Advice From An Old Programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#111

Post by Nick_C » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 4:45 AM UTC

dxbydt wrote: post #71

nadam wrote: post #7

"People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect" Generally in business, those people whose job title is 'programmer' or 'developer' or 'software engineer' get relatively little respect even with lots of experience. (I am 37 years old and programming since 12) Previously I thought the only way out of this is to become a 'manager', which I never really wanted to do... Rec…

>"Theoretically a relatively smooth transition is possible because there are 'quant developer' jobs out there." Quant-Developer is a weighted sum of q% quant and d% developer. Ideally you'd like q to be high and d to be small. What happens in practice is that many companies will hire a quant developer, throw 90% of d at you and keep you enticed with some 10% q. This is rather sad, but I have seen this happen to more…

I agree with you about IBs and large banks. We had some really interesting stuff going on to the extent we were leaders in our field. I wouldn't call CFA lightweight though, I found it hard. It was mainly memorisation of boring, boring, boring stuff. Little motivation == hard.

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#112

Post by demian » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 4:52 AM UTC

I would like to think that the sentiment of this piece is to move programmers to go and explore more disciplines.

Or to make the point that computer programming is such a powerfull tool that it's a shame to see that a lot of competent programmers are "just programmers" who think of code as an end to itself. Higher levels of manipulation and appreciation are available. Like a car mechanic, stuck with the beauty of the engine and the physics involved, but not the freedom and happiness and excitement of the car runing .

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#113

Post by thewisedude » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 5:50 AM UTC

The author suggests to not get caught up on a programming language and use that as just a tool. I think I agree. I also want to add that people get caught up on using some other tools like vi or emacs or things like that. I think they should not be taken too seriously either. Creativity and building a useful product are the most important things of all.

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#114

Post by stretchwithme » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 8:01 AM UTC

"Programming as an intellectual activity is the only art form that allows you to create interactive art."

I will have to let the car designers know that. And the great chefs of the world. And probably dozens of other artists.

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#115

Post by vacri » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 9:20 AM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #98

vacri wrote: post #19

"Programming as an intellectual activity is the only art form that allows you to create interactive art." (his emphasis) Kinetic sculptures? Fashion? Hell, go to a science museum and you'll find endless halls of interactive art, little of which involves programming.

Let me know when you can tell a Fashion designer you hate their dress by writing on the back of some girl wearing it. Oh, and doing that without software.

Eh? Are you saying that the random hate commentary at the bottom of online articles is required for something to be art? Your comment just doesn't make sense.

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#116

Post by amouat » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 9:36 AM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #96

ferids wrote: post #27

Also a part of this problem is that many programmers are assholes. Going out to the world while thinking "im to smart for the rest of the world, tha hell with them" is just a big social failure in general. One need to be able to see things out of different perspectives, a bit more open minded. Just because a person like to do other things in life then CS-stuff, does not mean they are automatically stupid. Programming…

You're right, the real way to be an asshole and have people love you for it is to say: "im too tough for the rest of the world, tha hell with them" Because being smart and confident is just uppity, but being tough and confident is baller yo.

Nothing wrong with being smart, confident and/or tough.

It's being arrogant and snarky that upsets people.

(I'm not aiming this comment at anyone btw!)

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#117

Post by crntaylor » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 9:40 AM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #94

amirmc wrote: post #2

> "People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines" True. I have a theoretical physics friend who's now applying a ton of machine-learning techniques to biophysics stuff (in an academic setting). I've no idea exactly what he's doing other than he's always snowed under and people keep coming back to…

Now that is interesting. I'm trying to imagine how you would apply machine learning to biology. Related to DNA sequences probably?

Here's just one possibility. Say you want to do genetic testing for susceptibility to a particular trait, for example heart disease. The human genome is vast, and no human could pick out significant patterns relating to heart disease even with years of experience and specialist training.

However, this is precisely the task at which machine learning algorithms excel. You split your data into two sets: people who suffered heart disease by time X in their lives, and people who didn't. You then apply a machine learning technique (some kind of classifier - maybe a logistic regression, support vector machine or a decision tree) to the data set, and it picks out features (i.e. particular gene sequences) which are most strongly predictive of heart disease. If you've chosen the right technique, you can not only predict a binary yes/no response, but you can predict a probability between 0% and 100%.

Now you can do genetic testing on an individual who hasn't suffered heart disease yet - with a suitable portion of their genome, you feed it into your classifier and it spits out the probability of them developing heart disease by stage X in their life.

Of course, the inputs don't have to be genomes (and quite commonly aren't). You might consider someone's age, calorie intake, level of exercise, social class etc. all as valid inputs to this kind of algorithm.

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#118

Post by 9diov » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 10:10 AM UTC

kls wrote: post #76

SatvikBeri wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree. I've met a lot of non-programmers who knew a little programming. They were more dangerous than effective. I'm sure you're well aware of this, but there's a ton of opportunity for even very simple programming to help in cases where people have never thought of programming as a possible solution. (This is how I contributed roughly $3MM of value to one company as a kid who barely knew how to program). On t…

One of the greatest companies that I ever worked for trained every employee to use Access and to solution for themselves, we had a system that monitored level of usage of an access solution as well as how much revenue it was responsible for. At a certain threshold the solution was deemed business critical and the access solution was used as a prototype for the developers to implement on a more robust solution. It was…

This is interesting. Could you elaborate on this monitoring system?

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#119

Post by wladimir » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 10:57 AM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #89

michaelochurch wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very interesting, and indeed seems to mark a certain personality type. Most people would see that exactly the other way around, that working with people is fun and easy, but the technical stuff is hard and extremely frustrating. Learning technology is fun when it adds something new . For example, if you know functional programming, then Gang-of-Four "design patterns" are completely useless cruft and not especi…

The point is that different personality types enjoy different aspects of programming. For some people the technology itself is the fun part. For some its what you can accomplish with it. There is no right or wrong here.

Yes, exactly. I think it's overall too easy to call someone else's use of spare time "trivial" because we don't understand why it could be useful for them, or to other people. We're all limited by our skills and interests. If only we could all be world-savers doing work of great impact and help to every person on earth in our free time...

Re: Advice From An Old Programmer

#120

Post by jkn » Fri, Mar 09, 2012, 1:42 PM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #92

edw519 wrote: post #28

Thoughts from an Older Programmer... I've been programming for a very long time. Me too. So long that it's incredibly boring to me. Actually, it's more interesting to me than ever. ...I knew about 20 programming languages and could learn new ones in about a day to a week depending on how weird they were. I have a cursory knowledge of quite a few myself. But I know one really, really well. Eventually though this just…

> Please remove the sentence "They cannot." Nobody asked you.

What do you mean? (seriously)

FWIW, I felt the same, reaching the end of your post. To me, edw519's version says "I value being good", while your version says "I value being better than the others". The latter is a bit sad, as it means the value increases when the others get worse.