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Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

taylor.town

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Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#401

Post by Aeolun »

Mashimo wrote: post #309
OoooooooO wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a US only problem though.

You don't think it's an issue in Japan or south-east Asia?

It’s not, really. Japan is absurdly good if the only thing you want to do is have children, and don’t care too much about how or where they’re schooled.

1 year of leave per child, inability to get fired while on leave, free childcare.

The only negative is that all those make advancement options for working age women 25-35 whom are expected to have kids ’soon’ nonexistent.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#402

Post by lolsal »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #93

Don't live to work, work to live. I bet Arthur partied his ass off back in the day, stumbled into work without sleep, napped during retros and refinement. He might be the least useful dev but he's a king at Burning Man. Now with his flush 401k, he can finally retire to make little wooden figurines to sell at the farmers market, where he really just wants to regale people with stories of the biggest fish he ever caugh…

I think this was a contrived example, but I really appreciated all the little details here! They struck close to home and felt very validating, even if accidental :)

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#403

Post by digging »

josephg wrote: post #215
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #139

There are talented people everywhere, the probability of somehow being ground breaking and world impactful is ridiculously small. Anyone pegging their self-worth on that goal is setting themselves up for a lot of mental health struggles. My levels of ambition and relentlessness absolutely shifted after having kids, I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. Now I am very much "fuck you pay me" and my prior…

> There are talented people everywhere, the probability of somehow being ground breaking and world impactful is ridiculously small. No there aren’t. For every Jonathan Blow, Salvatore Sanfilippo (redis) or Mike Pall (LuaJIT) there are probably thousands of run of the mill developers working at feature factories. You don’t build amazing software by being lucky. Your boss at GenericCo will never go out of their way to…

Your response is completely out of line with what you were responding to.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#404

Post by hsavit1 »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #217
bayindirh wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. I found out that just being better than yourself takes you a long long way. I have never competed, but just did my thing. Then found out that I've already know more and ahead of many people I'm inspired by. Yet, this was not my aim, and still is not. I'm just one of the so-called dark developers. I just do my thing, try to do it better every time, and don't care…

I recently put a little modal on my phone that just says "Compete against yourself" every 30 minutes, and I'm finding it remarkably helpful at focusing my efforts back to what I want to see in the world. I like the mindset of trying to be just a little better than you were, every day. It feels... correctly scaled, somehow.

i suggest a new push notification on your phone that says "be funnier" - all the top comedians do it

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#406

Post by commandersaki »

kriro wrote: post #332

Nothing against Arthur Westbook and his career choice [;)] but I think the proper way of turning mastery of a crappy codebase into a career is joining a bug bounty program. Some are big enough (think Yahoo's scope) that you can earn a living mastering them and finding bugs. But won't those bugs dry up eventually you ask...well thankfully new features, API endpoints, (sub)domains etc. are intruduced constantly.

I'm unfamiliar with bug bounties but how often do you get to peruse codebases? I thought most of the time you're working in a blackbox setting with just an outside interface that you peek through?

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#407

Post by pmontra »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #217
bayindirh wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. I found out that just being better than yourself takes you a long long way. I have never competed, but just did my thing. Then found out that I've already know more and ahead of many people I'm inspired by. Yet, this was not my aim, and still is not. I'm just one of the so-called dark developers. I just do my thing, try to do it better every time, and don't care…

I recently put a little modal on my phone that just says "Compete against yourself" every 30 minutes, and I'm finding it remarkably helpful at focusing my efforts back to what I want to see in the world. I like the mindset of trying to be just a little better than you were, every day. It feels... correctly scaled, somehow.

That is coincidentally similar to a pomodoro sprint: 25 minutes of work (compete with yourself) and 5 of something else.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#408

Post by clementime »

bayindirh wrote: post #351
kayodelycaon wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go with Peak HN. Everyone has their quirks. I've got my computer speaking the time every 15 minutes and everyone I know would be driven absolutely insane by that. It helps me keep track of time. Some people put a postit on their mirror or laptop screen.

This is a comic I love (titled: Weird): https://viruscomix.com/page500.html I store a copy in my "life changing comics" folder.

This is a great comic. Understanding and appreciating other people's differences goes a long way. So much harm comes from being fearful or judgemental of people who are different.

Now I'm curious - what else is in your "life changing comics" folder?

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#409

Post by surprisetalk »

angarg12 wrote: post #396

If this is a jab to supposedly mediocre programmers, it fails to be funny. I have a friend, let's call him AP, who is a programmer in a local java shop. He's been working in the same place for 12 years since he graduated. He kind of fits the description on this article, but he is one of the happiest people I know. He gets paid above average wage, and his work is easy and not very demanding. He knows the codebase insi…

Author here!

I agree with you :) here's some more context

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36985316

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#410

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

smackeyacky wrote: post #306
boringg wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for the upside of growth - how do you change it for when you start to age and skills erode a little bit. That would be deeply frustrating. Need to change the model at that point! What to though?

Your skills don't age like your physical body does.

You are saying it like skills aren't contained in that physical body.
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