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Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#261

Post by throwaway82729 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #240

I have a very wide area of interests, and doing things takes time. But while I'm doing thing 'A', I think about the fact that I'm making no progress on 'B', 'C', ... 'n' and it distracts me both from thinking as deeply as I need to on thing 'A' and the enjoyment I get from getting something done. So I struggle with letting go of the desire to get everything done that I can imagine would be fun and interesting to do.

+1000. I have too many interests and cannot focus on one thing. Lack of a strong hobby (except computers) in my childhood could be a reason for it.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#262

Post by TeMPOraL »

Lack of discipline and motivation. Just having an obligation to do something causes huge amounts of stress (sometimes to the point of physical pain), so I get easily distracted by anything that is not the task at hand. Ending up burning midnight oil to catch up.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#263

Post by floofyreal »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #201

Everything worth doing and about half of the things that aren't. If I had to pick one thing, it'd be my weight. I've lost 150lbs and have been keeping it off for years. People who've never lost a significant amount of weight (north of 50lbs) probably can't understand what it is like to have to fight your body every day of your life. I have to avoid temptation as much as possible, which means keeping only enough food…

Did you try fasting? I can imagine sharing your story will lead to many people trying to offer you their ultimate solution, but from my personal experience with never ending hunger, fasting for more than 24 hours (only water) helped me "reset" my hunger. I then continued with method of eating only 1 meal a day (intermittent fasting), while focusing on lowering carbohydrates, since they always make me the hungriest.

I respect your achievement in losing the weight and keeping it as well as still working on yourself, but I don't think life should be hard as you describe it.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#264

Post by cambalache »

Ramiuz wrote: post #54

I want to leave my country for work/ study reasons, but I don't know how to start or where to look. I'm a EE graduated from a university here in South America (Chile) and currently working as a SW lead in IoT / fullstack projects. Every time I look outside (linkedin, /cscareerquestions, HN), there are people with far more experience or qualifications. It makes me feel my ideas are all wishful thinking. That the succe…

Dont short sell Chile/South America/ Yourself. I understand you are free to look for options and I think it can be a great experience personally , career-wise and financially , but dont get frustrated if it does not happen overnight. Your brain power, imagination, work-ethic , ambitions will be the same in Oakland than in Penalolen (Ceteris Paribus).

Creo que lo que te quiero decir es que estando en Chile tambien puedes hacer muchas cosas interesantes, incluso tan buenas que no necesites emigrar. Estamos en un mundo globalizado. Mucha suerte.

PS. This is for jobs, if you want to study by all means prepare yourself, apply to top schools and hit it out of the park.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#265

Post by citrablue »

headcanon wrote: post #209

I'd say I struggle with a few things, but I'll pick one. I overcomplicate and overthink things. If I get into something, like a new hobby, I go in to "engineer mode" and think about all the complexities of what I'm trying to do, and end up going nowhere. Or other times, I will purchase a slew of materials I don't initally need because "I'll need them later" and end up getting bored with the hobby before they ever get…

I can empathize with this. Add in the fact that the older I get, the more impressive my project needs to be in order to impress myself. It's a form of self-sabotage, but by realizing that I don't have to build something great in 1 day, it helps.

What are your strategies to cope with this?

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#266

Post by citrablue »

80386 wrote: post #30

I make I try to get at least one Git commit every day, but my job is pretty draining, so that doesn't happen. And sometimes all my projects get blocked on hard stuff that I don't have the energy to solve. For all I know, I might look alright on paper. I've co-authored a paper in a respectable journal, written a few Rails apps, a few desktop apps, and a crappy interpreter for an old language - which doesn't really use…

Have you tried putting yourself out there for work? As patio11 recently said, try to fail out of 20 interviews. It's un-possible -- the hiring process is so broken, you'll get an offer.

Then it's up to you to catch up to their expectations. If you fail in that, so what! You'll have your first gig on your resume, and I bet you'll have learned a lot about working as a dev in that time. You'll be miles ahead of grinding it on your own.

