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How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

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Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#11

Post by cge42 »

anon91831837 wrote: post #5
albertoCaroM wrote: post #4

ALAN. Avoid Learning Anything New Terrible advice and mindset, It's good to learn for pleasure or curiosity. This way, you can enjoy reading SICP, effective java, code complete... Or you can use a new system, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS. Doing it you model your thoughts and mind, learn new ways, practices, or patterns, you don’t have to use then only for having learned, but even so, they will be useful to you.

Yes, it's a terrible, second-stringer attitude. Curiosity and obsession are a couple of the key differentiators between a workaday jobber in it for the money (like many who flocked to tech in the dot-com times) and a badass. TBH, if someone's only in it for the money, they're wasting their life in the wrong field when they could be doing something else such that their morale and satisfaction would be greater.

Ahh yes, I'll be sure to let consults notes Distinguished Scientist at NVIDIA and adjunct professor at the University of Utah Peter Shirley that he's a second-stringer and not nearly "badass" enough for Hacker News commentator anon91831837 and he's wasting his life in the wrong field.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#12

Post by zitterbewegung »

robbya wrote: post #2

Two things jump out to me: > Only learn something new when forced I think there is a balance between always doing things in a new way, versus always doing things as you've done before. When engineers are pushed too hard on deadlines, some will avoid learning new things as a short term approach for quick delivery. If your in that environment, you aren't going to grow. > Avoid linking to other software unless forced. I…

I think I interpret "Only learn something new when forced" is more like you should prioritize what to learn to do a task. Learning new things to learn new things is different than having a concrete project that emphasizes that you should learn one new thing. Learning the newest system of the week isn't really going to help you as much as a tried and true system that is well maintained and proven to work.

The second part about linking to other software is valid. What if the thing you are linking to is not going to be maintained? What if the thing you are linking to has a security issue? Now you are probably going to have to either link to something else or replicate the functionality. By only linking to things that are essentially hard to replicate instead of blindly linking to anything else.

In the above examples it is more of striking a balance instead of mere absolutes.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#14

Post by [deleted] »

Antoninus wrote: post #8
albertoCaroM wrote: post #4

ALAN. Avoid Learning Anything New Terrible advice and mindset, It's good to learn for pleasure or curiosity. This way, you can enjoy reading SICP, effective java, code complete... Or you can use a new system, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS. Doing it you model your thoughts and mind, learn new ways, practices, or patterns, you don’t have to use then only for having learned, but even so, they will be useful to you.

6. Be aware that most coding advice is bad. Think about whether there is empirical evidence that a given piece of advice is true.

[deleted]

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#15

Post by diminoten »

Antoninus wrote: post #8
albertoCaroM wrote: post #4

ALAN. Avoid Learning Anything New Terrible advice and mindset, It's good to learn for pleasure or curiosity. This way, you can enjoy reading SICP, effective java, code complete... Or you can use a new system, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS. Doing it you model your thoughts and mind, learn new ways, practices, or patterns, you don’t have to use then only for having learned, but even so, they will be useful to you.

6. Be aware that most coding advice is bad. Think about whether there is empirical evidence that a given piece of advice is true.

In other words, "Only I hold the real keys, everyone else is lying to you. Trust only me."

No, sorry. Invalidates the entire post, #3 notwithstanding. Such a cheap, low effort, lazy cop-out when writing about any topic.

What the hell was this guy thinking? I'm certain he's got better wisdom to share than this.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#16

Post by keithnz »

albertoCaroM wrote: post #4

ALAN. Avoid Learning Anything New Terrible advice and mindset, It's good to learn for pleasure or curiosity. This way, you can enjoy reading SICP, effective java, code complete... Or you can use a new system, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS. Doing it you model your thoughts and mind, learn new ways, practices, or patterns, you don’t have to use then only for having learned, but even so, they will be useful to you.

It's not terrible advice. You mentioned SICP, funny thing is, years ago when I put someone on to SICP, next thing you know in our production code we started getting these weird ass recursive functions..... Also had similar issues with Design Patterns, all kinds of overly engineered class structures started popping up. On the side of ALAN, I used to work with guy who did a lot of machine vision research, he coded everything the way he knew how for years, and he was super productive doing it. I didn't really like the code. But he got stuff done. Having said all that, learning stuff is still good, practicing stuff on non critical code is the next step.

Taking some lessons from BJJ ( Brazillian Jiujitsu ), when you compete, you go in with your A game, the things you have practiced, the things you have made work over and over again, your high percentage moves. Over time, you add things into your A game as you gain experience in making those techniques work. You may occassionally find yourself in an odd situation which some "new" technique is screaming to be used and you might try it out. But usually, when you encounter a situation you don't really know, you start working at getting the problem to change to something you do know, then throw your A game at it.

I think programmers should understand what their A game is.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#17

Post by her_tummy_hurts »

gigatexal wrote: post #9

I’ve been in a rut lately. Missing obvious things, shipping less than my best code. It’s come to my attention that I’m not as good at programming as I am at crafting database queries and tuning them but that’s such a small niche given how easy it is to pick up SQL that I’m having an existential crisis. So I’m working on getting better and getting more confident.

You could make a career out of just SQL. I know my company could use a decent SQL programmer. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of procs written by SQL amateurs

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#18

Post by KirinDave »

cge42 wrote: post #10
albertoCaroM wrote: post #4

ALAN. Avoid Learning Anything New Terrible advice and mindset, It's good to learn for pleasure or curiosity. This way, you can enjoy reading SICP, effective java, code complete... Or you can use a new system, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS. Doing it you model your thoughts and mind, learn new ways, practices, or patterns, you don’t have to use then only for having learned, but even so, they will be useful to you.

If you read what he actually wrote, he obviously means "Avoid Learning Anything Newly Invented/Created" not "Avoid Learning Things That Are New To You". In that context, SICP, Java, and Linux hardly count as new...

"All new ideas are bad" seems equally bad as advice.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#19

Post by diminoten »

cge42 wrote: post #11
anon91831837 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a terrible, second-stringer attitude. Curiosity and obsession are a couple of the key differentiators between a workaday jobber in it for the money (like many who flocked to tech in the dot-com times) and a badass. TBH, if someone's only in it for the money, they're wasting their life in the wrong field when they could be doing something else such that their morale and satisfaction would be greater.

Ahh yes, I'll be sure to let consults notes Distinguished Scientist at NVIDIA and adjunct professor at the University of Utah Peter Shirley that he's a second-stringer and not nearly "badass" enough for Hacker News commentator anon91831837 and he's wasting his life in the wrong field.

It's actually sad, his credentials suggest he's capable of a much better post than this...

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#20

Post by k__ »

robbya wrote: post #2

Two things jump out to me: > Only learn something new when forced I think there is a balance between always doing things in a new way, versus always doing things as you've done before. When engineers are pushed too hard on deadlines, some will avoid learning new things as a short term approach for quick delivery. If your in that environment, you aren't going to grow. > Avoid linking to other software unless forced. I…

I used PHP where everyone would reinvent the wheel and JS where everyone would install hundreds of packages.

This gave me the feeling that the truth is somewhere in-between.

Maybe NPM packages are overall low quality and it would be okay to use more of them if they were better, but I'm now just installing a package when I don't have the time or skills to code it myself. This saved me from dependency hell, but it also helped me to move faster than doing all on my own.

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