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Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

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Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#131

Post by tigershark »

danabramov wrote: post #130
tigershark wrote: post #127

It’s kind of scary that Dan Abramov doesn’t know about ML languages or typescript... I hope that he is just being humble, because otherwise I wonder if it was a complete lie when Facebook said that they were pushing on ReasonML instead of react.js. I know that he was not initially involved and that the first prototype used ocaml as a primary language before falling back to JavaScript. I really appreciate Dan work and…

I think you’re a bit confused here. Facebook isn’t “pushing” anything. There’s a React team. I’m on that team. We develop React. Facebook uses it all over the place. There’s also a Reason team. (Its creator also wrote React originally.) They work on Reason and its React bindings. Facebook uses it in some places. We talk to the Reason team of course. But there has never been a plan to force all React users to use Reas…

Thanks for your answer, I think that at the time of ReasonML presentation and a couple of other times I had the impression that there was quite of a push on that direction, but I may be wrong.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#132

Post by InGodsName »

sphuff wrote: post #4
conwy wrote: post #2

Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary? This strikes me as very American - this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be. Look... do we say Beethoven was a lousy composer because he never conceived the 12-tone system or mastered extended techniques or knew anything about Indonesian music? How absurd! Those were all things for later composers to di…

Dan Abramov is a Russian living in the UK.

He works for an American company.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#133

Post by danabramov »

tigershark wrote: post #131
danabramov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re a bit confused here. Facebook isn’t “pushing” anything. There’s a React team. I’m on that team. We develop React. Facebook uses it all over the place. There’s also a Reason team. (Its creator also wrote React originally.) They work on Reason and its React bindings. Facebook uses it in some places. We talk to the Reason team of course. But there has never been a plan to force all React users to use Reas…

Thanks for your answer, I think that at the time of ReasonML presentation and a couple of other times I had the impression that there was quite of a push on that direction, but I may be wrong.

There’s not really such a thing as a “push” at FB — each product team is independent and decides what to use based on its own criteria. So there’s never an org-wide mandate to adopt a certain technology. Reason has some adoption but it’s happening organically.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#134

Post by azangru »

anonytrary wrote: post #8

> People often assume that I know far more than I actually do. That’s not a bad problem to have and I’m not complaining. It is also not a good problem to have, either. There will always be a few people who think you know everything, and a few people who think you know nothing. The only plausible reason why everybody would think you know everything is that you act like you know everything around everybody. Put differe…

> Does it suck, though?

That's the mainstream narrative as regards to minority groups in tech :-)

I too am not convinced that being underestimated sucks. Being overestimated may be stressful when you keep trying to fit the image that others may have formed of you and to meet their expectations. When underestimated, the most likely way is upwards, towards greater appreciation; when overestimated, one quite possible way is downwards, amid general disappointment of those who had higher expectations of you.

I am not sure which is better.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#135

Post by siquick »

commandlinefan wrote: post #108
azizinnnjo wrote: post #107

I very much enjoy working as a programmer, but, to be honest, there is constantly a little anxiety in the back of my mind that I do not get FP/docker/devops/insert-latest-buzzword-here enough not to look like a clueless coder in a watercooler-side chat with a fellow. So I really appreciated this article, it made me feel better about myself :-)

It’s deeper than that - you won’t just look like a “clueless coder”, you’ll find yourself unemployable. I learned early on that it doesn’t matter what credentials you have or how much experience you have, never admit there’s anything you don’t know, or they’ll pass on you to hire somebody else who confidently insists that he does know absolutely every single thing there is to know. I feel bad for the author of this p…

The author created the key state management tool for one of the world's most used front end libraries - I think he's gonna be ok!

