Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 460 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#451

Post by johnnyanmac »

qznc wrote: post #61

Learn about the business side of the company. It helps tremendously if you understand how management/sales/marketing/etc think. Don't follow your passion. Passion will come if your work is meaningful, you are competent and respected for it. So instead work on your competency in whatever field. Leave if the environment will never respect you anyways. All software problems can be solved if you work on it long enough. D…

>Don't follow your passion. Passion will come if your work is meaningful, you are competent and respected for it.

Ehh, everyone starts at zero and you need passion (or otherwise some form of goal/discipline) to become competent to begin with. Nothing wrong with using passion to follow a goal. Just don't be place all your eggs in one basket; it's not the end of the world if you don't instantly reach your dream goal/salary/life choices.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#454

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #81

Always understand what you are doing, never accept advice like 'do it exactly like this to be on the right side', in short: stay clear of vodoo. Learn scripting to avoid repeating yourself, learn templates/macros or whatever it takes to avoid code duplication (it takes an effort, but is really worth it). Have some kind of document where you can write down your experience, what was learned, what kind of problems you h…

On second thought I don’t like my answer any longer: your knowledge and skills are conditioned on the environment where you were functioning/working. A slight change of environment and most of your assumptions and knowledge is out of the window.

What is important is a willingness and skill to learn new stuff; all else is in a flux.

Also I don't like this distinction between junior and old hands; it can make you complacent.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#455

Post by SZJX »

arandr0x wrote: post #130
fb03 wrote: post #76

do not burnout I know you are young and you feel like you're invincible. I know you can pull an all-nighter and work the next day just fine. We have all been in that situation and believe me, it is gonna take a toll at your performance ... and it could even trigger or help you develop some health issues in your life that can sabotage you down the line. Realize there's only so much progress one can do in the day. Stop…

Aren't young people allowed to, well, be young though? When you don't go to nightclubs, don't have friends to call at 1am and can't play guitar in your 400sqft apartment with neighbors on all sides of the world's thinnest walls, is it a terrible thing if coding all day and all night on relatively minor problems to make somebody else five figures a week is your primary source of excitement? Does it not beat alcohol an…

This doesn't make much sense. You can very well code at night but at least that shouldn't be related to your day job. I'm not sure what you get out of "coding all day and all night on relatively minor problems to make somebody else five figures a week". If you code something for yourself that's the best.

Also, not sure if Counter Strike should be regarded as bad as alcohol, though indeed both might become addictive if careful.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#456

Post by SZJX »

sincerely wrote: post #305
geezerjay wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren't young people allowed to, well, be young though? Working all-nighters to the point your health starts to suffer is not being young. It's exploitation the likes of which the chapters on the industrial revolution warn us about. More importantly, we as a society should actively discourage this sort of abuse. It makes no sense to let our health waste away just because a manager wants to boast about a target or a…

If I'm pulling an all-nighter coding, it's sure as hell going to be on my own project. I think that's the context of the convo

The OP wrote:

> "coding all day and all night on relatively minor problems to make somebody else five figures a week"

which makes no sense. Of course if one ever codes outside of the day job one should code for their own project, but that's not what the OP was suggesting.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#457

Post by mercer »

quaunaut wrote: post #349
kickopotomus wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience with Clojure stack traces ~60-75% of the time. Perhaps it is a symptom of functional programming? A lot of function passing and anonymous functions make it difficult to generate a meaningful stack trace.

Functional programming not so much- languages like Elixir or JS used functionally don't have this problem generally.

Elixir has had difficult to parse error messages until relatively recently, but this has improved immensely (Dialyzer/Dialyxir in particular).

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#458

Post by quaunaut »

mercer wrote: post #457
quaunaut wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Functional programming not so much- languages like Elixir or JS used functionally don't have this problem generally.

Elixir has had difficult to parse error messages until relatively recently, but this has improved immensely (Dialyzer/Dialyxir in particular).

In what way? I've been using Elixir since late 2015 and have rarely had issues.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#459

Post by jppope »

fao_ wrote: post #412
jppope wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't disagree more. Burnout sucks... and the crash was terrible, but the things I accomplished leading up to my burnouts were the best work I've done in my life. Here's what I would say: DO IT FOR YOU, not for someone else, not for a company... do it for yourself and what you want to accomplish in your life

I don't think anyone that's been truly burnt out would say something so stupid. It feels like a constant handicap on my skills and abilities. I don't think I'll ever perform to the standard that I did before, and this feels like a great shame given I have my career ahead of me, rather than behind me.

First, pretty sure the concept of "burnout" is a subjective attribution to a very physical, prolonged, exposure to overworking... so its really tough to say who has or hasn't been burned out.

Second, while I appreciate that you are going through hardship, I don't think thats fair to discount a 16 month stint working an average of 74 hours a week. Including a 45 day in a row, and 31 day in a row period. I burned myself to a crisp for a very real goal, and am happy I hit that goal. Of course, The months following were a disaster, and I don't think I actually snapped out of it till 1-2 years later. But I did snap out of it. (Note: I wasn't working in software either...)

Third, you can get through it. Burnout is physical AND mental... the problem is that people think that its primarily mental. If you are able to get past this incident, you will be stronger because you will know what your limits are. I'm not saying its easy... but if you ended up in this situation by working on something that you are truly proud of, or that you accomplished something that you wanted your entire life- then for me, its worth it.

Lastly, if you need help, or are having a tough time hit me up. I don't know what help I can be, but I can try to help you get through it :)

Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?

#460

Post by sincerely »

SZJX wrote: post #456
sincerely wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm pulling an all-nighter coding, it's sure as hell going to be on my own project. I think that's the context of the convo

The OP wrote: > "coding all day and all night on relatively minor problems to make somebody else five figures a week" which makes no sense. Of course if one ever codes outside of the day job one should code for their own project, but that's not what the OP was suggesting.

Oh, I must have missed that. My apologies :)
Post reply on HN