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John Carmack: Career Advice

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Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#71

Post by patja »

st1x7 wrote: post #8

Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.

On one of my first programming jobs, they weren't quite ready for me, so they just told me to read all the manufacturer's documentation on the platform we were using. I managed to read most of it cover to cover. Within a month I was being recognized for doing things others who had been there a year weren't even aware were an option. I've always been the type to open up a new application and explore what every single menu option offers, as well as at least digesting the whole table of contents/index to the help file or documentation.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#72

Post by leobakerhytch »

didizaja wrote: post #62
patrec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation! I also find it quite interesting that you mentioned git specifically, because I’ve been going back and forth for the last few days with myself about whether I should spend the rest of Winter Break and next semester (I’m an undergrad with one semester left) learning git internals deeply. So, this felt somewhat validating of the perspective that I should learn about git more de…

You might like to try Write yourself a Git [0] (discussed here previously [1]). YMMV, but I find the best way to learn something deeply is to get hands on. Less of a chance of convincing yourself you understand something that you really don’t.

For less of a time commitment, Git from the inside out [2] is a really nice explanation of the internals, from initializing a repo and the files that creates in the .git directory, all the way to pulling from and pushing to remotes.

[0]: https://wyag.thb.lt/

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19386141

[2]: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#74

Post by tmotwu »

kranner wrote: post #17
hvasilev wrote: post #5

Tools change, fundamentals don't. I disagree that you should modify what you should learn in order to start contributing as fast as possible to a team. I think that the advice that he gave was a bad one.

The problem is that far fewer people get hired to work on the fundamentals than to operate the current industry-standard tools. Also many of the jobs that require fundamental skills seem to require steep academic credentials (e.g. a PhD from a big name university) that are sometimes more difficult to acquire than knowledge of the fundamentals itself.

I think people misunderstand about the advantages of understanding fundamentals. Yes, very few are inventing new tools, protocols or reimplementing known data structures or hash functions. But the point of mastering the fundamentals is to transform the way your brain thinks when it approaches all sorts of computing problems. It's a framework that allows you to deeply think about the correctness and speed of what you are trying to build, backed by tens of years of research.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#75

Post by ido »

patrec wrote: post #20
st1x7 wrote: post #8

Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.

I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…

The above explanation is great but I think the example you selected (git) is rarely the right thing to choose as for most companies git isn't where the money comes from (notable exceptions are companies like GitHub or GitLab). Sorta like the difference between working in the IT department vs Development (for a software company).

Maybe a better choice is something like CSS: there's actually a lot to know about it and a lot of companies need people who are good at it for their core product (even though it's not as deep a topic as say being very knowledgeable/skilled in functional programming).

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#77

Post by smiths1999 »

didizaja wrote: post #62
patrec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation! I also find it quite interesting that you mentioned git specifically, because I’ve been going back and forth for the last few days with myself about whether I should spend the rest of Winter Break and next semester (I’m an undergrad with one semester left) learning git internals deeply. So, this felt somewhat validating of the perspective that I should learn about git more de…

I'm sure many will come down hard on my comment and disagree. But speaking as someone who teaches at a university and also works in industry and is involved in hiring, I don't think becoming an expert in git is worth your time. At this stage in your career you should spend your time mastering algorithms, data structures, and a compiled language like Java or C++. I would put emphasis on learning how to use your language of choice idiomatically (e.g., iterators, streams, the standard library and its core data structures, etc.). In my experience, the best way to do this is practice Leetcode every day. Doing one question a day (a 30-60min commitment) will put you leagues ahead of your peers. Combine this with reading a major book on your language (e.g., Effective Java or Modern C++ Design, etc.)

Without getting sidetracked about the merits of the technical interview, it is current a fact of life. In my experience most undergrads struggle solving even the most basic problems and even if they come up with a solution, they are unable to code it in any language of their choice. If you are coming out of university as a "git expert" and can't code up a basic solution, you will get passed over every time.

Most teams (at least in my experience) are not struggling to solve git problems (although they certainly pop up). So while you could add some "value" there, overall you aren't adding a whole lot of value. On the other hand, if you know your language and are a moderately competent coder, you can add a lot more value.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#78

Post by bstar77 »

Koiwai wrote: post #26

To be honest, getting career advice from John Carmack is just like getting career advice from a lotto winner, not everyone has the luck/genius.

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. You'd be surprised how effective people that are "smart enough" can be. I've become less and less impressed with people's innate "genius" and more impressed with their work ethic and focus.

I've wasted so much time in my life trying to learn things top down... that is, learn bits and pieces of something to complete a task without fundamental knowledge of the thing I'm working on. I've noticed "geniuses" never work this way. They insist on knowing their fundamentals first and work up from there.

A genius' mental framework for problem solving is so well developed that it just seems like they won DNA lottery. Carmack is incredible at what he does, but there are likely many intellectual things that he is terrible at because he has no mental framework for solving those types of problems. It ultimately would take him thousands of hours to be great at those things like the rest of us plebs.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#79

Post by patrec »

didizaja wrote: post #62
patrec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation! I also find it quite interesting that you mentioned git specifically, because I’ve been going back and forth for the last few days with myself about whether I should spend the rest of Winter Break and next semester (I’m an undergrad with one semester left) learning git internals deeply. So, this felt somewhat validating of the perspective that I should learn about git more de…

I agree with the sibling comment that trying to implement a limited version of git (but that can work on a real git repo) would almost certainly a great way to learn git (there are multiple "implement git yourself in X" projects for different languages X that you can find online).

There is no harm in reading through Pro Git (which is a fine git book) either, but generally, and I wish I had been more acutely aware of this myself when I was at school, if you really want to learn something you have to either implement it yourself or use it in anger in a realistic setting. It is useful to read about stuff to get more of a feel for what's out there, but you won't get a good understanding of anything you will need to actively engage with it, and it a setting that practically matters to you. From personal experience: it's easy to trick oneself into a superficial sense of knowing something and coming up short when called upon to either implement it or use it to solve a real problem. So my number one advice would be don't fall into this trap; do (hard for you) things in a way you can't cheat yourself (and get them working first before you make them pretty).

So give it a try, the winter break should be long enough to get it done, and if you find it's beyond you at the moment, you can always scale back your ambitions and tackle it once you've grown in ability.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#80

Post by thrower123 »

st1x7 wrote: post #8

Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.

It seems to tie in closely with the article from last week or so about "Blub Studies." Learn your tools, learn them well. Knowing the details of how real software actually works really compounds over time. And a huge amount of it transfers, because we just keep building newer and ever so slightly better mousetraps.

https://www.benkuhn.net/blub/

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