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Ask HN: Technology stall

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Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#31

Post by ankurdhama »

Yes, I have been in this situation and I guess most programmers who started programming coz it is amazing felt the same at some point. I call this the "infatuation with tools", where we keep learning new languages, frameworks, libraries, OS etc but once you learn it you feel empty and bored coz somehow our subconsciousness develop the idea that tools gives you silver bullet to solve any problem, which of-course is wrong. The way to overcome this is that you need to understand that Computing is a tool that can be used to many problems. The tools are not fun and interesting rather the problems are fun and interesting. Think about real world problem and how computing can solve them or at least play a part in solving them. Get fascinated by problems and not tools. Probably that's why I hate most job postings where they say "hey do u know x,y,z tools?" rather than saying "Hey we want to solve X, are u interested?".

And yes, computing is about data and algorithms and nothing else. Don't fall into the trap of new names of same concepts. Always think about problems in terms of data and algorithms and no other bullshit like objects, patterns that so called software engineering piled up in search for a silver bullet.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#32

Post by drewm1980 »

An italian expat colleague studying in Belgium explained to me that Italy is so beautiful that it has to have severe societal problems just to maintain homeostasis; otherwise everyone else would move there. If it's any consolation, there are people in colder, rainy countries, with worse food, and with cultures where next door neighbors don't even know each other's names, looking at Italy and wondering if they should accept some boring job there for the other benefits.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#33

Post by mpermar »

Being specialized in .NET stack you're likely like me in your 30s or 40s. Life in our 20s was simple. Java or .NET or PHP, specialize in one or the other, and there we go, we can build a career on top.

I share many of your feelings. I live in Spain. The markets are common. But honestly, I think it's not a matter about Italy being shitty at anything. The IT world has changed. There is no three platforms any longer. There is no one single deployment paradigm any longer. Things are much more complex now and it's truly impossible to try to take on everything as it was 15 years ago. I found that myself frustrating many times. Thinking, heck, 15 years ago I could study this, this and this and be an expert pretty much on everything software related. Now this is not true any longer and it can be very frustrating for all of us that come from that world.

I think the key here is holidays of course, but also to adapt to the new software world. And learn that not all what appears in HN is shiny and great, not all that is done in the cool places like SV is shiny and great, and not all those frameworks and languages that pop up are shiny and great. Rather than a matter of focus is a matter of taking it easy. Do something that you like and that you enjoy learning and learn to let things pass on. You don't have to be a master of react, golang or angular to be a competent software person, there is more choices than ever. Focus on the models, patterns, problems and solutions. That's where the value is today.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#34

Post by jabbernotty »

haukur wrote: post #21
bkanber wrote: post #2

There's no good answer. You have to learn how to focus. You can't wait for focus or motivation to come to you, you have to make it happen. Why do new languages interest you? Probably you're just looking for something different, to escape some depression you're feeling. Instead you should focus your attention on solving problems, and then picking the right language for those problems. You may also want to talk to a th…

> work for a US or Israeli company Why an Israeli company? I assume you mention the US because of the salary in SF and other tech hubs, but it doesn't seem to be comparable in Israel, nor higher than in cities like London, Berlin or Stockholm.

You took that out of it's context. The "that" in that sentence refers to the previous sentence. The poster is mentioning US and Israeli companies as places where quality is held to higher standards.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#35

Post by alex_hitchins »

brianwawok wrote: post #5

Non tech advice but do you exercise? A 30 minute run ever day before work makes a day 100% more enjoyable. Seldom does using a different language fix anything. Programming is programming. Excercise can fix your life outlook. Better teammates can change things. Nicer boss. But seldom will language or business do that much do your day to day life.

I agree up to a point (regards to languages). A change from C# to F# isn't small and can give you new ways to evaluate problems. Likewise with C. The constraints of the languages highlight areas you can learn and improve.

As for excersice, anyone in a desk based job needs to include movement as part of their day. I take a walk at lunchtime.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#36

Post by sixFingers »

Hey, I can't express how much I can relate. Some facts:

- I'm Italian

- I'm in my 30s

- I have ~8 years of professional experience, mainly in big agencies

- I have fully experienced the pains of your country, consider also I have been independent contractor for some years (you know, clients not paying you?)

I moved to France following my girlfriend, and I'm sitting here waiting for a response to some job positions I applied for. Also I'm running out of money. I am also really thirsty when it comes to technical challenge. So well I'm the last who can give you advice, but here are some things that worked for me:

- Stop looking at Italy for jobs, instead look at Europe. I had an experience working for a company in San Francisco (ok, that's USA) and it was ages beyond the typical Italian experience. I'm pretty sure that Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona can offer great positions _and_ professional cultures. I'm actually checking europeremotely.com basically daily, but also StackOverflow jobs is pretty cool for that. I hope not being wrong about this.

