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Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

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Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#241

Post by knodi123 »

mw888 wrote: post #149
stncls wrote: post #93

If you deal with computationally hard problems, I think there's a whole toolbox of utilities with unbelievable performance, in which millions of PhD-holder-hours have been poured, but that get ignored more often than not. - SAT modeling languages & SAT solvers - same for SMT (satisfiability modulo theories) - Constraint programming - MIP (mixed-integer programming) and its special cases, like - TSP (traveling salesma…

I could certainly read more about this, it sounds fascinating. Will appreciate more of your knowledge or a thoughtful hyper link.

the concorde reference: https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde/DOC/index.html

Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#243

Post by screye »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #198

> * Regular expressions > * Parser combinators > * Parser generators I sometimes forget how I take regexes for granted, and how some people don't know them. I would replace the combinator/generator stuff with "how to cleanly make a hand-written parser." Developers frequently stumble through that quite badly.

You don't even need to know how to use regex well. If you know what to look for, tools like regexr.com practically create the regex for you.

I have often found that the ability to identify : "hey I can use regex here", is more useful than actually knowing how to use regex.

Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#244

Post by onlurking »

What strikes me, is that everything you listed is under the "Lindy Effect", if it has been around for 30 years, you can expect to be around for the next 30 years.

Among those, I can also recommend: Relational Databases. Unix tools for text manipulation, like awk, grep, and sed. Make. Architecture patterns.

Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#246

Post by hermannj314 »

rtourn wrote: post #159
hermannj314 wrote: post #74

Can someone elaborate on how they use reg ex as a productivity boost? Do you use it for text transformation? How do you use it exactly? Do you use it as code itself or as a tool to help you explore/write code? I am a huge fan of Macros, I 100% understand their role in text transformation, but what problem does regex solve? I spend so much time trying to remember the correct syntax, it only ever works for me when solv…

A good text editor will have regex ability, and once you learn it, it’s super convenient to have it handy. Writing macros to do stuff is more of a hassle. RegEx is most useful for me as a super quick and easy way to solve a one off problem that isn’t important enough to write code to solve. I once walked in on a coworker (who’s not a developer) who had copied a pdf into text and was laboriously scrolling through thou…

Thanks for mentioning that use case of a footer with page numbers. I can understand how a RegEx would be powerful there.

Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#247

Post by zaphod12 »

warrenm wrote: post #99

You're way too over-focused on tech trivia in your list The biggest force multipliers what a friend described to me as a young teenager as "be an and" - don't just be a programmer, be a programmer and a lawyer Don't just be a welder, be a welder and a baker Don't just be an engineer, be an engineer and a writer Etc You may have heard Scott Adams call it a "talent stack" Same concept Be exposed to as many ideas as pos…

I appreciate this concept, but I'll need someone to tell me what the baker/welder is producing. At this point I NEED TO KNOW

Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#249

Post by throwaway684936 »

wittycardio wrote: post #156
exdsq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea. You don’t need to be at the top 1% of a field to do cool innovate stuff, just be good at two or three different fields and see what happens when you combine them. Currently going down this rabbit hole with computational archaeology and having a whale of a time :)

This is complete bs, real innovation happens exclusively in the top 1 percent of the field. This is just coolaid that some people like to drink to de emphasize the value of real skill and inflate their own egos.

It depends.

Real innovation in art software for example could only be done by someone who is highly skilled and experienced in both artistry and software engineering and has an very open mind when it comes to design.

You get get things like Sonic Pi from people who are both musicians and developers.

Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?

#250

Post by warrenm »

zaphod12 wrote: post #247
warrenm wrote: post #99

You're way too over-focused on tech trivia in your list The biggest force multipliers what a friend described to me as a young teenager as "be an and" - don't just be a programmer, be a programmer and a lawyer Don't just be a welder, be a welder and a baker Don't just be an engineer, be an engineer and a writer Etc You may have heard Scott Adams call it a "talent stack" Same concept Be exposed to as many ideas as pos…

I appreciate this concept, but I'll need someone to tell me what the baker/welder is producing. At this point I NEED TO KNOW

I'd bet they can put a down a mean bead of fondant, or frost their joints well :P
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