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Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

#171

Post by dirtnugget »

While many smart people here I believe said the most important things, I would like to add:

Do not accept "magical" behaviour.

I came across quite some projects which had Cypress E2E tests which were, according to the developers, "unstable".

So what is the magic part which makes it fail? There is no such thing as an instable test as such in a test environment, in this case it was a broken test with unmocked data which occasionally threw errors, depending on the OS and speed of the machine it was running on.

In another scenario the was a random number involved, which randomly chose a picture in the test development and depending wether it needed cropping or not, an additional popup would open.

I was told: "well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't". Nobody actually investigated further, tests were excluded instead. Noone ever looked at the artifacts/screenshots/logs.

Always investigate, there is a reason for every "magical" behaviour.

Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

#172

Post by collyw »

_gy5c wrote: post #96

I consider this essential: The ability to decouple the task from your ego. Specifically: - Never say "Got it" or "OK" when someone is explaining a problem or solution and you don't follow. It feels awkward to say "Sorry, I'm still not following. Do you mean that when..." five times in the same conversation but it is worth your time and embarrassment to come away with a correctly framed and well understood situation.…

> Never say "Got it" or "OK" when someone is explaining a problem or solution and you don't follow.

The absolute worst is when a colleague does this on your behalf.

Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

#173

Post by collyw »

gambler wrote: post #72

The IT industry doesn't really need "programmers". It needs people who build quality software systems. There is a difference. The essential skill to look for is the ability to imagine some system working differently from how it works right now. A good engineer should be able to imagine several novel, alternative states and compare them, thinking of various consequences and trade-offs.

There are plenty of cases where some shitty code will bring value to a company or person. Most junior programmers don't build stuff that is especially good.

Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

#174

Post by collyw »

mmargerum wrote: post #25
dagw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met plenty of programmers who had no sincere interest, but just saw it as a job they did 9-5 and then never thought about computers outside of those times. Programming was simply seen as a skill that could lead to comfortable, reasonably well paid job, and that was all the incentive they needed to learn the minimal amount needed to get said job. Basically as long you have an incentive to want to learn and a bit…

This would be the worst job ever if I didn't love it. I can't imagine doing it otherwise.

I don't especially enjoy my work, but the people I work with are decent and it pays the bills.

Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

#179

Post by catwind7 »

Scandiravian wrote: post #170
catwind7 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree - I think I'm probably coming off as disagreeing with you though. I think the difference for me is that the importance of communication for solo programming is a bit of a sliding scale depending on what your goals are. There aren't many exceptions when you work on a team. When I use the word importance, I'm tying it to a notion of necessity in relation to some goal. Team goals trump individual goals i…

I would extend the term "communication" to also include how we speak and listen to ourselves I don't think I am able to explain it clearly without writing a very long post. There's a really good book by Marshal Rosenberg, titled non-violent communication, which gives a better explanation than I can right now. I would recommend it to pretty much anyone, if only for the very healthy way of treating oneself that it prov…

Ah, I see. Thank you for clarifying that. That book sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

Thanks for taking the time to engage! I've also learned quite a bit reading through everyone's responses.

Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

#180

Post by catwind7 »

mikewarot wrote: post #160
bobwall wrote: post #13

Learning what questions to ask into Google is a critical aspect. Most of the time, coding is the process of writing some code, and then debugging it. Knowing to ask, my graphql endpoint is failing with a status of 500, vs. my graphql doesn't work. The first will help you narrow down the issue, the second is far too generic. I have been coding for over 20 years now, and I feel it is rinse and repeat in terms of hittin…

Google falls down flat unless you know "magic words". Example... let's say you want to be able to mark up a web page to highlight some aspect of it, like using a highlighter on a newspaper... you can't google hypertext markup... you have to go for "annotation" Growing Google-fu is like getting good at smelling bad code, it takes experience, which you get via frustration and the application of gumption.

I've noticed myself scrolling farther and farther down search results. There's so much SEO'd garbage at the top of the fold now.
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