It was... I will miss that until retirement, too, but the artisan part of this craft has been gradually dying for over a decade. I think this change started when "popular kids" started confidently saying they wanted to work with computers when they grew up. The effect is the proliferation of normies throughout the trade, now many of them with 10+ years of experience. The average developer's appreciation for the elegant and the inspiring grew weaker, and the idea of putting more work into a task than absolutely necessary (like, for example, stopping for a moment to consider the context before deciding on a tool or technique to apply...) lost all appeal. There's a thin line between aggressively pragmatic and ignorant, and the newer generations seem to treat crossing that line as a non-issue as long as the ticket can be presented as resolved. This mindset used to be confined to cubicles and neckties, but now it's seemingly everywhere...
Don't mind me; I just feel unusually old and grumpy today...
[1]: https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/
The problem is, when I go to work, I see exactly none of those people among my coworkers. I feel like breaking down on the spot and declaiming:
> I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.
I don't, mostly out of respect to Rutger Hauer. Anyway, while in absolute terms people like that are probably much more numerous now than 20 years ago, they feel much more distant to me than ever before.
Also consider finding a job where you need to know category theory to understand the system! That'll give you coworkers who are magical! And a little insane!
Ps. The "C" in "C-beams" now stands for "Category Theory"!
It's best not to try! These are the cultural delusions that drive us!
If they do it, if they actually learn categories, then you need to shut the f** up and let them live. They now have the power to do what they want. If they refuse to learn categories then you get to laugh at them and tell them that they are cringe, and fire them.
And if you don't have the power to just fire them for not learning categories, then you very likely need to learn categories yourself! And also gain the power to fire people, lol! There is no rational point to ever complain about a programmer, when you can just fire them instead.
What I learned from that is to create a ticket for every slightest little thing.
Correct a typo in a comment? A ticket.
Combine a tiny bit of duplicate code? A ticket.
Add a little error check? A ticket.
Forget working together to create a great and well-supported product.
What counts is whether I closed more tickets than you!
3 things matter most in real estate: Location, location, location!
3 things matter most in programming: Context, context, context!
DRY – like almost every other programming tool/paradigm/principle – are very often misused by a lack of the programmer's ability to discern correctly whether the tool/paradigm/principle fits in the specific context.
It's not just a science. It's an art, too.