When learning from mistakes either big or small, trace a few "why" back.
Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
221–230 of 460 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#222Do not try to understand everything in order to do something.
Yes, understand principles, but don't get frustrated because you don't understand everything from the silicon up to the photons coming out of the screen. You'll never understand it all. Try to understand more, but don't try to understand it all. No one understands it all.
I've seen this paralysis stop so many junior developers in their tracks. They beat themselves up trying to get it all before doing anything.
I'm gonna be real; I have only the vaguest idea how the VM works in Ruby, along with it's garbage collection (also, they keep changing it for the better). Yet, I've been programming in it for almost 10 years on a daily basis. I don't need to know this in order to setup some validations in Rails. Sure, it's useful when you hit some problems, but not critical for most work.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#223Read the error messages. Reread them. Extract every piece of information from them. Never close an error popup without having read and understood what it means. Always read stack traces when you're blessed enough to have them. 100% of the juniors (and an awful lot of seniors) I've ever trained simply ignore those and then come ask for help debugging. 99% of the time, the explanation for their problem is literally the…
I think a lot of the time people are perfectly capable of figuring out the issue on their own, however they ask for help for social reasons. Getting another person involved in the problem is way more fun, and creates a bond between both people.
When you’re messaging me 20 times a day about simple exceptions like “X gem is not installed” (Ruby) and asking me what to do, then it has an opposite offect of creating a bond
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#224Robots are coming and so is automation. Programming opportunity will only exist in custom projects but most companies want to use COTS solutions to not beholden to contractors in the long run. This change is starting to emerge and the programming opportunities for the future will start to erode.
So what should a junior developer do with this knowledge in mind?
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really like your last point "whatever the computer is telling is true from the computer point of view". In a surprising number of coding interviews that I've conducted, I've seen a candidate write an incorrect solution that generates an exception and then attempt to figure out the error almost on first principles, rather than actually reading the exception carefully and thinking about what coding errors could have…
It isn't just a huge hint, most of the time it tells you exactly what the damn issue is. This discussion is blowing my mind. I am honestly speechless. IT GIVES YOU THE LINE NUMBER AND THE FUNCTION CALL AND THE REASON! Why would you ever even attempt to debug without parsing it?
And in the opposite direction: remember when you are writing error messages to include all the relevant details, and never ever write "this shouldn't happen" or "document later".
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#226Find a hobby. Interesting things happen at the intersection of technology with other things, so find other interests apart from software. Technology skills, management skills - these are table stakes. Perhaps even more if you take the generalist career path, having some additional domain knowledge or value-add that you can bring will be important.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't just a huge hint, most of the time it tells you exactly what the damn issue is. This discussion is blowing my mind. I am honestly speechless. IT GIVES YOU THE LINE NUMBER AND THE FUNCTION CALL AND THE REASON! Why would you ever even attempt to debug without parsing it?
And in the opposite direction: remember when you are writing error messages to include all the relevant details, and never ever write "this shouldn't happen" or "document later".
What about, log_panic("If we have somehow managed to hit this code path, this project if FUBAR. I would recommend giving up and starting over.")
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#228learn to touch type
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#229Treat people with respect. Sleep well. Take care of your body and your mental health. Try to turn any feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome into energy to push yourself forward and increase your skills and knowledge. We've all been there... multiple times. Learn to code fearlessly: Are you being asked to run queries on a production box? Ask if you can get a user with read-only permissions. Change crusty old cod…
These are golden rules to live by!
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#230Find a mentor. I was lucky enough to have a couple more experienced developers take me under their wing when I was new. I learned so much from them. This idea of mentorship has fallen out of favour, but I now understand "there is nothing new under the sun".
Cannot upvote this enough. IMO every thing else is secondary to finding the right mentor.
Applies esp. early, but also later, in ones career.