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

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

#111

you say you started doing programming as a hobby which means it used to be fun, right? you might want to isolate the aspects of what made it fun back in the days when it was a hobby and what makes it dreadful at the moment and find yourself something which include the first, but lacks the later. personally i think the attractive side of being a developer is creating something. reading you're not interested in busines…

Honestly, I've always enjoyed chasing the "rabbit hole" that came with solving problems. I'm generally poor at putting my thoughts into concrete descriptions, but I'll attempt. It used to be something like this:

I have some sort of problem, ideally one that intrigues me, because it's not obvious. I would dive into it, and it would lead down to a rabbit whole of other issues and subjects I would research and would come out with a solution, having been engaged the whole time.

Nowadays, problems I encounter are either incredibly shallow, being caused because of some carelessness by myself or someone else and often solved with a 5 minute search, or the complete opposite, too complex for me to even get started with, as people much smarter than me.

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

#112
post #70
post #38

It's possible, though I don't know you, that you're too smart to be a programmer. And maybe "programmer" is the problem. Be a _____ who can also code. Zed Shaw said it best in the final pages of learn python the hard way. Programming as a career is rarely fulfilling to anyone. But being a teacher/doctor/librarian/entrepreneur/warehouse worker/farmer/etc. that can code is a super power. I'm basically talking to myself…

> Programming as a career is rarely fulfilling to anyone. I think this is unnecessarily controversial. "Rarely to anyone" needs evidence. Plenty of happy programmers around. I get your (or Zed Shaw's?) point though. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a programmer, but programming for the sake of programming is a fast way to get bored or to burn out. Programming is a tool. It doesn't hold inherent value without…

I definitely should have clarified my statement further as I agree with yours and you seem to disagree with mine. Let's go with yours.

"... programming for the sake of programming is a fast way to get bored or to burn out."

That's exactly right.

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

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. My own suspicion is that you the OP is highly intelligent and recognizes all of these weaknesses due to his own intelligence rather than a lack of it. I can relate to some of these things in a way. When I was 15 I tried to teach myself TC++. I got hung up on pointers and thought that I just wasn't smart enough to understand them. Many years later I had somebody who helped me understand pointers and I realized t…

On the other hand though, could you say that someone's interests are to a degree dictated by their capabilities? It seems to me like the distinguishing factor between someone who is interested in a challenging field vs. someone who is not, is that the person interested often understands the material to a degree that maybe the other person is unable to. For them studying and doing the work may take substantially less…

Yes, and! Things are often less black and white than this. The more I dig into what I think I want, the more influences I find. I want to impress my parents, I want to provide a super safe and comfortable life for my partner, I want people to notice the company I work for and smile and think I'm smart. As I take the time to pull those things apart, and wow does it take time, the call to teach and write is quieter but maybe truer? I don't know. I have to test it out.

TL;DR I think disinterest is driven by a combination of capability and soul AND (sometimes very loud) outside influences.

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

#114
I would be grateful you have a job; most software engineering jobs pay relatively well. Be grateful for this pay.

Find something outside of work that excites you if work doesn't excite you. Work isn't everything. If the actual thing you do at work doesn't excite you, try making friends at work who do excite you.

If writing simple CRUD apps is boring, it sounds like you actually have some aptitude afterall. If it's boring, try to find the sweet spot of challenge with capability. It sounds like you are capable of more than what you are doing now, so gravitate in that direction and move from there.

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

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to recognizing patterns in programming and such, I have a couple questions: * did you ever go to college for programming? if not, a lot of the 'patterns' people see were beaten into their heads in college, so that's something that can be helped :) * have you ever done competitive programming, like TopCoder problems (the old ones. Last I checked, TopCoder has gotten WAY over my head and probably a lot of…

Never went to school, i did have an brief experience with competitive programming back in HS, but didn't do very well.

Oh! Well then there you go! Let's get you sitting down and doing algorithm stuff! It may help you a ton! Honestly, it's a lot of boring stuff, but the idea is to get your brain thinking in a different way :)

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

#117
> I've tried to branch out into a number of different things, but nothing sticks. I fail to understand, fail to recognize patterns, am too slow to understand simple concepts and never retain anything.

I am doing my Masters in Statistics after doing my BS in Computer Science. It was overwhelming and like you, I felt I do not understand even the basic concepts and it takes longer to grasp the simpler concepts. But I realized I just have to spend more time on topics I do not understand and ask for help from my peers.

From my experience, in terms of learning new subject, I think what you are feeling/facing is expected and you just have to push through it.