Just have several strategies for coping with failure or disappointing yourself, otherwise it can be extra rough.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#267

Post by deathanatos »

legohead wrote: post #219

I don't like the new way of doing things. Kubernetes, node, react, terraform... Everything is more complicated and also more fragile. I feel like the software world is collectively mad and I'm sitting on the outside asking "wtf is going on?" Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

This is interesting. While I'm going preface most of these tools with having not used them to their full extent, to me, they still seem to solve very real world problems:

Kubernetes: I've actually not used kubernetes yet; I do hope to, sometime in the future. I do see the value in managing distributing the images/code required for a job to the machine that will eventually execute it, and distributing jobs automatically, as opposed to by hand. I've worked with a system similar to Kubernetes, and having used it, I understand the appeal and miss it greatly. Docker images (which I understand Kubernetes to use) also greatly simplify my life as a developer; generally, the actual VM my stuff is deployed to is significantly out of date (e.g., it's CentOS or Ubuntu) and this allows me to, e.g., get a very recent version of Python 3. It greatly pushes one toward (IMO) not having snowflake (unique, hand-crafted, but can't lose them) machines.

Node: I don't use Node server side; I mostly use npm for managing fetching client-side dependencies. Otherwise, this would be either committing them directly (I dislike mixing third-party and first-party code; it encourages ad-hoc fixes/changes, and doesn't get updated regularly) or a bash script to fetch them (more painful to maintain in the long run than npm, IMO). It also fetches indirect dependencies, so I don't need to figure out that this project requires that dependency, etc. Also, Babel is a godsend of a tool for dealing with browsers that haven't implemented the latest ECMAScript features. In particular, JavaScript modules are wonderful compared to life without.

React: I've not used full react; I've actually not used it at all for lack of time. I would like to use it, as building up UI elements via the DOM APIs is downright painful. Having not used JSX at all, I can completely understand why someone would invent JSX.

Terraform: We didn't use this for a while. AWS resources where managed by hand; nobody would know why something was in a particular configuration, and configurations between production and non-production environments would be different, with no clear rationale as the why. TF at least allows comments and a history of changes (when version controlled), and the language helps keeps things consistent where they should be.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#268

Post by abledon »

starpilot wrote: post #178

I struggle with crippling social anxiety and shyness that has affected every aspect of my life. I'm 33. It's made job interviews awkward/uncomfortable, and even made it hard to find rock climbing partners because I'm not really fun to be around. I don't know what to do. Therapists haven't helped.

Improv classes ,, and find some actors in classic films or television series , try to emulate them and incorporate their quirks into your style and mannerisms basically you will fake it until it actually becomes a part of you because the grooves in the neurons will finally be beaten down. Also helps to do lots of exercise - work up to 1000 push-ups per day (with breaks) over maybe 2 year training period but since u rock climb ur probably fit conscious already . If you think a situation is embarrassing or something , reframe it as an opportunity to collect a funny story to tell, think stand up comedian , so underneath all the chaos of the situation there’s the shining gem of ‘what a f’ing funny - curb your enthusiasm - Essie uncomfortable situation I’m in , this will be a great story to tell later on .

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#269

Post by Mizza »

legohead wrote: post #219

I don't like the new way of doing things. Kubernetes, node, react, terraform... Everything is more complicated and also more fragile. I feel like the software world is collectively mad and I'm sitting on the outside asking "wtf is going on?" Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

So much of this.

React is like one step forwards, 10 steps backwards. Mixing markup and logic, adding a whole front-end compiler, needing imports from third parties to re-implement basic browser functionality - for what? So that users have to see a loading spinner and their back button doesn't work any more?

I'm 90% sure it's an accidental conspiracy to keep front end developer salaries high.

Talking to older heads, apparently they felt the same way when XML and "middleware" came along..

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#270

Post by jondubois »

username77 wrote: post #84

I’m 30 and haven’t really had much dating experience. It boggles my mind how people are already married by 30. How does dating work? Serious question.

If you're a regular looking guy and you don't completely go out of your comfort zone, then you could spend years without any dates; it's normal; it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you.

On one extreme, if you're good looking and rich, then maybe 99% of people you meet will like you. If you're plain looking and poor then maybe only 0.01% will like you so you just need to try MUCH harder.

Being average does make it easier to form genuine (healthy) relationships though so it's not all bad. You don't want to attract the wrong kind of attention.

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