When asked for a time estimate, give 2-3x longer, possibly more if you can.
Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
91–100 of 322 posts
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#92Agreed. Some advice from Mr. Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvd_ZbX1w0
The fact that you are calling him "Mr" Peterson says a lot of depressing things about you.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#93If the ship is sinking, don't bail harder, get your butt onto a ship that _isn't_ sinking ASAP. It's much better for your mental health, and it's the logical free market thing to do....reallocating resources to more effective companies.
It's shocking how tightly scoped one's mindset gets in these situations. The hull of the boat so easily becomes the bounds of the world. Every time I jump ship, I'm shocked by how quickly and painlessly the things I once thought were life-or-death fall away.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#94Why are there so many duplicate responses in this thread?
Because we all want to reject a lot of the same inconvenient truths of the world, and when we finally stop, it makes such an impact that we're excited to share. If 100 people instead of 2 tell me the same thing is important, I think that's more exciting than redundant.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#95Grokking is not enough, go through the details. Spent weeks debugging a silent memory corruption on an 8-bit processor due to the incorrect usage of strtok in an SCPI parser.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#96Sadly, after more than 20 years building software, _NEVER_ trust a business person. My faith in humanity had to have me bitten by this the hard way more than once.
Could you elaborate a bit more? I’m not sure what to take away from this.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stretching is probably mostly hype. E.g., https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching.php
Tell that to gymnasts and martial artists. I have seen the "science" of this over the years, but I have also seen the practical fact that it's absolutely unavoidable.
That article seems to aim at the hype that stretching will help with anything other than stretching. It's pretty obvious to anyone who ever tried that practice helps you stretch farther, but some people also stretch because they believe it will prevent injury or make their muscles more efficient or something like that.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#98When you tutor someone, don't tell them what to do step by step. When they ask you how to solve a problem, don't solve it for them. It's tempting to explain in minute detail something you are good at, but if you always tell people how to do their job, they will become dependent on you. Let them figure it out on their own. When there's a bug in their code, point it out, but don't tell them how to fix it. If you always…
In my experience, most people who ask you to teach them don't want to learn as much as move on from this. It is frustrating, I no longer teach people. I take it seriously and it takes a lot of effort for me to teach well.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#99zope, the zca and plone.
But so happy to jad discovered these awesome tools :)
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#100That working in a big government setting just isn't for me. Doing data/reporting stuff in healthcare, to be more precise.
After 4 long, long years drifting around in my job, crumbled self-esteem, some mild-ish depression, I finally found another job and got out.
After a few months I realized that I was just 100% incompatible for the job I was in — not that I was unqualified or any of those other words that could also be true. I was simply incompatible.
I've learned to look at things a little better/clearer since then — evaluating things through the lens of my core values and how I feel rather than through the lens of imposter syndrome.
Maybe this is useful, maybe not :^)