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Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

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Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#101

Post by jdmoreira »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #96
jdmoreira wrote: post #10

1. When I realized programming was hard That’s it. For a long time I thought I was good at programming and I kept making the same mistakes over and over. All nighters, leet coding, runtime hacks, etc... And then one day it struck me. It’s hard and my mind can’t keep up with yesterday’s cowboy coding. Slowly I started putting defense mechanisms everywhere - good type systems, immutability, compile type instead of runt…

How did this work - genuinely curious? If you work as a team did everyone else stop being a cowboy too then pay down that tech debt? Or is this solo work or perpetual greenfield work?

It’s a bit more complicated than I made it look of course. My bit didn’t flip in a day and the reason why I changed my ways was also because I've worked with a few people that seemed to have figured this out already and just by observing them I could figure it out myself.

Nowadays it really depends, some people for sure get it more than others. Some just dismiss a lot of the safeguards I value as some kind of functional programming hype. Teams are hard :)

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#102

Post by thorin »

kleiba wrote: post #74

1. When I realized programming was easy That's it. For a long time, when I thought of the hardest stuff to program, I was thinking of computer games. Mind you, not the latest AAA billion dollar development budget 300+ people on the team kind of games. No - given my age, I was thinking about single-programming doing code and graphics and sounds on a C64 kind of games. To me, it was incomprehensible how one person alon…

After watching the first few weeks of Handmade Hero [1] I realised my idea of hard work and dedication was different to a lot of people I was trying to emulate. Doing this as a spare time, free project and the amount of knowledge and experience on-show was incredible

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3EtYb8d1o

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#103

Post by quickthrower2 »

You can get paid more and have an easier time.

You can’t possibly know what a company you join will be like until you actually have been working there 12 months.

For large code bases you can’t really rearchitect anything. You are stuck with how it works. Maybe on small scales you can refactor.

Don’t blindly apply design patterns. SOLID is good as a thinking framework rather than a code review gate.

Marketing isn’t what you think it is until you study it somewhat. E.g. it’s not glossy ads!

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#104

Post by vbsteven »

That everything software and most hardware/electronics is just logic all the way down with different levels of abstraction.

This is why I love software so much and struggle with people. Software is all logic and mostly deterministic, while with people feelings are involved (which could be argued to be also deterministic but then we get into philosophic discussions about free will)

But on the software/hardware side, any bug can be resolved by digging through the layers of abstraction and figuring out where the logic error is.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#105

Post by howlinbash »

haroldegibbons wrote: post #59

My "aha" moment was realizing most of my ideas and most apps out there are complete garbage. Not needed. Damaging, even. 99.9% of all of it. For example, most "cutting edge" web apps are better off as PHP monoliths. Facebook was a PHP file for a long time. But most apps in general should never make it past being shell scripts, which are better off staying as spreadsheets or better - text files which are better off as…

I've been a lurker for 5 years.

Congratulations you just wrote my favourite comment on hacker news.

Thanks for the laugh.

You certainly make a strong case.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#106

Post by quickthrower2 »

logicslave12 wrote: post #11

When I watched a world class software engineer build a real time data processing platform using only functional programming. At a major company, over ten teams were automated in a year. Beautiful and useful abstractions around data and data processing tasks that provided extreme value. I could never replicate it, but it reminded me about the power of software and the extreme ability that some have to weird it.

If someone is given the freedom to think and apply it can be amazing. Most companies don’t support this though. This was my experience early on in my career - hardly anyone wants to let coders think, instead it’s about fitting in to the processes. Not saying I’m that clever just common sense stuff. Like err let’s not get 3 people to simultaneously build 3 similar screens in the app.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#107

Post by superasn »

My aha moment was that it is 100x better to focus on one project and make it the absolutely very best instead of trying 10 things.

With these new and easy frameworks it's incredibly easy and quick to create new projects but creating and launching something is just the tip of the iceberg.

The main work comes after that, i.e. traffic, leads, conversions, optimization, etc which unfortunately can only be done with good old tedious hardwork and laser focus.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#109

Post by etripe »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #103

You can get paid more and have an easier time. You can’t possibly know what a company you join will be like until you actually have been working there 12 months. For large code bases you can’t really rearchitect anything. You are stuck with how it works. Maybe on small scales you can refactor. Don’t blindly apply design patterns. SOLID is good as a thinking framework rather than a code review gate. Marketing isn’t wh…

> You can’t possibly know what a company you join will be like until you actually have been working there 12 months

Does it actually take you 12 months, or did you mean that as a measured, sensible statement? Or are you perhaps looking at it from a bi-directional loyalty or advancement perspective and not just general culture?

For me, that would only apply to companies that I interpret as middling/unimpressive at first glance. The really good or bad companies stick out much more, so I can usually tell by the hiring and onboarding processes and the first couple of tasks you're given, even as a consultant.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer what are your aha moments?

#110

Post by mcv »

When I realised that programming is just taking a big problem and chopping it into a couple of smaller problems, and then repeating that until your problems are trivial.

The first time (1993) I was logged in on a remote machine and downloaded a file to there from another remote machine. It was just magic that the machine I was touching had nothing to do with that file.

When I hacked together a mailinglist system in shell script.

When I realised that C is basically just all memory locations.

When I understood closures.

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