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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?

#141

Post by CM30 »

geocrasher wrote: post #51
cschep wrote: 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…

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…

> but I only get out those tools when I neede them to accomplish a primary goal.

Actually, I think this might be an interesting thing for the OP to look into in itself.

Since in my experience, people's interest in any field tends to fall along a spectrum between 'does it for the art/sake of it' and 'does it to achieve a certain goal'.

If you're the latter, then of course you're likely to struggle with a lot of tutorials, since you don't see the value in the end result. Why would I learn about some new code organisation setup to build this dummy notes app when I have absolutely zero need/interest in a notes app? If you're that kind of thinker, you'll struggle to maintain interest in many tutorials simply because there's no real payoff for them beyond 'build some useless crap nobody needs'.

Ad it may explain the lack of interest in work too. Some people just cannot enjoy working on things they themselves have no passion for. If that's the case, the OP may be best served by looking for a company that is working on something they have a personal interest in.

As said, that doesn't make for a bad programmer (or a bad anything in any field). It just means you've got a different incentive structure to people who create stuff for the sake of it.

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

#142

Post by vldx »

samatman wrote: post #42
thomasmeeks wrote: post #13

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.

I'd like to elaborate on this, and strongly urge OP to see a psychiatrist. The answer to your dilemma might be a new career. It might be cognitive behavioral therapy. It also might be an SSRI or modafinil. I have my guesses but they aren't at all interesting, the point is to get in touch with a professional who can help you figure this out. What you're experiencing isn't normal, or inevitable, and it doesn't mean you…

How modafinil might help? As treatment of potential undiagnosed ADHD?

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

#143

Post by Sammi »

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…

Disagree. "Do you love programming" is as useless a question as "do you love digging". Loving to dig holes is not a good nor sufficient reason to dig holes all day every day. It just ends up being Sisyphean and pointless.

You need a reason to do things. A problem to solve, because people are problem solving machines. We make up problems if we don't have any at hand. Games are made up problems. But making things better in some way, is the best and most motivating kind of problems people can have.

So don't program for programming sake's, program to solve a problem that you care about.

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

#144

Post by Sammi »

spyckie2 wrote: post #125

just to add in - you're not slow, you're probably average. When you start working, all the things you can learn in a weekend quickly evaporate within 1-2 years of your working career. The only things left to learn are those that take 3 months or more. These things take the right mindset to learn - continuing to think about them, tackle them, ignoring failure and coming back to it over and over because that's the natu…

MBTI is pseudoscience without any empirical backing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

Really the only personality test with any strong empirical backing is the Big Five test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

All other personality tests reduce down to the Big Five when you try to test for co variance.

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

#145

Post by fatbybaileys »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #139
bachmeier wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That follows from the part I quoted. It would be very unusual for someone to be good at a task they know they don't want to do and that they find mind numbingly boring.

No it wouldn't. That's the entire concept of working on an assembly line. Whether you're good at something is not strongly related to whether you like doing it.

It might not be so strongly related in contexts like assembly lines where the skill involved is either minimal or extremely easy to acquire (e.g. learn how to operate machine or follow a 3-step quality inspection), not to mention the repetition involved which kind of guarantees that anyone will eventually 'get the hang of it'. If my job was one task, I'd get good at after some time even if I hate.

In contrast, being good at jobs that require 'thinking slow' (reference to Daniel Kahneman's book) and creating solutions to new problems every single day usually require motivation or perseverance if you wish. These are more or less measures of interest and if you don't agree, then they are at least strongly related to interest.

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

#146

Post by growlist »

probably_wrong wrote: post #126
Mirioron wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the question that inevitably pops up from this: what do you do if nothing interests you in this way? There are interesting things, sure, but those are usually fleeting. You'll be interested in something for a month or two and then lose interest in it. You can't earn a living on that. What do you do then?

According to my father, the business world in my country is currently experiencing difficulties finding talent because, in the words of his bosses, "young people today are too soft and quit when things get slightly difficult". While there are many other factors here that I don't want to get into (such as loyalty being a two-way street and so on), I often wonder whether the idea of "this is not a hobby, it's a job" mi…

An older colleague of mine a few years back used to come out with some philosophical pearls of wisdom from time to time for us young'uns. I remember him saying once: 'Of course it's not going to be easy all the time - that's why they call it work'.

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

#147

Post by kls »

Mirioron wrote: post #135
prostheticvamp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a mental health specialist: No that is not. We treat disease. Pretending we can fine-tune personality traits is quackery, and no respectable mental health specialist would lay claim to that. But don’t worry - quacks abound, and they even take your insurance.

To be fair though, a part of ADHD can manifest itself this way. From what I've read it's a pretty common complaint that people with ADHD have trouble doing things they're not interested in. In a lot of those cases you also hear about how their interests change all the time.

Not really enough information to base a diagnosis on and not that I would be qualified to do so, but the thought certainly crossed my mind that the poster might consider being tested. Lack of interest and lack of maintained interest is certainly in the realm of possibility. Unlike other psychotropic meds, ADHD meds have a fairly high success rate and a rapid onset of effective treatment. Pretty much with one dose a person can tell if they are going to work for them or not. For most that suffer it's like night and day.

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

#148

Post by kaybe »

probably_wrong wrote: post #126
Mirioron wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the question that inevitably pops up from this: what do you do if nothing interests you in this way? There are interesting things, sure, but those are usually fleeting. You'll be interested in something for a month or two and then lose interest in it. You can't earn a living on that. What do you do then?

According to my father, the business world in my country is currently experiencing difficulties finding talent because, in the words of his bosses, "young people today are too soft and quit when things get slightly difficult". While there are many other factors here that I don't want to get into (such as loyalty being a two-way street and so on), I often wonder whether the idea of "this is not a hobby, it's a job" mi…

You know, I'm reminded of the way the CCC conferences are run. Basically, everything (except the toilet cleaners I think) is done by volunteers (aka the people visiting the conferences). I think usually about a third of the attendants do at least a little bit.

You just sign up in the system and choose a shift. Some jobs need an introduction and your account is cleared for them once you attended. If you meet a certain amount of shifts worked you get a t-shirt and preference at next-year-ticket purchases.

What you usually see is even the people with the menial jobs getting really into them as well. The ushers will experiment with new routing to make it faster, the people running the checkroom will optimize the hell out of it and have a competition with the next shift.. it's good fun.

This works because a) they want the whole endeavor to be a success, b) they are allowed to freely fulfill the roles and experiment, c) nobody in particular and everyone in total profits from the work done, d) you can pick up one shift or 20, it's up to you and surely a couple more.

I think it is possible to be passionate about packaging items for sure, but not like this. So I wouldn't say it's impossible to run society with UBI, but it will have to look quite different.

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

#149

Post by punkbit »

We only live once! Respect yourself and your feelings! Don't waste your energy listening to opinions of how you are supposed to feel, they are not you! People love to throw the buzz word around as if coding is the best thing ever...! The end users don't care! Employeers don't care! The people you create this things for don't care about how you feel! Find something that makes you happy and has a meaning in yours and other people's life! Beware that a lot of the people that tells you to take a break and that you're just tired, are not that sympathetic when you'd try to get back to the job market, where they'd ask you to go through 5 stage interviews and totally waste your time for no other reason then their own bullshit job. Be careful!

If you do want to try later on and do something related with tech, not necessarily as a coder, have in mind the bizarre startup world! A lot of people get funding for simple business ideas! So try to live a fulfilling life and if you ever want to comeback do your own business and create a nice work environment for your team!

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