- Don't stop feeding your passion. If you love coding, keep doing it. Personally, I took everything which was outside my consolidated professional competence, and put it in a box called "game development". That's my secret corner where I experiment everything I love. Like well "modeling a mafia economic system through agent based simulation". There, I practice stuff I'll probably never use professionally: C#, LUA, C++, Golang, OpenGL.

- When you evaluate new technologies which may become part of your daily work, don't stop at the tool, but look at the context around it. RUST is good for system development. Would you like a job in that area? I'm basically a PHP developer, but man how much I would like to escape from it. I'm currently learning Elixir, as it looks like the Ruby of the next decade. I bet there will be a lot around it in web area.

- I force myself to switch off the mac after 8 pm. Before, I could sit there all the day and a good part of the night. Doing something else, especially if it involves physical activity, often helps me seeing more clearly myself, my real interests, and above all works as an antidepressant.

After all of this, I'll fail and be forced to return to Italy anyway. In that case, I'll give up coding and learn doing pizzas.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#37

Post by salex89 »

virmundi wrote: post #6

First to your lack of focus. I had the same issue. I jumped around various languages like Scala and Closure and D. I would jump around background products like Mongo or Arango or PostgreSQL. Probably for the same reason for you: novelty driven by a sense of the industry leaving me behind. I think this is a false sense driven by HN and the like. Startups playing with new things made me feel that my Java centric knowle…

Completely feel you... I'm in the completely same situation. My main language in the past three years is generally Java, but I worked in Node.js, actively working in Scala (Play, Akka and the bunch) and now I'm taking a bit of Python in a side project. I generally like to work with different databases so switching is not that huge to me, as databases go.

But yet I feel left out. I see every day things about Elixir, D, Clojure, all kinds of different databases, front-end stuff coming up (although I'm purely back-end big-data/analytics/database guy), and it's anxious. I also have a soft-spot for IoT stuff. The thing is not helped when reading articles and comments that say you should touch as many paradigms as you can, learning a language each month, reading a book each week and so on. And if you don't you manage your time badly and you sleep too much. I'm not saying I don't invest into myself, I take webinars often and my Kindle is always by my hand, but jeez sometimes it's overwhelming.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#38

Post by salex89 »

Tharkun wrote: post #13
wlievens wrote: post #11

A very vague comment but here goes: IIRC Italy is a pretty significant partner in ESA projects, maybe there are some interesting challenges in that space?

I was involved with a couple of ESA and EU FP7 projects. They're a joke. More paper than code is produced, and none of the code ends up being used.

Can't agree with you more. I'm currently in the business with FP7 and Horizon. What a pile of... It's all about buzzwords and overly complicated "architectures" which should be as general and vague as possible to dazzle the reviewers.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#39

Post by EugeneOZ »

sixFingers wrote: post #36

Hey, I can't express how much I can relate. Some facts: - I'm Italian - I'm in my 30s - I have ~8 years of professional experience, mainly in big agencies - I have fully experienced the pains of your country, consider also I have been independent contractor for some years (you know, clients not paying you?) I moved to France following my girlfriend, and I'm sitting here waiting for a response to some job positions I…

Rust is good for web-development too. And name is Rust, not RUST.

Re: Ask HN: Technology stall

#40

Post by hacknat »

I've been there. The problem with being a good programmer is that you quickly exhaust the low hanging fruit of interesting things to work on in your career. Remember that time when you knew next to nothing and everything you did was interesting, because it was novel. Those days are over, because you are now pretty good at doing what 95% of organizations need out of Software Engineers.

Don't panic.

Work is going to be a little bit boring for you for a while; learn how to cope with this for a bit. It is going to take longer for you to become an expert at something interesting and important than it took for you to get to where you are now. This may seem counterintuitive as you are quite a bit more aware of what you don't know than you than you were before you typed your first "hello world". That's okay. This is how knowledge works. All those abstractions you've built up in your brain for the the low-level things you didn't need to know at first are massive wells of knowledge that you only see the surface of.

So How do you get good at something? I truly believe you can only get good at something that you can sustain working on for a few years. I find, personally, that I can read one theory book or set of papers between bouts of working on something. That seems to be a good mix for me.

This isn't a race, this takes time. Once you start down the path of becoming an expert at something you'll realize it is the work of an entire lifetime. Enjoy the ride.

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