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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

thecodist.com

131–140 of 634 posts

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#131
They say that making money is easy but only so if it is the only thing in your life.

If you are willing and able to make tradeoffs that help you to focus on what is financially lucrative, then it's probably easy to find the highest paying path available. Factor in the rest of what's in your life and what you want to do; not so easy and usually it is "the money, and..." that people want.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#132
post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

At the risk of being "that guy", this actually misses the point of the poem. Quoting: "Though as for that the passing there/Had worn them really about the same/And both that morning equally lay" The poem states that the two roads are basically the same. Further points of interest... "I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by…

Yeah, except, while that may be the intention of the poem doesn't make it true. Sometimes a poem becomes something more than what the poet intended.

Reality is, some choices really do effect our lives and don't lead to the same place.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript is actually an incredibly flexible and effective language.

I get that convenience beats quality everytime but why do we pretend that `convenience == quality` is true?

I believe that's cognitive coercion in action.

Obviously none of us truly believes that `convenience === quality`.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#134
post #81
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When one retires, there are lots of more interesting things to do with your life than spending the remaining days of your life in front of a computer screen.

Like what? The more I know about things outside programming, the more I see how interesting it is and how much boring, repeating stuff you have to go through to have fun in other parts of life.

Sailing!

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being "that guy", this actually misses the point of the poem. Quoting: "Though as for that the passing there/Had worn them really about the same/And both that morning equally lay" The poem states that the two roads are basically the same. Further points of interest... "I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by…

Yeah, except, while that may be the intention of the poem doesn't make it true. Sometimes a poem becomes something more than what the poet intended. Reality is, some choices really do effect our lives and don't lead to the same place.

You dont know for sure unless you can live twice a la groundhog day.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#136
post #9

I think the right path is to be both a manager and a programmer. Starting business is getting easier and one person can manage both.

Starting a business is fairly easy, especially one that is service-based with low initial capital requirements. Maintaining a business for the long term is an entirely different beast.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#137
post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

This is one of the most widely misunderstood poems around. It doesn't actually mean what most people think it means: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misre...

The link doesn't actually make a good argument on why people don't think what it means

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we all have our own takeaways. What in your view is meant by the last lines? > I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

It's a statement about memory, and the narrative we weave about our lives. The full stanza for the last line: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. He is imagining that he will say the last sentence in the future , "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled b…

It might help the HN crowd if you say it's a sarcastic poem about survivorship bias ;)

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#139
post #68

My biggest regret is not shipping more. Sometimes the cause of that is management, and I long to be on that side defining the missing specs, building out the absent project plans, speaking to customers, allocating resource, championing it all and pushing it forward. At those times I despise being a programmer because being a programmer isn't enough to get product shipped. Other times (but it feels less frequently) th…

So true. I think a lot of programmers (myself included) fall into the pit of wanting to perfect their code too much. As you look back on your career, you realize ten shipped projects with decent code would've been better than three shipped projects with perfect code. (This is probably true of more than just programmers and code too).

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#140
I agree that programming is a dead end job. It's popular and relatively easy. It doesn't require any special skills. Anyone with an average IQ can learn it. There's low cost and barrier of entry to getting started. It's fun and addicting when you're a kid. Then you get trapped and it becomes monotonous.

There's only so good you can get at programming. Beyond that, most of your time is spent on debugging trivial issues or trying to keep your knowledge of the overwhelming amount of tools and platforms up-to-date. If you're a really great programmer you might be able to get 3x as much done as an average programmer, but you won't be able to get 10x as much done to warrant 10x higher pay.

Programming is just one step above working on an assembly belt. There's plenty of competition for your position including from cheap foreign workers from the 3rd world and, since your job can be done remotely, you're even more expendable.

That technology is a luxury, makes your position nonessential. You will be worthless if Western civilization ever fails and drops out of the Technological Age.

When you stare into computers all day you aren't developing social skills or really any skills that would be applicable to most other jobs. If you don't want to be a programmer forever, the sooner you stop wasting your time staring into computers, likely, the better.

If you want to be highly valuable, you need to have skills that are rare and desirable, that make oodles of money or change the world. Such skills are usually of a social, political, or otherwise creative nature - things that can't be learned from a textbook by anyone capable of logical thinking.

Programming is simply grunt work. It's the grunt work of dealing with the disarray of present day technology. As we advance and become more organized and cohesive, the need for programmers will be reduced.

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