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New Grad vs. Senior Dev

ericlippert.com

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Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#241

Post by scubbo »

mister_hn wrote: post #156
maliker wrote: post #136

I'm the senior dev on my team, and whenever a new dev joined my team they would look at the codebase and go "ew, python2? Just use python3." That gave me a chance to explain the testing and refactoring cost that would come with changing python versions, and how the benefits to users would be almost zero. And then at some point one of the new juniors said, "hey, there's a lot of filesystem performance improvements and…

Not everyone is accepting suggestions like you. I am a senior dev and I always try to push new ideas to my team lead (senior dev and older than me), but all I get is blatant criticism because he says "I've tested it and didn't like it). A clear example: refusing to move to Spring Boot and still staying on the dead horse JavaEE, which got more complicated and fragmented than ever since Java 9

Good Lord. And here I thought I was being a stick-in-the-mud by gently reminding our new upstart that, yes, moving from Spring to Guice would bring us some new functionality, but it would also lose other functionality and have a non-zero migration cost.

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#242

Post by bambataa »

on3 wrote: post #38
TeMPOraL wrote: post #11

Oh god. That meme. I've seen it a day or two ago. Can't find the picture anywhere now (I've seen it in some group chat). Anyway, beyond the words quoted at the beginning of this article, the meme's "nested loops go brrr" had a picture of a triple-nested loop using Active Record to do some simple database operations. To which the correct response is: "it's a 'senior developer' in an industry where you get called a 'se…

Found it: https://i.redd.it/lmrf72ko0ro41.png

It's probably based on some other meme I'm not familiar with but I really love how this borders on the absurd.

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#243

Post by burpsnard »

Supermancho wrote: post #219
commandlinefan wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other other hand, I’ve worked on system that stuck with “the old way” (like ColdFusion) for so long that it was impossible to even find documentation on the old programming environment if you could find somebody willing to maintain it. The longer you wait to upgrade, the more it’s going to hurt when you finally do.

Having been in this situation, as well, I find that the aging out of technology MUST be led by a CTO who is competent enough to know that tipping point of cost-benefit. Their job immediately becomes a political choice (pass the pain to the next guy) when the point has passed and it gets worse every new CTO. Some of these systems are HUGE (hudreds of millions of lines of ColdFusion, where I worked).

in a way it's quite a testament to it's utility.

Allaire were there with a workable solution, before jsp, php, (?) asp. Iirc only perl was serious competition.

I still sometimes see lotus notes '.nsf' links

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#244

Post by nickysielicki »

I think it's really interesting how complexity theory sort of falls apart in the face of hardware-specifics and concrete use cases. The motto in computer architecture is to make the common case fast (it's in like every textbook), whereas the motto in computer science is to make the program scale/to solve generically. When push comes to shove (as this article shows), the computer architects seem to have the final word, at least when it comes to making things go more brrrrrr.

There's so much stress and attention given to complexity theory for software engineers, to the point that people will cram for hours to make it through FAANG interviews. I understand that it's important and it's just something that everyone has to go through... but data structure and algorithm performance is a Wikipedia search away, and then you choose the appropriate STL container and move on with your life. The same can't be said for gaining an understanding of modern processors.

I'm not saying that one is more important than the other or vice-versa, I'm just saying that it seems wrong to me that not knowing algorithms and data structures can break an interview, whereas not knowing hardware is virtually a non-factor.

The big take away for me is this: if you're not benchmarking, you're cargo culting.

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#245

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

allover wrote: post #218
Lapsa wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that main reason for adaptation of microservices is to actually prolong development time (moar dollars) and make devops as convoluted as possible to safeguard data. Or foolishness.

You're assuming malice over incompetence. Having heard mainly "nothing but guff" justifications for microservices in non-enormous orgs, I think (as usual, and some law I forget dictates) the latter is more likely.

You're thinking of Hanlon's razor.

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#247

Post by burpsnard »

mister_hn wrote: post #156
maliker wrote: post #136

I'm the senior dev on my team, and whenever a new dev joined my team they would look at the codebase and go "ew, python2? Just use python3." That gave me a chance to explain the testing and refactoring cost that would come with changing python versions, and how the benefits to users would be almost zero. And then at some point one of the new juniors said, "hey, there's a lot of filesystem performance improvements and…

Not everyone is accepting suggestions like you. I am a senior dev and I always try to push new ideas to my team lead (senior dev and older than me), but all I get is blatant criticism because he says "I've tested it and didn't like it). A clear example: refusing to move to Spring Boot and still staying on the dead horse JavaEE, which got more complicated and fragmented than ever since Java 9

one client of mine has stuck to java8, way ahead of your curve there ;)

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#248

Post by bogdanu »

burpsnard wrote: post #240
bogdanu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reverse of this also happens: new team manager joins a team of 4-5 dev and goes "eww... a monolith, we'll write an MVP in 3 weeks with microservices, CQRS and all". Long story short, one year and a half passes and the mvp is still not finished, the architect leaves the company and some poor guys (from an outsourcing company) are still going at it with the same architecture.

> some poor guys.. still going at it that's how you earn your thousand yard stare

I have that stare from the first few months of my career. The perks of working in outsourcing I guess.

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#249

Post by mokus »

dmurray wrote: post #233
drewmol wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the answer is almost certainly that Python3 or some key libraries didn't exist. This has not been my experience, even within the past few years on occasion.

Really? The only other answer I can imagine is "all our other projects are in Python 2". And generally that means you will reuse some code from those projects. What other reasons have you seen?

By far the most common I run into (even for code started in 2020) - “I dunno, I just typed ‘python’ and used that”

Re: New Grad vs. Senior Dev

#250

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

cameronfraser wrote: post #173
bogdanu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reverse of this also happens: new team manager joins a team of 4-5 dev and goes "eww... a monolith, we'll write an MVP in 3 weeks with microservices, CQRS and all". Long story short, one year and a half passes and the mvp is still not finished, the architect leaves the company and some poor guys (from an outsourcing company) are still going at it with the same architecture.

CQRS and microservices has so much overhead, I'm amazed at how many companies adopt microservices without having anyone know a single thing about distributed systems. I think people underestimate the glue required to make microservices be useful. I had a similar situation at my last company where they spent a year and a half converting their monolith into half ass microservices and it still wasn't working properly. T…

They are adopting microservices for the wrong reasons. It's easy for them to scale up, they don't need to scale out.
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