Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#301

Post by rileyphone » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

rolenthedeep wrote: post #110

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to fully grok what object oriented programming really means. It's one thing to have someone tell you what an object is, but it's another thing entirely to build a fully object oriented system. I remember what made it click: I was designing an animation system, which had a bunch of different interdependent moving parts. Once I started treating each part like an object and lett…

I had a similar shift in perspective recently, that went from viewing objects from the outside as things to be manipulated, to viewing them from within as independent entities with boundaries. What made it click for me was watching Alan Kay talks and reading “Object Thinking” by David West. Now, I think the idea is due for some sort of renaissance. Though the culture of programming has turned against it in favor of FP, OOP continues to underlie the most important languages, organizations, and products in a way that speaks to its ultimate potential: to build evolvable, growable, maintainable software systems in service of human flourishing.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#302

Post by ruune » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #214

samhuk wrote: post #205

Computer networks. For years I was dumbfounded how IP addresses, VPN, ports, etc, all worked and tied together. Then, when I was interning as a software developer a fair while ago, a colleague drew the analogy of "IP address" = house on street, "port" = something you ask for when you knock on the door of a house. Then it all just clicked. I still remember that day all these years later. Other notable mentions, in no…

> Then, when I was interning as a software developer a fair while ago, a colleague drew the analogy of "IP address" = house on street, "port" = something you ask for when you knock on the door of a house. Hey thanks for sharing! Can you maybe expand on this in any form? I'd love to get that kind of analogy. Maybe you have a blog post about it? That'd be amazing!

This[0] blog post explains the basics of IPs, ports, etc. using that analogy

[0] http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/tcpip-ports-sockets/

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#303

Post by aj7 » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

thyrox wrote: post #237

The power of follow ups (especially in sales) One thing which held me back for a very long time was not following up with people who didn't show much interest initially. I wasted so many good leads thinking it is impolite to follow up with people after contacting them once. My whole life changed once I understood the power of follow ups and understanding that most people are so busy that it takes at least 6 reminders…

You were not trained well.

The principal element in sales is asking for the order. Everything, and I mean everything, follows from that. If you had been trained this way, following up would be second nature.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#304

Post by namrog84 » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #141

Big bang didn't happen in a single point in our space-time like a firecracker, it happened everywhere and was just a uniformly much hotter and denser universe that didn't really explode into anything, but space-time just expanded to make the universe less dense.

Don't some people prefer to say the slow expansion over using the term big bang? Although it hasn't taken off as a term. Or something like that?

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#305

Post by ShredKazoo » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

nivethan wrote: post #226

fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

2. Hits home for me as I’ve begun to realize the same thing. Not seeing any person of color in an activity makes it’s so I don’t want to be the first.

As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this.

I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California, people talked about race way less than they do today. When ethnic representation became a common topic of conversation, I had a hard time believing it at first, because it seemed so self-evidently obvious to me that race wasn't a particularly important characteristic of a person. I actually had the experience of thinking back to my time in jr high/high school and thinking "wow, that friend of mine had dark skin, and they weren't from India... I guess they were Black, huh".

I'm not trying to claim that I didn't have subconscious biases related to race as a kid. I'm sure I did. But I do suspect they have become a lot more severe as a result of people talking about race so much -- it has become a much more salient characteristic. (I'm also more aware of trying to mitigate my biases and avoid microaggressions and so on, of course.)

So yeah, I'm curious to compare notes with other 90s kids in this regard. I'm white, but if I was Black, I imagine that I'd be way more self-conscious about it now than I was when I was growing up. (Like, if I'm the only white person in a group, I feel self-conscious about it now in a way that I didn't feel when I was a kid.)

