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How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

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Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#141

Post by petra »

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…

Yes "avoid learning anything new" is a bit weird.

There are some things that are relatively easy to learn, and would make it so much easier on you. How, as a poor programmer, can you afford not to learn them ?

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#142

Post by Havoc »

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…

Probably just poorly phrased.

Something like "there are more new langs than you have time. Choose wisely"

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#143

Post by AVGProgrammer »

bjoli wrote: post #115
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…

Let me quote a friend that ranted about this very subject about a week ago: I am of extremely average intelligence. On the absolute top of the bell curve, looking down at the rest of you. I am extremely tired of the whole attitude that _anything is possible if you just put your mind to it_. I put my mind to it. That is how I got through CS in university. I worked at least twice as hard as the people that said _just p…

Man this kinda feels like me, first I thought "anything is possible, just put your mind to it", but after encountering a crazy good programmer at my job I think differently.

I have a bachelor degree, 36 years old, and I feel like I have reached my ceiling. I still think that I make progression, but it is so slow compared to some really good programmers at my job.

It sometimes makes me feel insecure, and I think of quiting my job, because it feels like I will never be able to be as good as others. On the other hand, maybe I should just accept that this is it, it wont get any better.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#144

Post by oytis »

ALAN might be a good advice, but software is such a miserable place unless you can learn and apply new stuff. My boredom would get me if I would do things the same way every time.

UPD: just realized who the author is. He _does_ learn a lot of new things, just not in software development, because it's not the focus of his career.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#145

Post by ensiferum »

gabrielblack wrote: post #72

> Only learn something new when forced This could be devastating, much more in little/medium company. I know of successful companies (I mean company with successful products ) with a C/C++ stack they considered "good enough" so they didn't change anything: the C++ standards, architecture, structures. Often that line of conduct was supported by a management looking any change or improvement as a cost. The result is al…

Just because something is old or uses old framework or old standard doesn't make it crap. Crappy code is crap, but it age doesn't make it crap. Code doesn't rust or detoriarate by itself.

Example if you write good code now using C++14. If it's good code now it will continue to be good code 20 years later. There's no property that adds bugs or "crappiness" to the code as the years go past. The invention of a new "c++40" standard doesn't obsolete old code or turn it "crap".

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#146

Post by yabadabadoes »

AVGProgrammer wrote: post #143
bjoli wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me quote a friend that ranted about this very subject about a week ago: I am of extremely average intelligence. On the absolute top of the bell curve, looking down at the rest of you. I am extremely tired of the whole attitude that _anything is possible if you just put your mind to it_. I put my mind to it. That is how I got through CS in university. I worked at least twice as hard as the people that said _just p…

Man this kinda feels like me, first I thought "anything is possible, just put your mind to it", but after encountering a crazy good programmer at my job I think differently. I have a bachelor degree, 36 years old, and I feel like I have reached my ceiling. I still think that I make progression, but it is so slow compared to some really good programmers at my job. It sometimes makes me feel insecure, and I think of qu…

I was mostly the follow your curiosity type with a few areas I worked hard.. I noticed much later that the reason I impressed teachers and later coworkers is that I'd seen everything before..

CS is an extension of math, a hard science where you seek validation from reality instead of others. If you take the style of the mathematician all comes easy. CS is an extension of linguistics, there might be a style that works there too, but there is also the lost people who count snowflakes instead of noticing snow is all about the same.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#147

Post by ch_123 »

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…

> Example: Learning CoffeeScript was a total waste of time.

Given how CS inflenced the ES6 (and later) revisions of Javascript, I find that hard to believe unless you stopped writing CS and went back to writing JS exactly as you did before.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#148

Post by dagw »

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 a total waste of time.

In what way? I too jumped on the CoffeeScript train, but considered it on the whole time well spent. First of all I wrote a couple of useful things with it so there is that. But more importantly having gotten used to the CS way of doing things made it much easier to jump to ES6 and many of concepts from CS could easily be re-used.

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#149

Post by scoutt »

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's a C++ programmer, so I assume he can also code in C. So do I.

When you go so low-level, then everything else just translates to "overhead" and it's always a trade-off (for example exchanging performance with "fast coding" or "easy of use").

At that point, you know there is nothing better, if better is understood in terms as "performance" (I develop firmware), so there is little room for improvement. Maybe rust? I don't know. It may just be another trade-off.

"Ease of use" and "coding speed" are things that should be interesting to our bosses in order to save a few bucks.

> others are doing that might be better

Of course, in my case I am always open for new techniques: I'd be rather looking and understanding how John Carmack splits and scans BSP trees instead of thinking that X language will do it for me (at the cost of "insert trade-off here").

But no. Just as the author, I'm not going to learn node.js because "new".

Re: How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer

#150

Post by dagw »

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…

I think there is a lot of disagreement about what 'learning' means and how long it takes. I while back I got curious about Elixir. So I downloaded it, skimmed the documentation, worked through a couple of tutorials and wrote a couple of trivial things. Took me half a day. I now feel I have a pretty good feel for what Elixir is and what its strong points are. Absolutely doesn't feel like a waste of time, even if I never write another line of Elixir in my life.
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