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John Carmack: Career Advice

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Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#171

Post by warent »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #157
sillysaurusx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I related with "my only friend is a few thousand miles away. We watch movies together and talk via discord." It's normal to end up in that situation. Or at least, I've been there. I hope they'll take me up on the offer, since it's interesting to get to know people. I'd reach out to them directly, but there's no contact info in their profile.

Unfortunately they never reached out. But, wherever you are, I hope you're having a Merry Christmas, daodedickinson. Everyone should! Don't worry too much about stuff. Things will get better. (Prozac also helped me.)

Agreed with sillysaurusx. Hang in there buddy. These times are particularly difficult for everyone (and of course some more than others!), and just know that the pain you're feeling does not have to be your pain. I think of it as the pain... of the human condition which we all share together. It makes it feel a lot less lonely. Brighter days will come, and you will be all the stronger when you get there.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#172

Post by ookookookook »

Balgair wrote: post #95

David Epstein's Range has a lot to say about this topic. Carmack's idea of 'deep' work [0] is environmentally dependent. It works for him and for the places he has been at. But it is not a universal rule for learning in all environments. Epstein uses Tiger Woods and Roger Federer as his headline case, but goes into many other forms of learning. Woods' golf is a kind learning environment ; the rules are clear, the fee…

>programming as work >rules are stated

I'm not sure where you work but I'd love this kind of environment.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#173

Post by [deleted] »

ookookookook wrote: post #172
Balgair wrote: post #95

David Epstein's Range has a lot to say about this topic. Carmack's idea of 'deep' work [0] is environmentally dependent. It works for him and for the places he has been at. But it is not a universal rule for learning in all environments. Epstein uses Tiger Woods and Roger Federer as his headline case, but goes into many other forms of learning. Woods' golf is a kind learning environment ; the rules are clear, the fee…

>programming as work >rules are stated I'm not sure where you work but I'd love this kind of environment.

[deleted]

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#174

Post by tharkun__ »

smiths1999 wrote: post #104
tharkun__ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure (well hoping) that all of the advice to go deep into one thing would always be in addition to actually being able to code. I completely agree with you that understanding git very deeply is not needed or useful to the level of detail suggested here in other comments. The level of understanding of git you need to stand out is very very limited in my experience. Most devs in "regular" companies struggle…

It wasn't clear to me that the other comments were starting from "know how to code," which is why I made my comment. If OP spends time honing their coding abilities then by all means learning more about git is a great plan. I am really surprised by your comments about git at "regular" companies. If all we are talking about in this chain is understanding workflow and how to rebase, cherry pick, etc. then I completely…

Oh I'm sure some other people took the discussion on various different ways. Such is communication between humans ;)

Btw. in case it helps you. No fresh clone in a different place needed. I think I know what kind of situation you mean and all you need is to cherry pick your commit on top of the branch you want instead of doing that merge/rebase that isn't working out. Takes even less time than cloning somewhere else and moving your changes over.

And in some cases what this sort of situation really just needed was an interactive rebase that just skips the appropriate commits that already happened on the main branch. Suddenly a litany of seemingly unresolvavle conflicts doesn't even exist in the first place. Many ways leading to Rome there.

I would encourage you to always work from just within exactly one repo with git. The whole "having another copy of the repo somewhere else" is something I have seen so much with svn but it just really isn't required with git at all. And even if you have to "do a fresh clone" you really don't have to. Just get rid of all files (rm -rf) except the .git directory (or copy it where you need it) and checkout again. I've used that a few times when I was having build issues and I wanted to make absolutely sure there were no generated files from either my IDE or the local build left anywhere that could screw things up.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#175

Post by silicon2401 »

webmaven wrote: post #142
didizaja wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very good question and I'm going to think about it more. During this past semester, I started keeping a Trello list of potential projects/readings I could work on to consolidate things, but it's still hard to pick from. The Git internals thing I mentioned was one thing in that list. Since I'm interested in open source software and the communities that form around projects, another idea I had is developing a…

> I know I can't learn everything, but yet it feels like there's so much I really _do_ need to know to be a competent developer. There really isn't anyone on the planet who is truly a "full stack developer" and competent from the front-end all the way down to the OS and bare metal. No one. Most developers stick to a particular layer, and are only familiar with adjacent layers to the extent of being able to have argum…

I disagree, I can easily imagine somebody having full metal to UI knowledge. Obviously not knowing every programming language, all types of electrical engineering applications, etc. But it's totally feasible to be able to have a sense of understanding from metal to front-end at least to an extent.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#176

Post by webmaven »

silicon2401 wrote: post #175
webmaven wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know I can't learn everything, but yet it feels like there's so much I really _do_ need to know to be a competent developer. There really isn't anyone on the planet who is truly a "full stack developer" and competent from the front-end all the way down to the OS and bare metal. No one. Most developers stick to a particular layer, and are only familiar with adjacent layers to the extent of being able to have argum…

I disagree, I can easily imagine somebody having full metal to UI knowledge. Obviously not knowing every programming language, all types of electrical engineering applications, etc. But it's totally feasible to be able to have a sense of understanding from metal to front-end at least to an extent.

Note that I am speaking of "competence", and you're mentioning "knowledge" and "sense of understanding". Not really the same thing.

Separately, "the stack" is inherently polyglot, and even aggressively pruning the selection wherever possible and eliding many formats, tools, and protocols still gives you an absolutely minimal set like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, HTTPS, TCP/IP, SQL, C/C++, Assembly, & VHDL.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#177

Post by silicon2401 »

webmaven wrote: post #176
silicon2401 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I can easily imagine somebody having full metal to UI knowledge. Obviously not knowing every programming language, all types of electrical engineering applications, etc. But it's totally feasible to be able to have a sense of understanding from metal to front-end at least to an extent.

Note that I am speaking of "competence", and you're mentioning "knowledge" and "sense of understanding". Not really the same thing. Separately, "the stack" is inherently polyglot, and even aggressively pruning the selection wherever possible and eliding many formats, tools, and protocols still gives you an absolutely minimal set like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, HTTPS, TCP/IP, SQL, C/C++, Assembly, & VHDL.

You can replace what I said with competence, and I still claim it. I think it's fully possible for people to be competent from metal to frontend, and I'm sure there are at least a few out there who are.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#178

Post by webmaven »

silicon2401 wrote: post #177
webmaven wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that I am speaking of "competence", and you're mentioning "knowledge" and "sense of understanding". Not really the same thing. Separately, "the stack" is inherently polyglot, and even aggressively pruning the selection wherever possible and eliding many formats, tools, and protocols still gives you an absolutely minimal set like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, HTTPS, TCP/IP, SQL, C/C++, Assembly, & VHDL.

You can replace what I said with competence, and I still claim it. I think it's fully possible for people to be competent from metal to frontend, and I'm sure there are at least a few out there who are.

We may be differing in defining competence, but regardless: agree to disagree?
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