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

#118
post #11
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…

Agreed.

Another factor, though, is that the interest generated from programming can be related to the thing a person is working on. A crescent wrench would be a boring object if all you did was wack it against the ground. But if it becomes a critical feature in constructing something, one probably acquires an interest. I can say that there are many things within this general field of playing-with-computers that I have previously found uninteresting, and now am quite fascinated about, but only because I've found uses. I've also been painfully unenthusiastic about some assigned work.

I'd also find it unlikely that humans in general are not interested in "making things," and insofar as programming/software is a vehicle for this, do possess an intrinsic potential to explore the field and acquire an interest. But the field rewards the independent-minded, as it's mostly through your own work, on your own projects, that generate a lasting interest (I believe).

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

#119
post #45
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. There are more people writing programs as a daily grind for a paycheck than as passionate artisans practicing their craft, and it's only getting more so as "CS" becomes an increasingly blue-collar field…

Not sure what you're disagreeing with. I don't think the person you're responding to thinks it's /impossible to get a gig as a programmer for a while, but that it's not going to yield a fulfilling career if one is merely chasing a paycheck. I think that's about right.

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

#120

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…

To be honest, this advice is a little prescriptive and facile, and you self admit that it's pretty limited. Giving talks at a conference, working on crypto-consensus algos and research-oriented consulting -- none of that really puts you through the experience of owning something long term which customers use. That's not to say I'd disagree with it (certainly not a be all end all). The inclusion of nofap and relationship avoidance is a little prudish and odd, but I can understand the draw of intentionally ascetic focus. Nutrition is 100% an often underestimated thing when it comes to productivity -- calibrating your diet pays dividends when it comes to maintaining productivity. Finally, the note that pattern recognition is basic brain function and everyone has it is true, the exhortion to stop reading crap like politics and twitter is probably correct if you binge read it and don't consume it in a healthy manner, and who really does? What you're saying is that there are a lot of things that are inside your control. What's really here to disagree with?

If we read between the lines here, it's clear that the OP is struggling not with what they were literally describing (somehow not being smart enough) and instead something different (burnout and maybe depression). And, if that's the case, then, as another commentator noted, "mental issues can can make subjective impressions unreliable or misleading" -- if this is the case, planning for increased productivity and mental hygiene (as wonderful as that all is) is probably not going to be a very useful next step. The next step is addressing the root cause, which is career dissatisfaction, potentially early career dissatisfaction.

First of all, OP, do you enjoy the labor and lifecycle of permanently helping your customers solve their problems? It's okay if you don't particularly care about the customers you are serving now while on the job -- you can change that. It's okay if you're not the star producer for the team -- you're still early on in your career, and so you're still learning to how to produce like a professional. What's important is that you at least somehow like the act of problem solving for customers, and that you are orienting yourself correctly to ensure you remain growing. It sounds like you feel like you're not growing anymore, or that you're stuck.

Why aren't you growing anymore? Is it a feeling, or a measurable issue with a very specific metric boundaries where it wouldn't be an issue? Are you running into problems inside your company or team? Do you think it would still be there if you were on a different team, or one at a different company? Do you think your issues have to do with purely internal factors or a mixture of both? Anywhere in between here could be possible, but if you're early career, just know that having experience at multiple companies really reduces a lot of ambiguity into things. Don't back project your identity in stone based off of a single work experience. Companies are a lot more chaotic free-for-alls than they are well run meritocracies, so it's not always easy to accurately trace back your track directly to your capability. Of course, as you do gather more data, you will be able to detect patterns and trends, but they'll be specific to you as a person. I think that's why it's important to work with a professional or in other way focus on healing if you're at the point of feeling burnt out, which is necessarily something that you have to spend some dedicated time recovering from (having been there before, it has taken me months before). For some folks, it can even be years.

First of all, you need to find a new job. Even if the new one doesn't work out, you need to collect data and experiences about what it's like at different companies. There's a world of difference between a stagnating train-car, a sinking ocean liner, and rocket ship. Once you've been on more than one and can figure out what kind of a situation you're in based on pattern recognition, it gets easier. You'll learn to figure out what you like and what you don't like. I aslo agree with the poster who says speak with a professional. It will take effort to find a good one, but keep at it. It's really worth it. There are so many things I used to think were insurmountable, or which were things about myself that were fixed in stone which I could never change, and that just really wasn't true. It took patience, mental flexibility, persistence and a lot of individual failures to end up getting to progress and momentum. If I had let individual setbacks permanently stop me, it would have been impossible to have gotten to where I am now. Don't give up.

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