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Ask HN: As a senior engineer content with programming chops, what to learn next?

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Re: Ask HN: As a senior engineer content with programming chops, what to learn next?

#13

Post by lucasyvas »

IshKebab wrote: post #12

You haven't even used a statically typed language yet. Saying you will be able to learn Rust in a weekend is ridiculous. There will be so many new concepts for you.

I would go further and say every time I try to learn a new language, I discover multiple things that I believed to be absolute truths are, in fact, actually lies.

I am a Senior as well and I personally am never happy with my programming ability - until you're Carmack (or insert one of your favourite programmers), there's something to learn.

I predominantly have written TypeScript over the last several years and Rust taught me that as great as TypeScript is, it has coddled me completely and actually deprived me of much knowledge.

Like, how exceptionally bad 90% of programmers are at dealing with errors because they are garbage in most languages. You can only learn how to do that properly once you see it done, well, properly.

Re: Ask HN: As a senior engineer content with programming chops, what to learn next?

#14

Post by winrid »

patrulek wrote: post #6

> I mainly use Python and SQL Learning how to write fast (as in performance) software. So optimizing memory usage, parallel (SIMD/GPU) computing and microarchitecture optimizations.

And learn how to optimize your queries and index data!

Re: Ask HN: As a senior engineer content with programming chops, what to learn next?

#18

Post by ComradePhil »

Nothing. Don't learn anything. You'll waste time learning something you'll probably never use or forget what you learnt if you ever need to use it. You are a software developer; you can learn anything when you need to. Save it for then. For now, enjoy your time.

Since you would probably will not do that, my second best suggestion is to learn a language which can do what python can't or not in a straightforward way... for example:

- be performant or elegant... or

- easy to deploy/distribute... or

- have better out of the box dependency management

- not be complete and utter garbage

Re: Ask HN: As a senior engineer content with programming chops, what to learn next?

#19

Post by IshKebab »

lucasyvas wrote: post #13
IshKebab wrote: post #12

You haven't even used a statically typed language yet. Saying you will be able to learn Rust in a weekend is ridiculous. There will be so many new concepts for you.

I would go further and say every time I try to learn a new language, I discover multiple things that I believed to be absolute truths are, in fact, actually lies. I am a Senior as well and I personally am never happy with my programming ability - until you're Carmack (or insert one of your favourite programmers), there's something to learn. I predominantly have written TypeScript over the last several years and Rust…

Yeah and even after Rust there's still a whole world of even more advanced/difficult techniques like pure functional programming, formal verification, proof assistants... and even totally different paradigms like HDLs.

The idea that once you've done Python you've done them all is hilarious. I don't know how someone could be programming for 25 years and not realise that!

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