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Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they're using an alternate exact representation for floats by default, that's just rounding them when printing.

That's a fair point about the Perl example, but Scheme and Common Lisp (including both Chicken and SBCL, last I checked) support (if not outright require) full numeric towers with rational number types, so these are indeed exact representations (unless you explicitly request binary floats for e.g. performance reasons) and not just rounding during printing. There are lots of other examples of doing it "right" (using m…

It depends. Do you want deterministic compute time? Then you have to settle for something inaccurate.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#52
post #18

I had the same issue. Then I went back to the roots: Lisp And learned Clojure. You will feel like you know nothing. You will feel handicapped. You will be confused. Then, one day, you will understand what simplicity means and how Clojure's design embraces that more than in any other language I know. By then you will have embraced the flying-by-your-pants-exploratory style of programming at the REPL. And don't want to…

How do you reconcile this with your day job? Or did you go on to work with Clojure full-time?

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they're using an alternate exact representation for floats by default, that's just rounding them when printing.

That's a fair point about the Perl example, but Scheme and Common Lisp (including both Chicken and SBCL, last I checked) support (if not outright require) full numeric towers with rational number types, so these are indeed exact representations (unless you explicitly request binary floats for e.g. performance reasons) and not just rounding during printing. There are lots of other examples of doing it "right" (using m…

I am aware of numeric towers and actually checked whether that was going on.

sbcl 1.4.16 uses single floats: https://ideone.com/ruw5qi

I don't know enough about Scheme to dig under the covers to see how it's being represented internally.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#54

20 years is a long time in anything. My first piece of advice is that nobody here knows who you are, nobody here knew you as a teenager, and nobody is going to understand what "love programming" and "don't enjoy it" actually means for you. The point is: anybody who claims that they got de-burned-out with this one trick isn't necessarily dishonest or naive, and if something in the comments here resonates, then by all…

Sorry to change topics, but are you able to expand a little on what made F# miserable. I ask as I was looking at learning it in the hopes that it would provide a positive developer experience. I would be very interested in finding out why it didn't work for someone else.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not unique to JS. $ irb irb(main):001:0> 0.1 + 0.2 => 0.30000000000000004 irb(main):002:0> $ iex Erlang/OTP 22 [erts-10.6.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:16:16] [ds:16:16:10] [async-threads:1] [hipe] Interactive Elixir (1.10.2) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help) iex(1)> 0.1 + 0.2 0.30000000000000004 iex(2)> $ python Python 2.7.17 (default, Dec 2 2019, 13:23:33) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 11.0.0 (…

Interestingly, though, some languages get it right: northrup@Topaz:~/Desktop$ perl -de1 Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.55 Editor support available. Enter h or 'h h' for help, or 'man perldebug' for more help. main::(-e:1): 1 DB say 0.1 + 0.2 0.3 […] northrup@Topaz:~$ csi CHICKEN (c) 2008-2019, The CHICKEN Team (c) 2000-2007, Felix L. Winkelmann Version 5.1.0 (rev 8e62f718) linux-unix-gnu-x86-64 [ 64bit…

Comparing lisps with their full numeric towers to run of the mill procedural languages is a little unfair ;)

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#57
A few things to consider...

Try side projects. Could be something you're been thinking of trying out (scratching an itch), or to learn something new.

For example, recently I made a macOS Quicklook plugin for displaying the Basic listing for program files for the first 8-bit computer I learned to code on (https://github.com/sebastienboisvert/ZX81QuickLook).

Another one I'm working on is modernizing support for a USB video capture device (https://github.com/btrask/EasyCapViewer).

The first one was a lot of fun for me, as it got me back to my 'roots' (re-acquainting myself with Z80 assembly, besides the nostalgia aspects), and along the way I learned some of the newer features of CSS and JavaScript (it had been so long since I worked in JS that I didn't know it had async functions now!). The second one is out of my 'comfort zone', and is forcing me to learn some new unfamiliar frameworks that need to replace the old code.

