Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#511

Post by agentultra » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:00 PM UTC

Learning Haskell.

A friend of mine had been gracious enough to lend their time and expertise to teach me TLA+ to help me solve a problem I'd been wrestling with. When we'd have lunch together they'd tell me about their work and how they were using Haskell. At the time I was skeptical that Haskell was a practical language for building software outside of academia.

I had realized I was regurgitating opinions from other people that I'd heard about Haskell. When interrogated I couldn't come up with good reasons for my opinions. I didn't want to continue embarrassing myself. I decided to learn enough of the language to form my own opinions.

And I've been programming in it as much as I could ever since.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#512

Post by TrackerFF » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

I've been humbled many times, but often in the context where I do not have anything to lose.

When I was a musician, I'd met people that were infinitely more talented and hard-working than me. When I was in college, I'd met people that were just better than me in everything.

But I'd say that my first "real" humbling came when something critical I made at work stopped working. Suddenly I'm the one responsible for a xxx million dollar system not being operational, and all the people that are dependent on it.

Every time I see some major apps / sites being down, I get flashbacks, and feel the immense stress some people are going through.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#513

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

erhaetherth wrote: post #295

just-tom wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I call myself a developer. I'm not that good of a programmer, but quite resourceful as a developer.

I've come to understand the difference between programmer and software engineer, but what's the difference between (software) developer and programmer?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#514

Post by oscare » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:08 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #259

projectileboy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a good friend of mine often says: We work in a field of people who envision themselves as artists, when all that is wanted are painters.

No one wants to be a "programmer." They'd rather be called "engineers." With none of the licensure, mandatory education, and so forth. But the world needs programmers and technicians for most of the work we have to do. I do comparably little "engineering" and the little I have done that qualifies for such a statement I recall. Majority of the work is programming and technician work. Nothing wrong with that.

Lately I've come to understand the term engineer somewhat differently from this excellent video from the 'engineerguy': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivqWN4L3zU

He defines the Engineering Method as: 'Solving problems using rules of thumb that cause the best change in a poorly understood situation using available resources.'

In that sense a Software Engineer would not necessary need to know all the complexities of the complete system to make something work as specified. And I would equate a 'Programmer' more like the Scientist or Mathematician in this case.

Funny how there are so many different ways to look at a title.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#515

Post by keepamovin » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

Paul-Craft wrote: post #255

keepamovin wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see. That's a good point. But I don't think hu3's comment was suggesting there's only two options, just illustrating some possible margins to describe the landscape. Maybe stavros' was hallucinating that strawman reduction in there, is what I think. Like you don't have to say it's a false dichotomy unless that's the only way you read it. The existence of something between the margins, should be obvious. Anyway,…

Well, it almost always becomes an actual dichotomy soon, for sufficiently large values of "soon."

Yes, the compounding effects of previous architectural decisions, but not if you take a balanced path, guided by awareness of the two extremes. So it needn't. Hahaha! :)

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#516

Post by scrapcode » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:20 PM UTC

4star3star wrote: post #224

scrapcode wrote: post #186

This might be a different response, but I think about this a lot. From my earliest memories, I have loved technology and especially software development. I got involved in a very large low-tech industry early on and I now have the golden handcuffs on. I've kept up with development, even finished my CS degree. I held on to the idea that I would hold the title of a real "software engineer" one day, instead of solo-ing…

I work with a guy who makes a lot more than me, and he describes his salary as "spending money" because he has so many other ventures, contract jobs, and investments. His attitude about code is that no one in the future is going to look at your code like it's the Iliad. It's not art. It's just a tool. Almost none of us have any legacy to speak of with regard to this work. Your priorities as a father are worth it. You…

Yeah, I get that- I guess I meant more of my trade categorization. I don't really have a specialty. I really am just an "IT Guy" for a large org with a background in dev, so I'm seeked out for things that seem like that skillset might favor (which ends up just being stuff like Sharepoint pages and BI dashboards unfortunately). Maybe I could come up with something "buzzy" for my son to tell his friends...

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#517

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:21 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #475

ayewo wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The steps in this witty quote helps puts things in perspective as what anyone should do first when in doubt: "Make it work, make it correct, make it fast".

And the 'fast' can be optional. But sometimes you already have something that works, is correct and fast, but you still want to simplify: for example, when understanding _why_ that code is correct is too annoyingly complicated to explain and understand.

With AMD having 128 core CPUs with a 192 core coming soon... Depending on what you're doing, and how you're doing, there's a LOT of raw horsepower you can throw at a problem. For example, a classic RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, etc) over more complex No/New SQL solutions.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#518

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #443

jaydeegee wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a colleague who was old school and loved optimising, everything he reviewed come back with tiny changes that would save fractions of a ms. His nemesis was a guy who was arguably the best coder I have ever worked with. Things come to a head in one meeting and old school said if we did things his way our code would run quicker and the response was legendary 'If we coded like you it'd run quicker because most of t…

That's just a rude thing to say. If you all coded like him you wouldn't be having the discussion. The issue is when you have people who do not code with efficiency in mind, and someone who does think about those things reviews the code. Most efficiency gains are probably marginal and not that impactful. So you're probably OK ignoring it. And it's true that bringing such things up during code review and then going bac…

And then you get an in-memory SQL database that is used for cached settings with a text-based SQL query to retrieve every configuration setting (thousands of times during a login) and have a login that takes many seconds to run.

Literal example... replaced with a lock-free hashmap, and reduced the blink of an eye in terms of time.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#519

Post by bombcar » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

_boffin_ wrote: post #25

When I was younger, I had an issue with external vs internal validation. Sadly, it heavily skewed towards external validation. I was on the chunkier side for a lot of my childhood and into high school. Joined wrestling and stayed with it. Lot the weight, grew, and gained muscle. Also started to get a lot of attention from the opposite sex. That, with the external validation issue, leaned into it and just had fun. It…

That last paragraph has helped me many, many times in situations from politics to personal. It's especially easy to be "this person is wrong, why don't they see how wrong they are" and much more useful to be "why is this person looking for this".

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#520

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #259

projectileboy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a good friend of mine often says: We work in a field of people who envision themselves as artists, when all that is wanted are painters.

No one wants to be a "programmer." They'd rather be called "engineers." With none of the licensure, mandatory education, and so forth. But the world needs programmers and technicians for most of the work we have to do. I do comparably little "engineering" and the little I have done that qualifies for such a statement I recall. Majority of the work is programming and technician work. Nothing wrong with that.

I prefer the term "developer". In most cases, software is a craft discipline, not engineering.