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#306

Post by gpsx » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

This is something that clicked after a few hours rather than a few years, but it is similar in a way. A long time ago when I was a graduate student I was in the library one afternoon studying some idea in field theory (physics). It covered maybe three pages in a small book, but it wasn't making any sense. Finally, hours later it suddenly became clear, and it was so simple. I remember saying to myself, "Why didn't they just say that?" I looked back at the book and they said exactly what I would have said. I guess sometimes words are not enough.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#307

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #295

fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

> 2. Representation matters. Strange, I had the opposite encounter. I realized the only thing keeping me from doing things was myself. There are definitely real barriers (hiring quotas, affirmative action, etc.) but without artificial constraints the only thing stopping you is you. You might feel a little uncomfortable but that's something easily overcome - and almost like a superpower when you realize you can overco…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#308

Post by theptip » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

feoren wrote: post #252

theptip wrote: post #189

Domain Driven Design. The book by Eric Evans lays out a bunch of concepts and as a developer that had not owned the architecture of a big domain, it was hard for me to see exactly where they fit. But after reading the book a couple times, and then encountering a few tricky domain modeling challenges, I started to see where these patterns add value. Also, as I started trying to describe the cohesive domain architectur…

I had the exact opposite reaction to this book. It seemed like great stuff when I first read it, but over time, I realized it's really misguided in a lot of ways: - Aggregates are too heavy. You need to make the decision about what is or is not an aggregate way too early in the design process. Boundaries are fuzzy. - Actual concepts don't exist in nicely packaged bounded contexts. Concepts overlap a lot. You need to…

Fair enough; YMMV.

I've not found that Aggregates need to be designed at the beginning; I've found it works fine to define an Aggregate after you start seeing performance issues with query patterns (i.e. define an Aggregate and forbid direct access to sub-objects when you see pathological access patterns/deadlocking).

Personally I've found Repositories to be a good way of enforcing that N+1 queries DO NOT happen. For example, in Django you can have the repository run select_related/prefetch_related and `django-seal` on the ORM query to forbid unexpected queries. This somewhat neuters the flexibility of the ORM, which can be a big cost, but lets you build much more restrictive queries that are guaranteed to perform well. It's a trade-off and I don't think it's a clear win for every use-case, but particularly when dealing with Aggregates I think having a limited number of ways to query is beneficial. (This might mean you're running some sub-optimal SQL queries, over-fetching etc., but for most line of business applications, that's actually a viable trade in exchange for simpler domain interfaces and protection against N+1 queries.)

Regarding "planning" vs. "doing", that seems to fit quite well with doing most of your work in POJO/POPO domain models, then only rendering those into DB writes at the edges. I think Repos can help with that. (IME you get N+1 selects when you use ORM models that abstract away the SQL queries and have application code interacting directly with ORM models; if you remove the ORM from your core domain logic and force it to live at the edges in Repos, this is not possible.)

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#309

Post by yieldcrv » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #295

fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

> 2. Representation matters. Strange, I had the opposite encounter. I realized the only thing keeping me from doing things was myself. There are definitely real barriers (hiring quotas, affirmative action, etc.) but without artificial constraints the only thing stopping you is you. You might feel a little uncomfortable but that's something easily overcome - and almost like a superpower when you realize you can overco…

most of us here have our own drive, but I’ve come to appreciate that other people are inspired by seemingly superficial things

It clicked for me when I let my publicist go wild and she got me on listicles of BIPOC founders, before, we just had lots of quotes and interviews. Only people already interested in the project on its own merits were following along. After, there were lots of people that are interested in the representation in that kind of niche who otherwise just wouldn't know how to find that representation. Or just wouldn't be able to tell by founder names alone.

and of course we got the amplified engagement from people arguing about “why does race matter” in the LinkedIn comments. so shoutout to the useful idiots, publicists expect that to exist and calculate it.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#310

Post by icepat » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

texuf wrote: post #284

jackthetab wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any suggested reading for #1 ("learn how to navigate \$THIS.")?

It’s old and perhaps a little controversial, but “ NLP: The New Technology of Achievement” has good examples and abstractions that could help you with #1

Controversial in that it's generally considered a pseudoscience. I'd advise against anyone looking to figure out how to navigate this wasting their time with pseudosciences.