Initially, I wanted to only allow myself to start on them once I had completed doing a lot of other things that needed to get done (being such a procrastinator) - but I found that just doing them without those restrictions relaxed me more, and allowed me to get those things done more easily anyways (it served as a diversion, but a good one that I didn't need to feel guilty about).

If you're coding day-in day-out, doing the same routine, think about 'tuning out' at night - leave the computer off, and do something else altogether; take up a new hobby, or read some books, or anything that interests you. The point is to change the scenery a bit to recharge.

If it's available to you, you might consider taking on (or asking for/seeking) something that's new to you at work, that opens up new opportunities, both for learning and potential advancement. Any good employer should recognize and appreciate that.

As others have noted, 20 years is fairly long time, especially if you've only done the same general thing; as such, it might also be worth considering a bigger change. Maybe it's time to take on something else that's more challenging, that can help you grow. That could be something along the tracks of a more managerial nature (or simply taking on more of a leadership role, if that sound too scary), or perhaps something in an entirely new direction.

There's a lot of good feedback here - soak it in, think about it, and consider what might help you get that excitement back. Making changes doesn't mean you give up what you love doing - it might be simply the thing you need to rekindle your interest in it.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#58
post #54

20 years is a long time in anything. My first piece of advice is that nobody here knows who you are, nobody here knew you as a teenager, and nobody is going to understand what "love programming" and "don't enjoy it" actually means for you. The point is: anybody who claims that they got de-burned-out with this one trick isn't necessarily dishonest or naive, and if something in the comments here resonates, then by all…

Sorry to change topics, but are you able to expand a little on what made F# miserable. I ask as I was looking at learning it in the hopes that it would provide a positive developer experience. I would be very interested in finding out why it didn't work for someone else.

Hopefully OP will response. I read ojna's post to mean that he prefers F# over Python, but that the rest of the job around the F# programming was miserable (maybe biz, org, process, and personality stuff was bad).

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#59
post #42
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was it about JavaScript that wanted you to leave programming? I'm just curious.

As someone considering leaving the web development industry after 12 years: JavaScript is a never ending grind. Callbacks, then Bluebird, then Promises, then a sync await. a new testing framework every six months. a new web framework every couple of years. aimless, massive changes to the language (classes in a prototyped language? Why not). JavaScript then coffeescript then three versions of typescript. too many UI l…

'JavaScript is a never ending grind' - Wow no better way to summarize it than that. The funny thing is that I've always felt that Javascript the language is pretty straight forward and easy to comprehend. As someone who primarily writes Ruby and really appreciates the functional style of writing code, Javascript lends itself to that style very easily.

But the ecosystem around is just that never ending grind. At my last job, over the 3 or so years I was working fully stack, it was just a constant churn. Start with React / Redux / SRR / Jest / Mocha / (probably some other testing frameworks) / Flow. By the end none of the original testing frameworks were being used. React had introduced Hooks, which I actually like, but it was a whole new paradigm to learn again. Flow was out and we needed to migrate to Typescript as quick as possible. And this is just the React ecosystem!

React has its place and I'm definitely comfortable working with it (also writing 0 tests cause I have no idea where to even start for that) but I'm looking forward to the day maybe simple web apps get back to simple setups. Projects like LiveView[0] for Phoenix really give that hope.

[0] - https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#60

20 years is a long time in anything. My first piece of advice is that nobody here knows who you are, nobody here knew you as a teenager, and nobody is going to understand what "love programming" and "don't enjoy it" actually means for you. The point is: anybody who claims that they got de-burned-out with this one trick isn't necessarily dishonest or naive, and if something in the comments here resonates, then by all…

> As a society we tend to think of therapists as something you do when you're mentally ill, but you don't just go to the dentist when you suspect you have a cavity

I started seeing a therapist about a year ago and went through a similar mental switch. I used to think of them as, like "mind doctors" to fix you when something is going wrong. But now I realize therapists are much more like personal trainers for your mind.

I'm not mentally ill or suffering any particular crisis and I still get a ton of my therapy appointments. It's basically an hour with a really smart person deeply trained in psychology who helps me make the most out of my particular brain and personality.

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