Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#11

Post by ZephyrBlu » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:33 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #8

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

That's not a senior engineer's job.. that's a job that has scope creeped into many roles: project management, lead developer, project owner and a trainer. Are you doing QA and managing the production servers as well?

Those are roles that Senior engineers are expected to be able to play, at least at my company.

And yes, devs do QA because we have no QA staff and Production Engineers manage the servers.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#12

Post by didibus » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:35 AM UTC

jehlakj wrote: post #9

For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof. Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it. Unfortuna…

There's a level beyond that where you actually figure out how to write good abstractions. It's likely you thought you were making good abstractions and useful indirections, but you weren't, hence the problem. Concrete code with little indirection will be better than badly thought out abstractions that are incorrectly designed with unnecessary layers and indirections. That said, good ones, that are well done and thought out are worth their salt and can result in huge force multipliers for future runway.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#13

Post by bombela » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:36 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #8

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

That's not a senior engineer's job.. that's a job that has scope creeped into many roles: project management, lead developer, project owner and a trainer. Are you doing QA and managing the production servers as well?

Wait.. you are supposed to only code?

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#14

Post by seer » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:38 AM UTC

devnull3 wrote: post #3

Small piece of wisdom I received when I was an intern: "Never get sentimental with your code"

While this is indeed a very good advice, I learned how to cope with this a little better than “just don’t care”.

Mostly because I do enjoy coding, and am still sentimental with code I’ve written decades ago. The trick is to split that kind of code into their own libraries. Preferably open sourced. This way once your code has outlived its usefulness to your current project it can still live on, and be useful somewhere else.

For example one of the first things I’ve written as a jquery plugin that I really liked, I polished it, wrote some docs and demos, and in its day it was pretty cool (stayed on HN homepage for two days). I still got mentioned for it years later by people actually using it even now.

Even if I myself don’t find it useful at all, it’s still nice to see it is used by someone somewhere.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#15

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:40 AM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

I would have thought that job would be a higher level than senior. Team lead perhaps.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#16

Post by userbinator » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:41 AM UTC

jehlakj wrote: post #9

For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof. Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it. Unfortuna…

I blame this tendency to overabstract on the emphasis on top-down design / teaching methods. Beginners are taught to abstract whenever possible, and aren't taught when to stop. They don't see the reason behind it, and instead add abstractions dogmatically, dramatically increasing complexity in the process. When abstraction is used well it definitely decreases effort and increases flexibility, but all too often it's overused and results in "object-oriented obfuscation" instead.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#17

Post by didibus » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:41 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #8

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

That's not a senior engineer's job.. that's a job that has scope creeped into many roles: project management, lead developer, project owner and a trainer. Are you doing QA and managing the production servers as well?

That's what I thought at first as well, but I eventually realized that's not the case. The senior engineer is mandatory to be consulted and involved quite actively for all those other roles to function correctly.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#18

Post by darkteflon » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

didibus wrote: post #12

jehlakj wrote: post #9

For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof. Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it. Unfortuna…

There's a level beyond that where you actually figure out how to write good abstractions. It's likely you thought you were making good abstractions and useful indirections, but you weren't, hence the problem. Concrete code with little indirection will be better than badly thought out abstractions that are incorrectly designed with unnecessary layers and indirections. That said, good ones, that are well done and thoug…

I think parent’s point is that, you can be a great engineer, but also have limited knowledge of any given problem domain. What constitutes a good abstraction is driven in large part by that domain knowledge, rather than by your pure skill as an engineer.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#19

Post by croo » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #8

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

That's not a senior engineer's job.. that's a job that has scope creeped into many roles: project management, lead developer, project owner and a trainer. Are you doing QA and managing the production servers as well?

Not original commenter but same shoe: the answer is yes and yes. Small companies has their perks and drawbacks :) And my view on seniority is definitely skewed: I would say I expect a senior engineer to handle a large(multiple month) task, rip it to pieces, make a rift out of it and handling out paddles for the other team members while talking through the hard shit with other similar minded persons in the company. I'd also expect correct ballpark estimates.

What I do not expect is the business part - decisions, communication with the client, money stuff. I also don't expect responsibility for all of this on one person - this is where multiple roles comes to play as one person could break it's spline from all this.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#20

Post by ZephyrBlu » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:46 AM UTC

DougMellon wrote: post #2

> Good enough is good enough. I’ve only been in my first role for about two months and this one hit the hardest for me personally. I imagine it has a direct correlation with impostor syndrome, but I spend a lot of time writing things over and over again because in the back of my mind I’m thinking “is this the correct approach? Will they think I’m failing if it’s not how they’d do it?” I consider myself lucky that I’m…

I also had the problem of not wanting to ask questions and look stupid, and my manager told me to ask the questions I need to get the task done. Very simple and effective.

Also, instead of re-writing things in solitary many times over it would be a lot more effective to write something pretty good (In your eyes) and then ask for feedback on it. That way you can either validate that you're doing a good job, or start to learn what "good" looks like.