Remember that working for someone else means that other person, who has th means to take the risk has mad a calcualtion that there is more income generated from your work product than the money spent on obtaining it. So work exactly as much is reasonable and use the rest of your time and energy to take the same gamble on yourself, out your extra effort into yourself & your own bussiness India’s rather than someone else’s ( for negliagable reward)
Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
391–400 of 460 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the math. Are you suggesting that you spend only 1/26 of your after tax income, and save the hypothetical remaining 25/26?
The goal is just to get to 25x your annual spending. Once you're there if you earn 7% interest and only spend 4% (what you'd normally spend in a year), you've now not only spend no money (only a piece of the interest) and that extra 3% left over accounts for inflation. So you build a pool for 25 years of spending, then just coast on that for the rest of your life. The key is to realize that it's not your earnings, bu…
...required change in spending habits (illness, emergency, inflation)
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#393Look for two pieces of advice here that contradict each other. Find someone who knows you well and ask which one applies to you.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#394Find a project you are passionate about that you can pursue on the side.
It can be both your portfolio and motivate you to keep pushing the envelop.
I do these short little exercises in programming to explore different concepts. Usually make a rough POC for an idea or some kind of interface.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.")
That's annoying but fine as long as it's unique and you can grep it in the codebase.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've gotten a lot of value from reading HN. I've also wasted a lot of time. It helps to develop a personal filter. Mine is * Avoid headlines that make me angry, unless the news is really important. The discussion is never worthwhile, don't even bother. * WSJ, Bloomberg, and WaPo won't let me read articles with w3m, so I skip the article. If the topic is tremendously interesting, I'll check the comments. * TED and nau…
"object orientation is a failed paradigm" uh... wtf?
Here's an explanation from Casey Muratori: https://youtu.be/GKYCA3UsmrU?t=4m50s
See also Mike Acton (Engine Director @ Insomniac Games): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait wait wait. Not so fast. i'm one of those programmers who read manuals and stack traces but I have to admit that I've seen my share of both manuals as well as stack traces that didn't make much sense.
Especially when you end up in C++ template hell.
That kind of stuff permanently damaged my ability to enjoy using C++.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disregard that first piece of advice. You'll hear a lot of bullshit about how only people who love programming and want to spend all their free time building things should be software engineers. Ignore them, ignore the imposter syndrome and make sure you have a life outside of work - preferable doing something that isn't just more programming. It'll make you a more rounded individual and in the long run a better deve…
I'm not suggesting someone spend all of their time writing code outside of work, I certainly don't, so please don't label what I'm saying as such, or as "bullshit". Yes employers pull that crap, and want you to sell your soul, that's not what I'm suggesting. I don't think programming is something you become good at simply by doing your 9-5. I've worked with a lot of 9-5'ers and they're rarely the best or most rewarde…
I still disagree with you. The idea that you should only become a software engineer if you want to continue it outside of working hours is one of the reasons our industry is primarily made up of white (or Asian) middle class men. It's perfectly ok to do this as a job, a really good job, a career, but still a just job that you don't pursue out of work. When we discourage people who don't want to code in their spare time we discourage valuable alternative view points and create a horrible homogenous industry (despite our industry effecting just about everyone these days). Many people don't have either the time, resources or inclination to pursue more coding out of work. And sure, the techy who does loads of side projects will be a better coder, but there's a hell of a lot more to this job than coding and it's perfectly possibly to be a good engineer while only doing it 40 hours a week. We need to expel this attitude so we can create a diverse workforce, which is proven to be more efficient.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#399Read 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…
Don't think, just set the halt.
https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/practices/pracjustset...
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#400Earlier 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?
Let's try that! I was trying to do some trivial task on a .gov website, but was greeted with the following, which I'm pasting here for your convenience. Could you spot the problem? Because their customer service can't. --- Error Page Exception SRVE0260E: The server cannot use the error page specified for your application to handle the Original Exception printed below. Original Exception: Error Message: javax.servlet.…
The server process running in a thread other than the router? Dunno, I’m sure I could figure it out having access to the code.
Support most likely does not employ software engineers / SREs.