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Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

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Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#231

Post by Kinrany »

nitrogen wrote: post #105
Kinrany wrote: post #91

You're having an emotional problem, not a technical one. Therefore you need to ask a therapist, not other developers.

Peer support is really undervalued in the modern world. Empathy and advice from people similar to oneself can be just as, if not more, healing as professional support, for certain situations.

It may be undervalued. What's important is that it's not as good as professional support, even if it's better than people think.

A good therapist is better at empathy and asking the right questions than a peer. Peers may have more domain knowledge and familiarity with the situation, but this is only important for juniors. A CTO can make their own good choices once they identify the problem.

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#232

Post by wizzwizz4 »

NoPicklez wrote: post #200
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason you shouldn't have been able to. Programming basic things like an operating system shouldn't be as hard as it is. (Honestly, programming an entire OS is easier than programming within existing systems, at this point, for many applications – but only if you can cope with bare-bones serial I/O.)

You're completely missing his point. He was simply using "programming operating systems" as an example. His point still stands regardless of how easy you think something is or should be.

If your goal is to produce Linux, you've picked the wrong goal; just use Linux! But back when computers were simpler, in the months April – August 1991, one absolutely could make an OS kernel where things “seem to work” in four months.

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#233

Post by optymizer »

ghiculescu wrote: post #206
optymizer wrote: post #65

How are you the CTO and a developer? If you're coding features as the CTO your company must be really small so it doesn't really matter if the code isn't 'perfect'. If the company is big enough where people have the time to call you out on shitty code and think they can do better - awesome! Let them code it, and you can focus on technical direction. Tell them what to do. Delegate. Let them write the code - it's what…

This and the comment below are super broad advice that you absolutely don't need to listen to. I'm the CTO at 100+ person company and write code about 50% of the time. Do the work you enjoy most. As long as customers are happy and you keep finding more of them, the rest will work itself out.

I can interpret your comment as "I'm a CTO who prefers to spend 50% of their time doing other things because they make me happy". It could be that your code and happiness level benefit the company more than CTO duties, but to me this situation seems like it would be suboptimal for most companies.

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#234

Post by bgroat »

ekns wrote: post #227
gcmac wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this excerpt from an Obama interview: > When problems reached him in the White House, he said, it was because they were unsolvable. He generally was being asked to choose between two bad options. “By definition, if it was an easily solvable problem, or even a modestly difficult but solvable problem, it would not reach me, because, by definition, somebody else would have solved it,” he said. “So the only…

How can it be "by definition"? Is the president defined as someone who picks unsolvable problems? Are the subordinates defined as people who solve every single solvable problem?

I, the OP used the phrase "almost by definition". And this has no quantitative backing, just my proselytizing.

The child comment about The President doesn't use the phrase "by definition" at all

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#236

Post by tombert »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #232
NoPicklez wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely missing his point. He was simply using "programming operating systems" as an example. His point still stands regardless of how easy you think something is or should be.

If your goal is to produce Linux, you've picked the wrong goal; just use Linux! But back when computers were simpler, in the months April – August 1991, one absolutely could make an OS kernel where things “seem to work” in four months.

Ok, you're very clever. Replace "building an OS" with "proving the Goldbach hypothesis" or something. I was just giving an example of what I thought was a challenging project. Clearly for you it wouldn't be challenging.

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#237

Post by cwitty88 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #115

There's a STTNG episode or two where it becomes known that Captain Picard is just kinda winging it, while looking confident. Regarding large software systems there almost never one right answer. At times we need to make decisions without perfect knowledge. Some portion of those decisions will be suboptimal of course. Whereby we make more decisions to hopefully improve the outcome. It's the nature of the problem. Perh…

I definitely have decision fatigue. I decided to step down to get it off of my plate.

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#238

Post by jl2718 »

This is called executive wisdom. You are seeing things clearly now. Most ideas are bad. Most execution is sloppy. Just because you can does not mean you should. Your primary job is to kill all ideas except the one thing you are absolutely certain of. Do that one thing. Over-do it. Then do it again. Be certain that there is no possible way that anybody could do it better.

Edit: I probably should have said to kill all projects/features/goals that you are not absolutely certain of. Ideas for achieving the same objective in a different way, are probably good risks.

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