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Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

#201

Post by NoPicklez »

bmitc wrote: post #172
NoPicklez wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is quite common but it depends on the optics of situation. A mine site usually fixes its own tools used to do their job, they usually fixed things they've purchased to use that are broken or become broken, is that not the same?

I highly doubt that a mining operation finds it acceptable that tools that they have purchased show up broken, undocumented, and unsupported.

Your job as a developer is to write code and piece code together to make your life easier. That includes taking the work that others have done and make it work to suit your code base.

On a mine site, the job is to mine and process minerals. That includes engineering a mine using products that eventually fail over time and need fixing. As part of that process an automotive electrician may need to fix the electronics on a vehicle that have become faulty or damaged.

Mechanics and engineers need to inspect, rebuild, and fix the tools they are given to do their job. The difference is that yours may not work up front, whereas these tools need maintenance over time.

Re: Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

#202

Post by contravariant »

I guess that would have been the first time I build something that could do something useful (to other people) that wasn't possible before, the first time I made something that could exist exist.

For me that was when I crossed the line between merely tinkering and actually crafting something that could stand on its own.

Re: Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

#204

Post by whstl »

gamacodre wrote: post #120
whstl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indeed a superpower. I don't really remember when I felt that external dependencies were magic, but thinking about this, it explains a lot of the behavior I see on some developers who are very negative about the more challenging parts of the job. Some of them don't really believe the research stuff we do at work are even possible. They're constantly surprised when other devs finish those tasks. Some don't bel…

I've worked with some of those folks too. It seems to me like they haven't really learned programming the way I understand it; instead, they've learned various incantations that can be strung together, and are just at a loss when they don't work as expected/documented.

Oh, that's definitely true.

To me the issue is they assuming everyone around them is like this. I'm totally fine with lack of experience or knowledge, but a co-worker constantly underestimating their peers is not alright.

Re: Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

#206

Post by SQueeeeeL »

bmitc wrote: post #169
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing extremely good quality software is hard and expensive. In the vast majority of cases all you need is okay software developed by people who just want to get the job done. Understanding how software creates value and what kind of software at any moment is valuable; and which parts of your job is tied to that process makes this much clearer. If anyone reading this just want to write bash scripts that don't viola…

> Understanding how software creates value and what kind of software at any moment is valuable; and which parts of your job is tied to that process makes this much clearer. This is a good point and something that is indeed requires a lot of care and thought and experience to tackle properly, but I think it strongly hinges on the assumption that software just does a thing, so to speak. Whereas I personally view softwa…

You are correct, but current geopolitical conditions and economic policy have created financial situations that basically enforce short sightedness on the side of corporations. If your employer is publicly traded or has institutional investors; they need to report quarterly earnings. Investors won't care about code health or the longevity of a product, they only care about sales/revenue.

It's a fundamental systemic issue that's why we see so many tech companies produce terrible products. But we (the programmers) have no ability to fix the shortsightedness of the American financial system.

Re: Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

#207

Post by vidyesh »

bonniesimon wrote: post #178
edg5000 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps if you can get your IDE's indexer configured, so that you find refererences to functions and variables reliably. More importantly is to use an IDE with a good fast global search function and get comfortable with it. At least for me, 99% of navigating a large codebase is global search.

Is there a way to get vscode to this level.

Not using VSCode currently but I think pretty much yes.

You can goto or peek definition in VSCode. And the find tool has the option to find all occurrences throughout your project.

Re: Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?

#209

Post by whstl »

bmitc wrote: post #172
NoPicklez wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is quite common but it depends on the optics of situation. A mine site usually fixes its own tools used to do their job, they usually fixed things they've purchased to use that are broken or become broken, is that not the same?

I highly doubt that a mining operation finds it acceptable that tools that they have purchased show up broken, undocumented, and unsupported.

When I was doing enterprise work with closed-source libraries, any defect required them fixing it. We've found some issues with AWS and they fixed it too.

The difference between most professions and programming is that we have open source. The equivalent of that in the real world is getting blueprints to build our tools and then building them ourselves, with no guarantees.

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