In my job I do it all the time; people ask for stuff and I often spend a lot of time on clarifying questions, the most fundamental of which is "Are you sure this is what you want?"

It was a fun echo, because when I was a kid I watched it with my parents, and my Mom had to explain to me who Ethel Merman was.

So I guess they've achieved human parity then?

(I'll see myself out)

https://www.wired.com/1994/10/spew/

https://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/content/clarke

For example, I often bring up images of card catalogs when explaining database indexing. As soon as people see the index card, and then see that there is a wooden case for looking up by Author, a separate case for looking up by Dewey Decimal et. cet. the light goes on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog

Visual code is all over the place if you look; Any time something advertises itself as "low code" or "no code" it's a drag-and-drop flow based UI like this one. Most (if not all) ETL systems work this way, and all kinds of low-code AI Agent frameworks are cropping up.

I do agree that there very high prices to be paid for this stuff, and worst of all most of those costs are hard to see, and only crop up late in the project, when, as you point out, the more complex algorithms and processes crop up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load https://nifi.apache.org/ https://hop.apache.org/

For what it's worth LabVIEW presents those structures as container boxes, which IMO works well enough. To put it another way, visual coding has many problems, but when programming LabVIEW I didn't find the representation of control flow to be one of them.

https://labviewwiki.org/wiki/For_loop

One way I think of it is that the architect needs to market the architecture, at least a little bit. If you ask a marketing team to deliver a message they immediately start crafting multiple delivery methods to meet people where they are at. Architects shouldn't think they can somehow escape that basic requirement of effective communication.

And you're right, this is a marathon, and working sustainably is absolutely the most important thing. One can do both. If you love what you build and you're leading a balanced life then I would say you're Doing It Right.

There are a few reasons for this, but the most concrete is that your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one. The author is correct that exemplary performance will not save you from being laid off, but when layoffs come your next job often comes from contacts that you built up from the current job, or jobs before. If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles. If people think you are a hired gun who only does the bare minimum that next role will be harder to find.

On top of that, carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you. Pride in good work and pleasure in having an impact on customers and coworkers is good for you. Sometimes that means making dumb business decisions like sacrificing an evening to a company that doesn't care, but IMO that sort of thing is worth it now and then.

To be sure, don't give your heart away to a company (I did that exactly once, never again) because a company will never love you back. But your co-workers will.

Unlike RIM or Palm, Apple could realistically choose not to sell their device at all, or at least not sell it for a while, and so they were able to break the carrier oligopsony. It also didn't hurt that Steve Jobs was, well, Steve Jobs. A one-of-one business negotiator.

Steve knew that the customers did. not. care. And that the carriers would build more cell stations if they had to.

The river of money from Macs, iPods and iTunes gave Steve Jobs a completely different kind of leverage in those carrier negotiations. Device only companies like Palm and RIM couldn't have broken that carrier strangle even if they did have the technology.

"Look, I know that professionals like you have been playing this music since you were kids and don't find it very inspiring anymore. And I'll be honest, we do this material to sell tickets and make money for our other more challenging repertoire.

But if you're having trouble finding your passion for this show, please remember that it's a full house, so you can be sure that for some of those people, this will be the first time they hear this music.

And for others in the audience, it will be their last."