Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 173 posts

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#11

Post by farias0 »

godelski wrote: post #4

I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a si…

Yeah, I guess the real question here is "do you love programming?" If you do you can make it work, it's a matter of not giving up and instead tweaking your learning system, practicing more and better, etc. If you don't you need to find another area.

Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#12

Post by hopeithelps53 »

How long have you been programming professionally? Do you think you are giving yourself a fair assessment based on how long you have been working in the industry? I ask to rule out the possibility that you are being hard on yourself or maybe have imposter syndrom. you say you find crud app building easy, this is not a statement which the general non-it population could say. Did you attend courses before working (university, college etc.)? Do you have good on the job mentorship or are you trying to figure everything out yourself? Do you have a person who is more senior who can give you honest constructive feedback and guidance?

If youve already made the decision you are leaving programming... Can you think of things you have enjoyed about your career to date (i.e. coding, testing, designing, meeting people etc)? and what was it that steered you towards the career in the first place?

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#13

Post by thomasmeeks »

My intuition is that you’d get more out of therapy than a career change right now. This sounds more like burnout or a lack of interest to me. But framing it as a lack of intelligence says a lot about how you view yourself, which could make a career change much harder than it needs to be.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#14

Post by throw3848yui »

I am something you could consider smart; wrote first program as 6 years old, gave talks at conferences, worked on crypto-concesus algos, now I do research oriented consulting.

Some points:

- pattern recognition is basic brain function and everyone has it

- you need PERFECT health to be smart; check testosterone, sleep, weight, nofap, exercise etc.. 90% people have brain fog for some stupid fixable reason

- there is nothing wrong with CRUD app maintenance if you make good money. Challenge is nice, but gets old very fast, unless it is a hobby.

- avoid relationship until your life is in order. Huge time sink and ruins concentration.

- stop reading crap (politics, twitter... )

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#15

Post by t-writescode »

godelski wrote: post #4

I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a si…

I think you hit the nail on the head here. This person tries to get us to believe they're stupid; but, if they believe that themselves, truly, then they're going to create self-fulfilling prophecies. They need to find something they're interested in to work on every day. 8 hours is a long time each day to be doing something, it's better if you're interested in it, so that at least some of those hours are fun.

And I will say, and I have often repeated that software development, programming, is a horrible job if you don't love it. Programming sucks if you don't enjoy it. It's too much thinking, too much abstracting, too much typing, too many meetings, and horribly, horribly boring - unless it's your thing, and then it's not.

OP, don't force it to be your thing if it's not your thing.

You may also have some depression. It may genuinely be worth seeing someone about that to help you navigate it and grow and cope with it. Depression is horrible, and any step that can be done to help yourself through it is a huge win for your own peace.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#16

Post by benkoller »

godelski wrote: post #4

I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a si…

I'd second that, somewhat. The things I'd consider myself to be good at are the things I care about. I can still quite clearly distinguish between personal and "business" interests, and don't feel a blurriness between both if I do not want them to blurr, but it is the one thing that has helped me (apart from being at the right time at the right place) to progress in my career.

What I'd take away from what both godelski and me are saying (if I were you): Find topics that sound interesting to you, dig your heels in, learn about those, play with the concepts. 9 times out of 10 something will come out of it, and if its just yourself understanding better what you're actually looking for.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#17

Post by emsy »

farias0 wrote: post #11
godelski wrote: post #4

I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a si…

Yeah, I guess the real question here is "do you love programming?" If you do you can make it work, it's a matter of not giving up and instead tweaking your learning system, practicing more and better, etc. If you don't you need to find another area. Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me…

I’ve seen enough colleagues who are just in it for the money and found a niche inside the company that avoids anything demanding. In that regard you can work in a mind numbing fashion that other, often lower paid, professions also have. I wouldn’t recommend it though because the trouble comes when switching jobs can’t be avoided.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#18

Post by xf1cf »

throw3848yui wrote: post #14

I am something you could consider smart; wrote first program as 6 years old, gave talks at conferences, worked on crypto-concesus algos, now I do research oriented consulting. Some points: - pattern recognition is basic brain function and everyone has it - you need PERFECT health to be smart; check testosterone, sleep, weight, nofap, exercise etc.. 90% people have brain fog for some stupid fixable reason - there is n…

There is nothing in this comment that strikes me as real. Not only was it completely unnecessarily to condescendingly talk about how allegedly smart you are, the points you gave sound like they came straight out of a wantrepreneur youtuber's vlog.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#19

Post by [deleted] »

adverbly wrote: post #10

When was the last time you were working on something and lost track of time? This an indicator that you were in a flow state. Dont go for something you love doing - not everyone has that. Find something you can focus on, and that you can zone out while doing. This is honestly all most people can hope for.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#20

Post by dasil003 »

Hard to offer any kind of constructive advice without some indication of your personality or what you do enjoy.

I'm skeptical of the idea that you're not smart enough. In my experience, becoming a good programmer requires some relatively low-threshold capacity for logical thinking combined with a tenacity for debugging and understanding how things work. Being a genius who picks up math and CS concepts quickly is far from required.

If you struggle with patterns and applications but are bored by simple CRUD apps then it may be the case that you just don't like programming that much. That would certainly make it very difficult to learn and retain anything.

Overall though, you sound more depressed than anything. If that is the case then it colors all perception of what you enjoy or don't enjoy, and probably should be addressed directly before making any major career decisions.

Post reply on HN