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#136

Post by joshtynjala »

tomduncalf wrote: post #65
jchw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My "thing I dont know as of 2018", just for good measure: How to build complex front-end applications without making a complete mess of things! If you find anyone that truly knows the answer, please let us know :) I'm sure plenty of people claim to, and many more will just claim that the mere concept is flawed so there's no point, and there are even more non-answers. But the actual problem is very difficult. I remem…

A few things that have made creating new React projects easier for me: - create-react—app or Parcel bundler, both of which require zero config. CRA is easiest but I’m not a fan of their defaults for Typescript (which is to prevent the app loading in dev if you have any tslint or compiler errors, even if they are just warnings) so once I’ve messed around fixing that, it’s almost just as easy to use Parcel. - For websi…

In case you missed it, the official create-react-app 2.x supports TypeScript out of the box now, and it has better defaults than react-scripts-ts. No more ridiculously strict lint rules.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#137

Post by sophiebits »

heydonovan wrote: post #110
Aeolun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the main thing you are missing is the actual coding?

Hah! Probably. I'd rather learn about distributed systems, the idiosyncrasies of bash, how file systems work, dive into how http/2 & ipv6 will solve some of our problems, etc. Absolutely love fixing bugs in code though, but the actual act of coding an application from scratch bores me. Can't explain it!

(I manage the React team at Facebook.) This is like me! I love fixing stuff and enjoy coding from scratch much less. I don’t have specific tips for you, but I promise it’s possible.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#138

Post by pg_bot »

sidcool wrote: post #73

This is a very good article. What stumps me though is how the 10x engineers/architects make such sound technical choices without knowing a lot of things. I perennially feel ignorant of Computer Science concepts that many others seem to possess. This article helps me to understand it's not only me. But I would still like to make the best tech choices most of the times...But the problem is..WHAT TO LEARN NEXT? THERE'S…

Your thought process is backwards. Instead of starting with a technology you want to learn, start with a problem that you have. Then do research on tech that can solve your problem and you will learn by solving the problem you have.

Most technology companies are also terrible at explaining what they do so you need to be able to do a bit of reading to understand their value proposition. For example Docker, their website's homepage states.

Future proof your Windows apps and drive continuous innovation Protect your legacy, invest in your future.

Which is techobabble nonsense, and doesn't tell me a fucking thing about what Docker does. Docker isn't just for windows apps, so I don't know why they are alienating linux users. It makes no sense, and I would assume most people would move on unless they already knew what it was. This is sad, because I like and use Docker and want them to succeed.

How I would describe Docker to the uninitiated. Docker is a file. In that file you can run a series of commands to install and compile all the software necessary to run your application. Once you execute the file, it outputs another file which you can send to someone else who will automatically know how to run it. That's all it is, there is no reason for confusion.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#139

Post by danabramov »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #126
Kiro wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's one of the most prominent React core developers. The author of Redux etc. Many JavaScript and React developers (myself included) consider him a rockstar.

You don’t think that’s a problem? I don’t think there’s any value in being a name in programming. There is certainly value in a dollar sense (to their own career prospects at least), but I don’t understand why people would be like “wow! It’s $name! They’re famous!” If someone non-junior knew no shell scripting and had no FP knowledge — or thought that JavaScript counts as FP [spoiler alert: it doesn’t] — I wouldn’t h…

Personally I’m not saying JavaScript “counts” as FP — which is why the post says “unless _you_ count”. ;-) But there are certainly FP subcultures in the JS community which only use the functional subset:

https://github.com/jfmengels/eslint-plugin-fp

https://github.com/fantasyland/fantasy-land

https://ramdajs.com/

That subculture is what I was referring to.

If you’re splitting hairs over such definitions without acknowledging the cultural aspect and use that as a hiring criteria I wouldn’t want to work with you either.

Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018

#140

Post by sircastor »

irq11 wrote: post #92
douglaswlance wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He invented Redux, and is a core contributor to React.

Honestly, hearing that a core contributor to React doesn’t know much of anything about basic engineering topics is disheartening, not encouraging. Not memorizing the algorithm book is one thing, but being considered a “rockstar” when you don’t know basic sorting algorithms...

Being a rockstar is more often a matter of being able to work in your field effectively and efficiently. He's not a savant, and he's not working in a space where knowing sorting algorithms is meaningful to his day to day activity. He's still great at how job and the space he works in, and not knowing these things doesn't heavily affect that
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