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How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

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Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#101

Post by [deleted] »

01100011 wrote: post #99
geowwy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is right though – new tech nearly always disappears. Example: Learning CoffeeScript was a total waste of time. Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me. Based on past experience, I strongly suspect the same will happen with React, Rust and a bunch of other new exciting tech. There are countless examples besides the ones I mentioned. But on the other hand, the time I put…

I agree about 90%. Sometimes though, it pays to learn the weird or new stuff. Sometimes, you can make a lot of money knowing the next big thing, even if it goes away in a year. You have to be well positioned though, like being an hourly contractor. I'm generally the guy who knows the boring shit. C, networking, 'Linux', hardware, RF... But I keep telling myself I'm going to jump on the next bandwagon just to see how…

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Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#102

Post by itronitron »

overgard wrote: post #77

The "Avoid Learning Anything New" advice is insane. (Well, practically all of it is, but that one really stands out). I think the exact opposite advice is far better: never assume the way you know how to do something is best, and always be on the lookout for what others are doing that might be better. Here's the thing about learning: the more you learn, the easier learning the next thing becomes. You form links, insi…

If you consider 'new' to mean it is less than three years old instead of meaning it is unfamiliar then the advice is not insane.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#103

Post by seanmcdirmid »

geowwy wrote: post #95
overgard wrote: post #77

The "Avoid Learning Anything New" advice is insane. (Well, practically all of it is, but that one really stands out). I think the exact opposite advice is far better: never assume the way you know how to do something is best, and always be on the lookout for what others are doing that might be better. Here's the thing about learning: the more you learn, the easier learning the next thing becomes. You form links, insi…

He is right though – new tech nearly always disappears. Example: Learning CoffeeScript was a total waste of time. Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me. Based on past experience, I strongly suspect the same will happen with React, Rust and a bunch of other new exciting tech. There are countless examples besides the ones I mentioned. But on the other hand, the time I put…

I prefer learn tech on demand: given a job find the right tools that exist at the time, and then use them even if you don’t already know them.

Besides, having problem context makes the learning much easier, vs just saying...I’m going to learn react today in a void.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#104

Post by Lutger »

overgard wrote: post #85
keithnz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ever…

You lost me at "next thing you know in our production code we started getting these weird ass recursive functions...". I don't mean to be mean, but recursion is pretty fundamental to a lot of algorithms, and it sounds like the SICP coder was just writing stuff more advanced than you were comfortable with.

Might also be an inappropriate application of recursion in a language where loops are more common. I've seen people who learn new stuff go overboard with clever code in production that is less readable for their peers.

Recursion shouldn't even be considered advanced though, just like classes and first class functions. I'm all for making code as boring as possible, but to me understanding at least these concepts is a requirement of entering the profession of software development.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#105

Post by BigJono »

soulofmischief wrote: post #87
BigJono wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning is pretty simple, the golden rule is "Don't learn new tech, learn how to solve new problems". Learning how to use something like Vue when you already know how to use React (or vice versa) is stupid because they both solve the exact same problem in a reasonably similar way with a reasonably different API. A better example might be something like Postgres and DynamoDB, since it can go either way. If your probl…

> Learning how to use something like Vue when you already know how to use React (or vice versa) is stupid because they both solve the exact same problem in a reasonably similar way with a reasonably different API. Settling on Mithril as my front-end library was a long journey from framework to framework. If I had stopped at Vue or React, I'd be much worse off for it. Really, if I had stopped at the first front-end li…

> Really, if I had stopped at the first front-end library/framework I used in web dev, I'd still be using PHP.

Well, I did specifically give an example of two techs that do similar things that might be worth learning if they're different enough that one solves a problem the other doesn't.

I don't know anything about Mithril, but if you're right that you'd be 'much worse off' then that would be a similar case, no?

