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Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

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Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#331

Post by retiredcoder »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #292
beat wrote: post #15

Admittedly, my first days as a junior programmer were before some of you were born, but I'm thinking of a particular format here... Learned as junior: If you report an OS bug or some other deep problem, seniors will not believe you and assume you're making excuses for your own bugs and lack of understanding. Understood as senior: If a junior programmer tells me they found a system-level bug, I won't believe them and…

>Learned as junior: Technical skills matter most. >Understood as senior: Communication skills matter most. I see this often, but it needs to be said with a caveat - the second line presupposes the first. Without the first, the second doesn't really matter (or it does but you're in the wrong career).

Actually it is very disfuncional for me to be in a company that communication skills are ahead of technical.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#332

Post by TimTheTinker »

drbojingle wrote: post #195
docker_up wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Understood as senior: Legacy code that I wrote myself is hard to read. For me, any code that I wrote more than 3 weeks, I forgot. That's why I comment the hell out of my code. The younger programmers have routinely told me "commented code means the code isn't very good." I chuckle and ignore them and wait for them to hit their mid-30s and older.

There's truth to both sides. Depends on the comment really. ``` doesAThing() //does a thing ``` doesn't help anyone. My rule: Code is for how, comment is for why.

> Code is for how, comment is for why.

Excellent. For interfaces, other code that uses the interface (perhaps even tests) can also help to document the "why".

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#333

Post by sbov »

eitland wrote: post #324
grogenaut wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting the statement about once a quarter at work of: Yeah I found this bug and I worked through it, did a bunch of googling or internal searching found a similar issue and welp it was a ticket from you (me) 2 years ago.

Which is why I am trying to get better at what I used to to: writing down and sharing problems I saw.

I have a giant dev file (well, 2 really: 1 for personal, 1 for work) that I use as a scratchpad. Anything I work on goes there. Makes it easy to find things.

Monthly I pull out useful things into notes about that topic. Run into a weird problem with spring framework? Copy out the relevant info into springframework.md.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#334

Post by sebdufbeau »

agentultra wrote: post #242
danielscrubs wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve posted it before. But it gets confusing on the global stage. Software Engineer is a protected title in some countries. In mine it means studied a great amount of advanced math in college, almost nothing else. We usually prefix it with a word that tells if we studied 3 or 5 years. SE in US seems to mean just Software Developer I guess?

In Ontario, Canada you can call yourself a Software Engineer. It's prefixing that title with, Professional that will get you in trouble if you're not licensed with the Professional Engineers of Ontario under the Professional Engineers Act . Requirements are pretty high: http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/2057/la_id/1.htm But I suppose industry/capitalism loves the fact that we don't require licensing in order to pr…

In Quebec, Canada Software Engineer is a protected title and you must be registered with the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (http://oiq.qc.ca)

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#335

Post by gowld »

enriquto wrote: post #205
dahart wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh this is such a good comment! > Legacy code that I wrote myself is hard to read. Sometimes I don’t even recognize me as the author for a while. Realizing I’m reading something I wrote and can’t understand it without studying carefully has been rather surprising and reminds me of the old Kernighan quote “Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as…

> the old Kernighan quote “Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?” This quote can be interpreted in an intelligence-positive way, to encourage you to learn by writing the cleverest possible code. Then, when you get to debug it, you will be forced to improve your skills. This interpretat…

That is absolutely horrific. I don't want to spend my energy learning the special skills needed to deal with things I should have been smart enough to prevent from ever existing.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#336

Post by harrisreynolds »

Tade0 wrote: post #289
enobrev wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> code that I wrote myself is hard to read This has happened more times than it probably should: 1. Arrive upon some code I wrote at some point in the near or distant past. 2. Review it to get some idea of what I was trying to do 3. Laugh at my young self for being so naive 4. Refactor or Rewrite 5. Re-realize the edge-cases and difficulties 6. Remember this being a problem 7. Refactor And Rewrite 8. Either `git rese…

Here's what happened to me(A) and a friend(B) from a former workplace of mine(open-source project): B: Take a look at this shit code that I found. A: Whoah, it really is shit. Blame it so that we can see what kind of genious is behind this. B: ... A: Well? B: Apparently you wrote and I reviewed/approved it.

This is really funny. So good. I ask all the time, "Who wrote this shit??" knowing it was probably me.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#337

Post by chadash »

xmprt wrote: post #288
chadash wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Understood as senior: If a junior programmer tells me they found a system-level bug, I won't believe them and will tell them to go figure out what's wrong with their code. My first job was in finance and I remember one time that I had a glitch on a complicated Excel spreadsheet. I checked it over, checked again and checked again until I finally concluded that the bug was in Excel itself. So I go to my boss and tell…

You can't tease us like that without explaining what the "bug" in Excel was.

As I said, it wasn't a bug in the end :) The issue was with my formulas, but I don't recall exactly what I did wrong. It was a tiny typo I made a sheet with thousands of formulas if I remember correctly.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#338

Post by yters »

I disagree with the documentation one. I really think developers need to focus a whole lot more on documentation, possibly prioritizing it over code.

In fact, I think there should be something like a documentation driven development, where first devs change the description of what code should do, and then change or add the tests, and then finally write the code.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#339

Post by chinhodado »

snicky wrote: post #187
enobrev wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> code that I wrote myself is hard to read This has happened more times than it probably should: 1. Arrive upon some code I wrote at some point in the near or distant past. 2. Review it to get some idea of what I was trying to do 3. Laugh at my young self for being so naive 4. Refactor or Rewrite 5. Re-realize the edge-cases and difficulties 6. Remember this being a problem 7. Refactor And Rewrite 8. Either `git rese…

Semi-related story of mine: 1. Stumble upon some specific problem with a web framework we use. 2. Jump straight to stackoverflow. 3. Sbd had a similar issue, nice. 4. Sbd wrote a very concise answer, nice too. 5. There's my nickname under the answer. Oh, wait...

It's a recurring theme with me, though a bit different where my name is under step 3, and I only realized that when I tried to upvote the question and couldn't.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

#340

Post by beat »

pdpi wrote: post #74
taneq wrote: post #7

The big one for me was the realisation that the code doesn't matter . I mean sure, it does, to us. It's what we do. But really, code doesn't matter. To the end user, what matters is that we solve their problem. We let them do their job, and we make that job as easy as possible. And that's what they pay us for. And to the company we work for, what matters is that we solve the end user's problem, and that we do so in a…

This is why calling people "coders" annoys the hell out of me. There was a popular blog post a long way back[1] about how you shouldn't call yourself a "programmer" because that builds the expectation that programs are the key output of your work. "Coder" takes this problem even further — your job is no longer to build a program (with all the thought and design work that entails), but rather to type out code. I'm not…

I often say "That's not programming, that's just typing". (Stole it from someone, can't remember who now.)
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