writing about it?

Well, to put things in context, I didn't start with computers during my studies. On the site's home page, you can see that I had my first keyboard in my hands when I was 6 years old, then I started playing with Linux and Open Source at the age of 12 (ah the "Kimsufi" servers at OVH, that's where I spent my pocket money when I was a teenager ... ?).
By the way, on the same home page (yes, I'm linking twice) there are links to the Github repositories of projects I wrote as a teenager.
So geekery in general has been my life since I was very young, sleepless nights trying to get a cheap p***** webcam working on Linux, ça va j'ai connu (ah, I see that others at the back of the room see what I'm talking about) hence the fact that I'm taking the liberty of writing an article on the subject.

There's no such thing as a three-legged sheep...

Here's the first point we need to talk about, I don't listen to CDIs, but I do see them pass by and obviously they're proposed to me. When I read things like "Looking for a front-end / full-stack developer with 10 years' experience on React" ... well, now we're going to start getting angry. writing nonsense is quite another! The first release of ReactJS dates back to May 29, 2013, so HOW can a dev have 10 years' experience on a technology that was first put in the hands of devs 8 years ago? Seriously, is there ANYTHING that shocks you here? What's the problem? Some recruiters have NO idea what they're talking about, no idea what changes between such and such a stack, they're told "we need a React developer" so they look for a React developer.
Let me give you a piece of advice: with this kind of announcement, you're going to scare off the good people, because a good developer will see that this kind of phrase is nonsense! They'll run away from such offers.

So, are you ready for a new challenge?

Another sentence I've read in the CDIs that are going by... so out of curiosity I read the ad, the challenge of what? Maintaining an uninteresting tech stack? Disgusting code all over the place with hardware from m**** (that's why, when I was on a permanent contract, I paid myself a lot of money).tais en CDI je me payais moi-même mon matériel, c'était une condition, l'écran qui défonce les yeux, merci, mais non merci.)
I know a few of them, the oldest dating back to my teenage years.I even write to him from time to time, "So, what are you working on at the moment?"I always get amusing replies?

How fast can you do that?

Well, that's another trick ... we can't give clear, precise answers to this question in 80% of cases ... Why? For several reasons:

• The last time we worked on a similar project, if it was more than two years ago, things changed.
• Some specific requests will be the first time we've done them ... can you give clear deadlines on something you've never done yourself?
• I refer you to the "je suis un dev" article which explains the subject very well, and the title of the article "Ton estimation du temps est une blague" says it all.

Finally, I'd like to give you a concrete example of what I'm talking about. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on "how to cleanly modify a Symfony slug".
In fact, there's a method based on "Event Listener" and a single basic table which, for larger projects, is more suitable. The problem is that this method requires a much higher level of Symfony expertise.

No, we don't do data entry...

Copying and pasting data... well no, we don't do that, it doesn't make sense, a dev will take the data, understand it and write code that will write the data for him... it's a well-known dev disease?

So, what's a developer?

What I'm going to write here remains my opinion ...

He must have a minimum of passion for what he does.

For me, this is the crux of the matter, it's a job that requires a huge investment, and I don't count the hours ... in fact, even when I'm at the pool doing my laps, my mind is far away ... solving problems (how am I going to do this? and this?).
My professional and personal lives are very intertwined, but I don't have a problem with that. I've chosen to make a living from my passion, and that means making choices. Including this one (which doesn't mean I work for free, nobody works for free...)

Real added value: learning fast

Most of the successful Silicon Valley guys are all dropouts (Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg).
So what? Isn't the sacrosanct level of education the answer to everything? Actually, in dev it's more complicated than that.
When I was a student, our projects were based on Symfony 2 and on Android 3 - 4.am writing these lines, I'm working with Symfony 5 and Android 11 is about to be released... and frankly, a lot of what I've "learned" I hardly use any more.
Your real added value is having the right methods and the ability to learn very quickly.
I sometimes work with other freelancers on certain projects, and the first thing I look at is this: I look at the Techs he knows well, but I know that in the project he's bound to come across something he's never done before. How quickly can he solve this problem?

Conclusion

Well, the article's coming to an end... Are you sad? Well ... there'll be more, don't worry; I've still got a lot of nonsense to tell you ....
The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the world of devs (well, in this case, one of them, me).
Have a great week and see you next time?