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#106

Post by fastball »

geowwy wrote: post #95
overgard wrote: post #77

The "Avoid Learning Anything New" advice is insane. (Well, practically all of it is, but that one really stands out). I think the exact opposite advice is far better: never assume the way you know how to do something is best, and always be on the lookout for what others are doing that might be better. Here's the thing about learning: the more you learn, the easier learning the next thing becomes. You form links, insi…

He is right though – new tech nearly always disappears. Example: Learning CoffeeScript was a total waste of time. Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me. Based on past experience, I strongly suspect the same will happen with React, Rust and a bunch of other new exciting tech. There are countless examples besides the ones I mentioned. But on the other hand, the time I put…

Learning CoffeeScript was only a waste if you never got paid to write / never built anything useful in CoffeeScript.

The failure there is learning something that is not useful to you right now, not "learning something new".

Are their opportunity costs associated with learning one thing over another and making the "wrong choice" in terms of which stuck around longer? Sure. But you can't predict the future. Focus less on what you learned that didn't get much mileage, and focus instead on what you can learn next. Learn new things and old things - just keep learning! In the end, there are very few things you can learn that are a total waste of time - the more things you learn, the more perspective you have, whether or not you are specifically using the exact thing you learned.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#107

Post by koonsolo »

overgard wrote: post #77

The "Avoid Learning Anything New" advice is insane. (Well, practically all of it is, but that one really stands out). I think the exact opposite advice is far better: never assume the way you know how to do something is best, and always be on the lookout for what others are doing that might be better. Here's the thing about learning: the more you learn, the easier learning the next thing becomes. You form links, insi…

Reminds me of a programmer I met about 7 years ago. He was in a team of 4, writing internal software tools for a company.

He said he was annoyed that he always had to manually join other peoples code. They would send the files they changed to him, and then he would search what changed, and add their changes to his own code.

I asked why they didn't use source version control like Subversion. He asked me what it was. He was so happy to hear that such tools exist, and was going to look into it further.

And I on my part, was perplexed that none of those 4 programmers knew about it.

If you don't regularly read shit to improve yourself, maybe it's time to find another job.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#108

Post by Lutger »

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 didn't get that from the article. It's more like: most of the new tech won't stick and if you aren't smart enough to discern what will stick and what not, then focus on learning tech that has already matured and been adopted. Remember, the advice is meant for programmers who aren't that good.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#109

Post by factsaresacred »

geowwy wrote: post #95
overgard wrote: post #77

The "Avoid Learning Anything New" advice is insane. (Well, practically all of it is, but that one really stands out). I think the exact opposite advice is far better: never assume the way you know how to do something is best, and always be on the lookout for what others are doing that might be better. Here's the thing about learning: the more you learn, the easier learning the next thing becomes. You form links, insi…

He is right though – new tech nearly always disappears. Example: Learning CoffeeScript was a total waste of time. Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me. Based on past experience, I strongly suspect the same will happen with React, Rust and a bunch of other new exciting tech. There are countless examples besides the ones I mentioned. But on the other hand, the time I put…

> Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me.

'A few years' is a solid return on investment. Besides the reason Jquery is now useless is because Javascript now has those capabilities, so your skills were 'grandfathered' to ES6/ES7.

Learning an applicable skill is almost never useless.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#110

Post by geowwy »

factsaresacred wrote: post #109
geowwy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is right though – new tech nearly always disappears. Example: Learning CoffeeScript was a total waste of time. Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me. Based on past experience, I strongly suspect the same will happen with React, Rust and a bunch of other new exciting tech. There are countless examples besides the ones I mentioned. But on the other hand, the time I put…

> Learning JQuery helped me for a few years, but now JQuery is basically useless to me. 'A few years' is a solid return on investment. Besides the reason Jquery is now useless is because Javascript now has those capabilities, so your skills were 'grandfathered' to ES6/ES7. Learning an applicable skill is almost never useless.

Yeah, I'm not saying it wasn't useful at the time, just that it's not useful now. As opposed to learning SQL or shell scripting which will probably be useful my entire career.
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