Ask HN: Maybe I kind of suck as a programmer – how do I supercharge my work?

You may be right. You are missing something.

The way to build big things is to build small things right. Small functions/classes that work correctly, no matter the input. Next up, you wield them to build up a layer and so on. Long story short, you may be missing the concept of abstraction. I say that because you mentioned code interactions; that tells me you are looking at things so closely, the bigger picture seems much larger than it is.

Also, understand that people have different perspectives; that they came up because of some random events. It is a mistake to think people who do a lot of work, think a lot. They don't - They usually have a simpler/more powerful perspective than you have ie, they refactored the thinking required to do a job into smaller number of steps. This is what chess players or the mathematicians do.

Also, you may be aiming too high without background knowledge. An object cache layer for SQL? - Who said this was easy?

Automatic code gen via YAML? - Did you write a toy interpreter before?

MIDI over Wi-Fi? Audio destuttering? - I don't even know what those mean, and Im working as a programmer for more than 10 years, and now in a "big" company.

Do you read a lot? Many of the successful people (coding or other fields) do

May be you can start by reading SICP. It certainly cleared a lot of cobwebs for me.

Work with other people. Preferably a mix of people who seem less/equal/more capable than you are, but if you have to pick one, go with working with people that are above your level. Look at how they work, how they approach problems. Get code reviews from them, and review their code.

Don't get set in your ways (or the ways of those better than you), be willing to try new things and see if it fits your style.

Go slow before you go fast. It took you a month to add copy/paste -- so what? Next time, put in extra effort to try new ways of working, playing with the code, writing invisible support code no one else will see, writing tests perhaps, writing English before code, getting feedback, etc., instead of what I assume your normal approach is of "need to get this out quickly!", and it'll probably take two months, but so what? Eventually you'll get faster as enough experiences have taught you what goes well and what doesn't, but you need to slow down to get those experiences first.

Of course, some people are just super-geniuses. Measuring yourself against them is just a recipe for depression. To quote 'Eliezer:

"...if you have difficulty with any programming concept, you must not be a supergenius. You're just an ordinary genius at best. The sad truth is that there are some people for whom programming comes as naturally as thinking, with code formed as easily as thoughts; and if it takes an effort to understand any aspect of programming, you have just learned that you are not one of those people. Alas."

Don't forget naps!

Hi

I just realized, I'm pretty sure I'm just passing my 40th anniversary of programming this month. Jeez I feel old.

How I made it this far I have no idea, but here I am still plugging away.

My eyes are going, I get tired easily, and my productivity is a hundredth of what it once was...

I look around here and don't know what half of the posts are even about most of the time :-) In supposed to keep up with recurrent neural networks, the language of the month, algorithms research, which HTML template framework is or is not in vogue, whatever...

Over the years I've written a couple of books, built some pretty cool shit and had the pleasure to work with some of the best, but you know I'm really pretty damn dumb, and the only thing that has saved me is persistence.

I've felt like you many many times on occasion over the years.

Computer Science is a huge subject, and growing by the day, immeasurably larger than when I started. There is no way to keep up in all avenues... and that is fine.

It's pretty normal and healthy to have a bit of a low self esteem about our work as software engineers because it is literally true that every piece of work can be better. Please try not to take that attitude a bit too far though.

You know, I got into this because when I was a kid I wanted to understand how computers work. They were a magical box of wires to me and still are.

I wrote code for fun, my own personal pleasure, and the hope that along the way maybe some of it is of some use to someone else. Maybe even make them smile. That's what drives me and keeps me going.

I think my advice is just program because you enjoy it. Everything else will come.

Financial reward is a side effect, not a cause.

There is no huge race here. Programming is a very personal creative past time that takes an incredible amount of effort for all of us and a lot of patience.

I know it might seem at times looking around hacker news that everyone is way ahead. I can understand that, it's a pretty elite set out here. But... I think deep down, the dirty little secret is everyone feels a bit crap compared to everyone else on here more often than we all let on. Fake it 'til you make it. ;)

Like others said, you have so much to be proud of. Shipping multiple projects on iOS, wow!

The fact you are even looking into audio algorithms and things like MIDI over WiFi is great! Sounds like a lot of specialist knowledge you are building there. I'm impressed!

Maybe one pointer. Step back and stop, take some time and think about the machine instead of the problem at hand. I say that because you mention race conditions. Understanding why they are occurring will be of enormous help. Then when you figure it out, explain it to someone else.

But meh, stop whinning, It takes me weeks to do what I could once do in an afternoon :)

You are doing great.

Keep it up man, it's a really fun road.

Nice you are here.. let it flow.

I'm not extremely experienced, but it's hard not to agree here. I work with neural networks primarily, but I've had to start learning working with JS for interactive visualization. In short, compared to neural networks, it's a giant nightmare.