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Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#11

Post by maxxxxx »

I don't think it's about learning new stuff. Find a really hard problem and work through it. That's how I learned the most. I am not talking about one month projects but something that takes a year or more. In a project of that size a lot mistakes you made at first come back to you over time and you can improve.

My most difficult projects have been done with C++ and took years. That experience still gives me an advantage even with JavaScript because I have developed pretty good instinct about what probably will work or not.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#12

Post by newnaivedev »

I read a article recently [0], and I think you may like reading it. From my username you can see what I'll post here is really naive. But what works for me is failing. Failing sets a precise goal of where is my limit (be it in knowledge, or something else). So keep trying, keep failing and soon you'll find you keep improving. Other than that, a good mentor would help a lot, don't be afraid of asking questions when you don't understand something or think the person can help you improve.

[0] - http://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of...

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#14

Post by mikekchar »

For me the biggest thing is always to question what I think I know. It's easy to get into a local maxima. You often need to take one step backwards to take 2 steps forwards.

In practical terms that means that you need to change the way you write code. And that means practice. Katas are good, but you have to force yourself to do it differently than you would normally.

Here's an example of something I did recently: https://github.com/ygt-mikekchar/es6-monad-challenge/blob/ma...

This code is clearly insane. You would never do it this way in production. Or would you? In reality, how do you know what the advantages and disadvantages are if you never try it?

But small toys and katas are not enough. Architecture and design requires practicing on a big scale. That means side projects that you have complete control over. It's unfortunate, but this stuff takes time. If you like programming it's not bad, though :-)

Always get ideas from other people. Read books and blogs to get more ideas. Then go nuts. The hardest part is to have to courage to absolutely suck. Picking insane things to do will help with that because you don't have the feeling that it must turn out good in the end. It's insane.

Hope that helps!

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#15

Post by sahilkhosla »

beat wrote: post #8

Start by comparing yourself to yourself, not to others. Don't worry about matching others for their strengths. Just be a better you tomorrow than you were yesterday. Next, distinguish between depth and breadth. Are you a generalist by nature, or a specialist? I'm a total generalist. I've achieved basic competence in a truly shocking variety of different subjects, but the main thing I'm an expert at is being a general…

Is one better than the other?

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#16

Post by ak93 »

Start by becoming aware of yourself. Being mindful and aware of your own existence, weakness, strength gives a profound energy to move forward. Once awareness becomes a second nature, you wont see failure as failure nor success as success. It will become a journey.

I am rebuilding myself with this process and taking inspiration from Bhagwad Gita for that.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#17

Post by codr4life »

surrey-fringe wrote: post #10

Adderall.

Worst idea ever, stay off the chemical cocktails. It only takes one objective look and a minimum of reflection to see what Big Pharma is up to, and it's not good for anyone. Speed will make you feel better-ish, but it will also turn you into a Zombie-like shell without substance.

I wouldn't recommend drugs at all without knowing more about the person I'm talking to, but I strongly prefer natural alternatives like weed and shrooms to untangle my my brain.

Back to subject. I would say stop worrying so much about what others are doing and trust your own intuition about what to learn and how to do it. Most of software is an ignorant echo chamber, most of the people who make noise couldn't write a creative line of code if their lives depended on it. Do your thing, I'm sure you didn't go through all the effort of coming here to be just another drone.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

#19

Post by huangc10 »

I'm currently reading Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Here is one thing interesting he mentions.

To grow, one can either scale vertically or horizontally (paraphrased).

Now if we apply this to your situation , scaling horizontally would be learning new languages, ie. Objective-C, Javascript etc. I'm assuming you're not really about this but you want to scale vertically.

If scaling vertically is the case, then what you really want to focus on is doing something either 1) other people have not done before yet and/or 2) do something that is 10x better than what is already out there. I don't do too much C/C++ dev but maybe think about embedded, OS, GPU, etc.

If you accomplish 1) and/or 2), then you can truly master C/C++ dev. My 2 cents.

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