I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter • Hacker News Board

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#61

Post by carstenhag » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #35

demarq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, I feel I could be employed tomorrow in a language or stack that I haven’t even heard of and start being productive by the end of the week! I seriously think you owe it to yourself to practice learning something new every week. It often takes one afternoon to get a “taste” and small side project to get beyond that. Every programming language. Is literally just a template for instructions, and every technol…

So could you be a productive iOS/Android developer in a week with no previous experience?

During Covid I had a colleague, mainly web/js/angular dev, join the Android team. It was a new project to him, so he had 0 idea of the business problems, flows, etc.

In a timeframe of 1-2 weeks he was making PRs. It needed quite some reviews from me, usually because he didn't know about "how it should behave" on Android, or what the best practices were in terms of using Kotlin or following our architecture. After 2-3 months he was as proficient coding as I basically (but we all know, coding is 50%).

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#62

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #57

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that learning a new language -at a basic level- can be done quickly (like a couple of weeks , not days). But learning it at an advanced level, is a whole different matter. I've been writing Swift since, literally, a few hours after it was announced, in 2014. I write Swift every day (like, seven days a week), and have been, since that first day. I feel as if I have only had "mastery" of the language f…

I just said something similar in another reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37099395 But as far as employees being an “investment” let’s look at things from the employee side. For context: these numbers I’m about to cite are correct to within a first approximation on the “enterprise dev” side where most of the 2.7 million developers work and in most major cities in the US that are not on the west coast or in…

> You couldn’t compete with that if you wanted to.

Unfortunately, I was forced to.

My company was one that paid “competitive” salaries.

That’s code for “below average.”

This filtered out 90% of applicants, right there.

So the ones that applied, did so, out of genuine interest in the company and the technology (we were a “marquee” company).

I was forced to look for “diamonds in the rough,” and became fairly good at evaluating whether or not someone could handle the tech and the learning.

I kept them, by being a really good manager. I treated them with respect, didn’t burn them out, and shielded them from a lot of the corporate BS. They appreciated that, and stayed.

When our team was finally rolled up, after just short of 27 years, the employee with the least tenure had ten years. These were seasoned C++ image processing professionals.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#63

Post by thowrasdf23 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

edem wrote: post #40

I wonder why anyone thinks that learning a library that's written in a dead language is a good idea.

Right? The community has been quite honest on its wants/desires for dart with little progress in 10+ years.

Thankfully Skia+React metaphors are being actively developed in more mature and healthy language ecosystems.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#64

Post by ianlevesque » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #32

tkiolp4 wrote: post #15

I don’t buy it. As software developers we learn technologies for breakfast. We learn them, and then we forget them. We recollect the wisdom gained and apply it in our next gig using a different technology. It works for mobile development, for frontend, for backend, for infra, for almost anything. I have worked for years with PHP, Apache, Ansible and MySQL. Nowadays not anymore. And in 7 years I’ll be using something…

Yes because I know Java (hypothetically I haven’t touched Java since two years after it was introduced) I can become an efficient Android developer “in a few days”. Better yet, since I did Windows CE development for ruggedized devices using C# Compact framework back between 2007-2010, I should have no problem picking up iOS development “in a few days” and start being a productive member of a team right? Or better yet…

> Are you going to hire me to lead a team working on a 10 year old complicated Java app when all of my “enterprise” experience is in the .Net ecosystem?

Yes. The skills are fungible.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#65

Post by lawgimenez » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:21 PM UTC

doix wrote: post #53

scarface_74 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So could you be a productive iOS/Android developer in a week with no previous experience?

Not iOS, but I'm fairly confident I could be productive in an Android codebase in a week. The only reason I don't think I could do iOS is because I'd need to use a OSX, and I think it would take me longer to become productive in OSX. It also depends on what you mean by "productive", would I want to lead a team to create a new app from scratch? Probably not. Go into an existing app and start fixing bugs and creating n…

You could be productive in a not-so complicated Android codebase in a week.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#66

Post by mgkimsal » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

ianlevesque wrote: post #64

scarface_74 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because I know Java (hypothetically I haven’t touched Java since two years after it was introduced) I can become an efficient Android developer “in a few days”. Better yet, since I did Windows CE development for ruggedized devices using C# Compact framework back between 2007-2010, I should have no problem picking up iOS development “in a few days” and start being a productive member of a team right? Or better yet…

> Are you going to hire me to lead a team working on a 10 year old complicated Java app when all of my “enterprise” experience is in the .Net ecosystem? Yes. The skills are fungible.

