How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#31

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:06 AM UTC

I totally agree with this stuff.

I was a professional programmer (now retired), and not a very good one. I'm familiar with Dunning-Kruger; I've worked with good programmers and bad ones, and I can tell the difference. Very good programmers are far and few.

I noticed that most of my colleagues were keen to learn new shit, like new JS libraries, new languages, new source-code management systems and so on. I think I lost interest in newness (for its own sake) about 15 years ago; I got turned over one time too many by a vendor that decided to withdraw support for a programming language that I had committed myself to.

I recommend retiring from programming. You don't have to keep up with the young whippersnappers any more, you can carry on coding in bash, you don't have to use git, Docker, or weird NoSQL systems. I realise that some of this new-fangled stuff is better than FORTRAN or VB6 or whatever; but learning a new programming system every 6 months is a total waste of time and effort. Get to be good with a few useful tools, then concentrate on people skills.

Or give it up completely, and learn cooking, or drumming, or interior-decorating.

I think there may be some rationale behind ageism in software development. For the first 25 years or so I got better at it, but I think after I turned 50 I started getting worse. Or at least, I got better slower. It took me longer to learn new tricks.

But I really think that some of those new tricks were not worth learning - for example, you can stuff Node and that ridiculous dependency system where the sun don't shine. JS is a very clever language; but cleverness isn't always best.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#32

Post by taneq » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:09 AM UTC

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.

I think it's a tongue-in-cheek way of saying "don't chase the latest framework/paradigm/trend/fad unless you have a solid reason to do so".

There's always an exploration/exploitation tradeoff when choosing your tech stack, and in my opinion most programmers overinvest in exploration, given that the terrain is infinite and covered in roughly equal local optima.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#33

Post by colechristensen » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:11 AM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #27

jugg1es wrote: post #21

This is such a bizarre post. If you have the self-awareness to admit this about yourself, you are probably not a poor programmer. Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. Most importantly - poor programmers do not learn from their mistakes a…

Why should being aware of how lacking you are as a programmer have much bearing on whether you're good or not? When I started programming seriously I had a mentor who gave me a long list of my shortcomings. It's taken years of hard, dedicated work to rectify most of those problems and I still have a huge distance to cover to be as good as I want to be. Being a good programmer is a skillet acquired with hard, concentr…

It is somewhat semantics but there is a big distinction between being aware and unaware of your failings that has a real impact on your output.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#34

Post by solveit » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:11 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #18

cge42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Wait for technologies to mature" sounds like a great heuristic for people who need to build things that actually work.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#35

Post by baroffoos » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #27

jugg1es wrote: post #21

This is such a bizarre post. If you have the self-awareness to admit this about yourself, you are probably not a poor programmer. Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. Most importantly - poor programmers do not learn from their mistakes a…

Why should being aware of how lacking you are as a programmer have much bearing on whether you're good or not? When I started programming seriously I had a mentor who gave me a long list of my shortcomings. It's taken years of hard, dedicated work to rectify most of those problems and I still have a huge distance to cover to be as good as I want to be. Being a good programmer is a skillet acquired with hard, concentr…

OP said "probably not" not "certainly not". Most people do not have a mentor to tell them everything they are doing wrong so they are probably not aware.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#36

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

her_tummy_hurts wrote: post #17

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

Correct. Tuning SQL queries can deliver performance improvements of several thousand percent, in exchange for just a few hours' work. EXPLAIN is your friend.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#37

Post by michrassena » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #19

cge42 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Either the post is intended sarcastically, or there's something to learn from it.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#38

Post by elliekelly » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #18

cge42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think it’s that “all new ideas are bad” but more that it’s not always efficient to be the guinea pig. I have a pharmacist friend who says he tries to avoid taking any medication the first five years it’s on the market. Not because he thinks it’s bad but because he’s seen enough new medication to know that it takes about that long to really get a good picture of the risks and interactions.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#39

Post by nwah1 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

RadiantSecurity wrote: post #25

jugg1es wrote: post #21

This is such a bizarre post. If you have the self-awareness to admit this about yourself, you are probably not a poor programmer. Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. Most importantly - poor programmers do not learn from their mistakes a…

> Poor programmers do things like allowing an incoming request to spin up unlimited concurrent threads. Poor programmers erroneously throw exceptions on any operational deviation - even it if can be handled without error. All of these examples make sense in the context of your business, but in some environments these might be best practice ;)

There's different levels of concern for a public API and an internal interface. If you control all publishers and subscribers, then you don't need to worry quite as much about sanity checking inputs or making every possible workable input produce a valid result.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#40

Post by pnako » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

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.

It's easy to pick up anything. It's difficult to master most. If you're good at SQL, why not transition to be a full-time DBA? In the right companies, good DBAs are highly valued.

I suspect there is quite some business helping companies wanting to transition from Oracle or MongoDB to PostgreSQL.