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Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#271

Post by samstave »

rightbyte wrote: post #105
fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

Getting fed up with all the stupid technology grind is not necessarily burnout though. One could call it wisdom or experience too.

The things I was doing in my 20s made me feel as though I was changing the world, and I had an impressive project list.

In my 40s, I can hardly stand certain aspects of the tech space... and keeping motivation is all about things I can make, but not make for others.

Find something that sparks your imagination. Skill atrophy is my main thing. Mitigating skill atrophy on legacy skillsets, sub-sets of skills you have used for 20 years, but have no passion for any longer is tough as HELL -- and it makes me feel I can't learn... but the fact is I fail to learn anything I dont have a spark of passion about.

And I am not talking that romantic passion that some billionaire founder is taking about -- I am talking about *enough* passion that your ADHD can be quelled, and that small distractional things dont have undue heavy draw against your attention (passion)

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#272

Post by samstave »

riledhel wrote: post #189
blakewatters wrote: post #138

Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point.…

>That is what this game is all about. It may to you, but for lots of people it's just another job and that is also valid and sometimes healthy too.

True, but if it were just another job to him, he wouldnt be posting...

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#273

Post by jweir »

rightbyte wrote: post #105
fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

Getting fed up with all the stupid technology grind is not necessarily burnout though. One could call it wisdom or experience too.

We switched to using Elm for our front end. One of the complaints about Elm is doesn't get upgrades very often (like years in between).

This has been a feature for us – we don't need to be upgrading or fixing for upgrades or learning new "things". We focus on building with what we have and know and it works.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#274

Post by 62951413 »

blakewatters wrote: post #138

Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point.…

I have always been motivated mostly by the stack I use and especially the complexity of the thing I build. I don't really care if anyone wants it. My most exciting job was a failed startup but to this day I can brag about the kind of system we built. It's probably easier for frontend developers to care about actual users.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#275

Post by ishjoh »

leetrout wrote: post #150
trevormcneal wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice the fast decline in the last 20 years? Even active X was less crappy than the most well-polished actual react project, and active X was crap. Even java applets did more and in an easier way than modern frameworks and JS shit. One simple page, with login, logout, some search, and navigation nowadays require a few plugins, router, state management, lib for requests, lib to handle cookies, lib for JWT, etc...

I feel like I am one of the few that switched from angular to react in 2014 and while enjoying how "simple" it was started noticing how much people liked building complexity in it. Now I have used react at a few different sized companies, taught it to some students and completely stopped using it for personal projects. It just seems like too much added complexity for almost every situation and people just see everyth…

I'm a full stack engineer that does lots of react in my day job. I now use jquery in all my side projects because I want to get them done instead of spending lots of time getting the project setup.

Nothing beats adding a script tag in the footer and being done with project setup.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#276

Post by conradfr »

FractalHQ wrote: post #201
conradfr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I like Vue. It's mix of the two with a synchronized ecosystem for the core libs and a simple API. Vue 3 kinda tanked all that though.

What do you think of Svelte? I haven’t used Vue since I discovered Svelte but I’m always curious about peoples perspectives and try to keep my finger on the pulse. The new Nuxt looks pretty awesome! Love the api design. I’m hoping Sveltekit steals a few ideas from it before 1.0.

Seems interesting but quite young. When I looked it up it there was discussion about Sapper vs Sveltekit etc and quite frankly I can't stand that kind of thing anymore, it just leads to confusion, a lot of Googling and SO, partial or wrong docs etc and in the end a LOT of lost time and energy.

And I say that as someone who is currently refactoring a Vue 3 app from JS/VueX to TypeScript/Pinia ... oh the irony.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#277

Post by conradfr »

tpetry wrote: post #199
conradfr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I like Vue. It's mix of the two with a synchronized ecosystem for the core libs and a simple API. Vue 3 kinda tanked all that though.

Can you describe the vue 3 part more? As an outsider it just looks for me they just added another api with a different style, so people can choose what they like.

The official router and store were not ready when they released Vue 3, even kind of still not, and the store is moving to a new lib.

Also there's now two competing APIs. The new one that they want you to use, and the old one that people like better.

Also a lot of time your objects are actually proxies, which I'm sure there's good reason for but that's kind of annoying (personal opinion).

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#278

Post by fleb »

flemhans wrote: post #268
fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

I'm doing these mini vacations so often now that they feel routine. What's next? :P

Buy an old house and start renovating?

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#279

Post by fleb »

foobazzy wrote: post #173
fleb wrote: post #16

This sounds like burnout to me. I am in my mid-40s and used to have spells like this, but no more. I needed some kind of large change, back then, to get myself sorted out, but this could be pretty destructive because if I waited too long, the change I'd need wouldn't really be conducive to staying on whatever project I was on. The key to not having to deal with this problem anymore, for me, was starting to proactivel…

> most effective way to recover enthusiasm was to pick up a new skill, work-related or not. I was in my mid-30s in the late aughts and not entirely sure I wanted to keep coding - so I signed myself up for an 18 month "executive MBA" program to find out if I might want to do something else This might sound tangential, but I am at this exact stage in my life. I am in my early 30s and have signed up for the executive MB…

Tips, suggestions, warnings - very subjectively and at random...

- The "hard" stuff (with numbers in it...) didn't really grab me at all, I originally studied math and was somewhat disappointed in much of that part of this kind of MBA program, my hunch is that a regular full-time MBA would have been better for this, more immersion, this was all a little in the one, out the other for me because there wasn't much time to practice.

- But, the "soft" stuff on the other hand, was a goldmine, all the personal development, organizational psychology, negotiations, etc. This alone was worth the tuition.

- The best part was gaining a far better understanding and tolerance of why and how pretty much everything we work with in software is more or less "broken", it's actually not broken, it's as good as allowed by budget and organizational circumstance, and if something is to be improved, well, then that background has to allow for that improvement or else the improvement is just a pipe dream.

And you meet interesting people who will do interesting things in the community where you live, assuming you stay put, which I didn't, so I can't say much about that.

Re: Ask HN: Why can't I learn anymore?

#280

Post by jaegerpicker »

blakewatters wrote: post #138

Your problem is very simple: you are working on bullshit. Across your entire description of your situation you never once mentioned what it is you are actually working on but called out the income you hit and frameworks you are playing with. I humbly submit that your problem is that you have lost the plot. Hate to break it to you chief but the libraries and frameworks and techniques you use to work are not the point.…

That's great and all, probably true for a ton of developers. Certainly is and has been for me. Now show us how that's actually useful, the majority of jobs aren't building useful important things. It's building some dumbass startup idea that is very likely to fail or writing insurance backend code or some generic web form that NO ONE gives two shits about. I'm not angry at you, don't want this to come off that way. This industry is fantastic in many ways, great salary, skill based, no hard labor, etc..... But just like most jobs it's a very lucky few that get to work on something they think is important.

Maybe 20+ years have beaten me down but it's so rare that a job that matters is out there and available. It's so depressing how many web apps for really bad ideas are considered "engineering" careers. Maybe that's what I should build a way to find engineering jobs for causes/things that matter to people. I know I'd love to have a job board/DB to search for Climate Change based positions.

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