While that might be the 'right' answer, it's also in the minority for many job openings/postings.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#67

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

0x445442 wrote: post #51

keyle wrote: post #39

The mistake is believing that you can ever stop learning. 20 years I'm doing this professionally, 20 years I'm learning.

The mistake OP is referring to is spending too much time learning the wrong thing which is easy to do in the Cargo Cult that is modern Software Development.

There isn't really anything to Flutter that stands out as so unique it wouldn't translate. Dart is not opinionated, sort of as if you threw every Algol family language into a blender, and the component/reactive style is just like any other modern framework.

it's arguably one of the strengths of Flutter, regardless of where you come from there's nothing esoteric to it, so it's not like you learn the wrong thing. Learning Programming isn't about memorizing APIs or libraries, it's about concepts.

If you've done Flutter for several years your experience translates just fine to say React native, you just gotta learn Javascript

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#68

Post by scarface_74 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #62

scarface_74 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just said something similar in another reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37099395 But as far as employees being an “investment” let’s look at things from the employee side. For context: these numbers I’m about to cite are correct to within a first approximation on the “enterprise dev” side where most of the 2.7 million developers work and in most major cities in the US that are not on the west coast or in…

> You couldn’t compete with that if you wanted to. Unfortunately, I was forced to. My company was one that paid “competitive” salaries. That’s code for “below average.” This filtered out 90% of applicants, right there. So the ones that applied, did so, out of genuine interest in the company and the technology (we were a “marquee” company). I was forced to look for “diamonds in the rough,” and became fairly good at ev…

Most of those 2.7 million developers I spoke about will never make low end FAANG money and that’s perfectly fine.

I had my first house built in the burbs of Atlanta in 2002 making $60k (2500 square feet) and my second house built in the northern burbs (3200 square feet) making $135K in 2016 [1].

I only fell into a remote role at BigTech in 2020 at 46 years old after declining a chance to interview for a software development position and being offered a chance to interview for a position in the Professional Services division doing cloud consulting [2].

I was perfectly happy living the upper middle class lifestyle in 2020 making only $150k with my wife making $20K working part time.

In fact, I’m excited to get back to working at small companies on the high end of enterprise dev comp because my department became too “Amazonian” this year and my shit tolerance level is extremely low.

[1] 2002-2012 was a decade of bad life and career decisions that I didn’t recover from completely until 2018.

[2] I did my bid, saved money and paid off debt and our bills are actually $1000+ lower per month now than they were when I started.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#69

Post by mgkimsal » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #22

Id say that its the wrong way to think about it. As long as you are working in the software engineering field change is a near certainty. You will not hit on a technology / framework / product that will keep you going for 40 years. [1] Working with Flutter you have learned a lot that is valuable going forward. Learning to adopt new tools is part of the job.

C, Java, PHP, SQL, Python, Ruby have kept a lot of people going for more than 20 years, and will likely continue to be relevant in some capacity for at least another decade (if only maintenance, not even including new projects started with those tech stacks). I've been working with PHP and some variation of SQL for the past 28 years, and it will go on for a while longer. I've also worked in the Java world, and have done a smattering of other tech along the way as well.

Not everything lasts 40 years, but many things last more than 3-5.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#70

Post by em-bee » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #35

demarq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, I feel I could be employed tomorrow in a language or stack that I haven’t even heard of and start being productive by the end of the week! I seriously think you owe it to yourself to practice learning something new every week. It often takes one afternoon to get a “taste” and small side project to get beyond that. Every programming language. Is literally just a template for instructions, and every technol…

So could you be a productive iOS/Android developer in a week with no previous experience?

i did this with php and python in two different jobs. i had very little php experience and never worked with any php framework before, but the team i was in consisted mostly of junior developers, so i ended up writing better code than any of them except the team lead. laravel was also very easy to understand.

at another job i started with only some rudimentary python experience. they had an inhouse framework, so being deeply familiar with python frameworks and libraries would not have even helped me. they knew i had experience in other languages and it worked out pretty well.

most recently i had an interview where it was very clear that i haven't done any work on go before. at least during the interview that was not an issue. after the interview they wanted me to send them code examples of previous work. i didn't get the job, but i don't think lack of go experience was the problem.