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Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

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

#531

Post by Izkata »

mlry wrote: post #379
dizhn wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused. Does only one of them support charging? (I've got one where both can charge, though they don't look the same because one is also thunderbolt)

I think this is their point given this threads question for a humbling learning moment. Both ports support charging but it took someone from outside to get OPs fixed mind off their habitual notion that only a specific port could charge. They did not even try that other port.

The leftmost one is the normal charging port: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/7fidd0/reminder_l...

The second one is a different design with a different icon. Not clear at all.

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

#532

Post by jjmarr »

eru wrote: post #360
jjmarr wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a discrepancy that the top comments here say that "some people can produce a ton of value by not caring about code quality" and "I didn't care about code quality and got bit later on". And people discuss that incurring technical debt with bad code can sometimes be worth it and sometimes not be worth it. The logical implication of technical debt having an interest rate (i.e. It costs more to fix something late…

Btw, if you like the financial metaphor, then technical debt is a bit of a misnomer. 'Technical debt' behaves a lot more like equity you sold than like debt you issued. In the sense that the 'technical debt' is only something to worry about in the future, if your project goes anywhere. But if no-one ever uses your product, you don't need to fix the 'technical debt'.

Thank you! I like the metaphors because they allow me to think about related variables. What metrics would I use to compare different technical equity options? Is there an implied valuation of my project based on the % of developer time I have to spend fixing an issue related to the feature value?

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

#533

Post by wnolens »

snipethunder wrote: post #127

I am from China and I always thought I am very good at math, because I can get good grades at national Olympiad level math competitions. After I came to America, I realized that I got good grades in China because I internalized the math concepts by doing large amounts of problem sets and it was actually a very slow learning process. In college mathematics courses, I realized that some of my American classmates can gr…

Interesting to hear your experience. I grew up in the Canadian system, and then in university my class was ~25%+ international students from China. They mopped the floor with us locals. It was my introduction to not being even a little good at something, relatively (which I was previously #1 at in highschool)

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

#534

Post by bombcar »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #234
LVB wrote: post #201

While in Army basic training, my duffel got swapped with another guy's (no idea whose). Back at the barracks, I discovered that they'd snagged some spent shells from the range. Massive no-no. Young, naive me assumed that presenting these to the drill sergeants and explaining the situation would be the correct move. I was severely disciplined as a result. Others were like, "Dude... why didn't you just quietly toss tha…

Naive civilian question here -- If the drill sergeant is your boss in basic training, I don't understand why telling him info you think is important got you into trouble. After all, "talk to your boss if you have a concern" is the #1 piece of advice given to anyone who has a job. In healthy work environments, the culture is to assume the best about the intentions of others ... sounds like he wasn't doing that at all.

> talk to your boss if you have a concern

This is one of those pieces of advice that is spoken but has a huge unspoken part, mainly - if talking to the boss makes them look bad or causes problems for them more than not talking would then you stay silent.

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

#535

Post by bombcar »

arank wrote: post #346

It was my second day in NYC as the new incoming student at Columbia University graduate school. My senior with whom I was staying took me for sightseeing. We got into the subway station and my senior went ahead and I got late while purchasing the tickets. I swiped the card at the "turnstile" and waited for it to move up automatically so I can go ahead. After waiting for 2-3 minutes, I thought something must be wrong.…

I've almost subconsciously learned to watch those ahead of me in situations like this, because I've been caught out too many times.

The turnstiles that do NOT move when you push but instead require a button or other press really hurt if you expect it to move!

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

#536

Post by selimthegrim »

lyu07282 wrote: post #389
rcbdev wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not in the U.S. but in Europe, Software Engineering is often a field of engineering where one can get licensed. i.e. in Austria many IT techs and devs are called (at the doctor's office or in formal settings) "Mr. Engineer" ("Herr Ingenieur") if they fulfill some formal criteria and get licensed. A further qualification is becoming a federally certified civil technician for IT (Ziviltechniker or Ingenieurskonsu…

Yet almost every major piece of software or idea started in California and almost nothing noteworthy in the space started in Austria. I think that tells us something about the real value of a piece of paper granting you the right to call yourself an "engineer".

IrfanView?

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

#537

Post by bombcar »

nottorp wrote: post #337
dusted wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Euro-mind-blown I didn't know they still made those, I only know them from old cartoons :o Thanks for clearing that up for me! :)

They're still available but they only seem to make them for professional cleaners (hotels etc) in europe. And they get big and you probably don't want them in your home.

You can find that kind of setup on many machines around the home and shop:

Look at https://bissellcdn.blob.core.windows.net/cdn-storage-contain... - the ONLY Mention it makes is "quick release power" but doesn't document how to do it (it's a turn the hook setup).

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

#538

Post by schneems »

stavros wrote: post #521
medymed wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if super-people like this balance their various activities so that doing each charges them up for some of the others, and then they can hit a resonance like state of being in-the-zone excelling at each one in turn. And not letting small interruptions derail the system. It would be the opposite of being stuck in a soul-sucking rut between unsatisfying work and unsatisfying non-work life.

They probably just like doing them.

It took me awhile to realize that some people can simply talk a really good game. They will genuinely pick up a little bit of a skill but can speak about it as if they’ve spent every waking moment thinking about nothing else.

I had that realization when an amazing-guy-“ at-everything said something at 100% confidence and 100% charisma that was quite wrong.

On the flip side, maybe we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the things we know. The above comment was a topic I didn’t consider myself an expert in, but in hindsite I’ve spent many hours/days on the subject and am quite interested in it. So maybe it’s not that I knew less but rather I lacked the ability to demonstrate that knowledge. (Which is its own, admirable skill).

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

#539

Post by Jensson »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #407
eru wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Optimising' for simplicity would often be a good idea, though. Optimising for speed of execution only matters some times.

Optimising for simplicity first is almost always the right thing to do. Even if it turns out to be too slow you then have a reference implementation to confirm correctness against. In my experience it's rare to correctly identify the bottleneck in code while writing it.

> In my experience it's rare to correctly identify the bottleneck in code while writing it.

Why? It is so easy, just think of the work being done and pick the big parts, those are the bottlenecks.

Only reason I can see anyone fail at that is that they don't know how long things take in their programming language, but that takes very little time to learn, and once learned you will know the bottlenecks before writing.

In so many cases the bottleneck is using bad data structures everywhere, that often gets you 100x runtime and doesn't show up in a profiler because it is spread out all over the codebase, that is the real bottleneck that never gets fixed and is why programs are slow today. To fix that you have to learn to know the bottlenecks as you write the program and not rely on a profiler. Profilers helps you find how long things take, they are really bad at helping you understand how to make the program fast.

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

#540

Post by Jensson »

dotinvoke wrote: post #387
rcbdev wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not in the U.S. but in Europe, Software Engineering is often a field of engineering where one can get licensed. i.e. in Austria many IT techs and devs are called (at the doctor's office or in formal settings) "Mr. Engineer" ("Herr Ingenieur") if they fulfill some formal criteria and get licensed. A further qualification is becoming a federally certified civil technician for IT (Ziviltechniker or Ingenieurskonsu…

I live in a country where software engineers often have engineering degrees. What that means in practice is that they study math and physics for the first 2-3 years of their degree, instead of computer science or software engineering. Does that make them build better systems than Californian devs? Based on company revenues and salaries, I’d say no.

> Does that make them build better systems than Californian devs? Based on company revenues and salaries, I’d say no.

Majority of silicon valley devs are immigrants though, they are good because they are sourced and filtered from all over the world not thanks to American education.

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