Advice to a novice programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#81

Post by kazinator » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 8:47 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #29

icyberbullyu wrote: post #25

I really have to disagree with the disparagement of vim/scp at the beginning. It's a bit slower to start if you begin with command-line tools, but the dividends payed out by learning the standard command-line utilities are huge. Learning the command-line utilities means you have the tool-set to build your own tool-set; since it's a lot easier to using CLI tools as building blocks for larger tools. At both of the last…

I don't think he was shitting on command line tools; he was shitting on the remote machine his child was having to use, which was slow and unreliable. > Also big disagree on the final statement of the article. CS is not a vocational major, nor should it be. There are plenty of good post-secondary schools that focus on writing code and the tools you use to do so; CS curricula should not be focused on producing program…

> I don't think he was shitting on command line tools

Yes he is; he put "You can't do good work with bad tools" in bold.

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#82

Post by hiroprot » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 8:48 PM UTC

Maybe somewhat off-topic, but visiting this URL causes my Ubiquiti setup to trigger a Security Alert about an Incoming connection from the IP that hosts plover.com related to TOR (screenshot of the alert: https://share.cleanshot.com/J1cfSd1W)

Curious if anybody else experienced this, and what's behind it?

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#83

Post by jerf » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 8:49 PM UTC

softwarebeware wrote: post #51

icyberbullyu wrote: post #25

I really have to disagree with the disparagement of vim/scp at the beginning. It's a bit slower to start if you begin with command-line tools, but the dividends payed out by learning the standard command-line utilities are huge. Learning the command-line utilities means you have the tool-set to build your own tool-set; since it's a lot easier to using CLI tools as building blocks for larger tools. At both of the last…

You're talking about this right? > I think CS curricula should have a class that focuses specifically on these issues, on the matter of how do you actually write software? Are you really opposed to "a class" on writing software being included in CS curricula? CS courses have plenty of writing software.

"We're going to ask you to write code for four years. Professional coding may not be the point of this curriculum but coding is still the primary way you're going to interact with it. And don't you dare take even a week to sharpen the saw out of those those four years, because that's not the point of this curriculum! Saw with that dull saw! Saw harder! Because sawing is not the point of this school, so we're not going to teach you, so just saw harder!"

How is this a sensible position? It's not even "vocational training" being called for here, it's basic fundamentals for anyone who is going to code. I can tell you from experience that data scientists could stand to be oriented on the basics of this stuff too, and it would pay off in less time than just the course that taught it, let alone the full curriculum, let alone a career.

This is agreement with you, btw. Of course the very basics of management of programming should be taught. Of course the stuff in the blog post should be taught formally in some introductory class. Who trains their football players by just having them play games over and over? Who teaches musicians by just having them play concert music? Who expects English students to improve by just writing journal articles continuously? Every field has some sort of basics to it that aren't the actual output of the field but will cause anyone who is weak in them to waste arbitrary amounts of time spinning uselessly on useless irrelevancies.

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#84

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 8:57 PM UTC

stinkbutt wrote: post #41

andrewstuart wrote: post #36

Speaking of using sharp tools…. I really don’t get the love for VSCode. I’ve used Jetbrains for years and last week gave VSCode a really solid try. Man what a mess. Everything is a plug-in, plug-ins are inconsistent, getting basic things to work requires a tsunami of plugins. Everything feels half baked and duplicated and needing updates or abandoned ugh. Nothing feels professional because everything is a plug-in bui…

i tried Goland (the Jetbrains IDE for Go) and when my mouse hovers over a variable the IDE does not provide a tool tip that tells me what its type is. And for that reason I've stuck with VS Code.

[deleted]

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#85

Post by bitwize » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 8:57 PM UTC

duck2 wrote: post #48

icyberbullyu wrote: post #25

I really have to disagree with the disparagement of vim/scp at the beginning. It's a bit slower to start if you begin with command-line tools, but the dividends payed out by learning the standard command-line utilities are huge. Learning the command-line utilities means you have the tool-set to build your own tool-set; since it's a lot easier to using CLI tools as building blocks for larger tools. At both of the last…

I found VSCode's remote plugins to be a really good option when the code lives on a shared remote machine over a slow connection. vim+scp is an extra step on each change, vim over ssh is just awkward, and sshfs isn't the most reliable piece of software.

I learned vi on a Tandy Model 16 running Xenix. The Xenix console driver, for whatever reason, throttles comms to the display to 9600 baud. It was fine. Today a "slow connection" is megabytes per second. Latency may be an issue, but otherwise vim, or any terminal-based editor, will run nicely over any modern connection.

By contrast, VS Code needs to inject itself, plus any plug-ins, over to the remote side. Wanna know how long that can take if the link isn't decently fast?

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#86

Post by robtaglang » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

> Debugging is an engineering discipline: You come up with a hypothesis, then test the hypothesis. Then you do it again.

I like this - I've given some form of this advice, but I usually say: "you should call your shots in pool".

You can flail about randomly and hope a ball goes in, but you won't get any better. You must be intentional, and train yourself to come up with and systematically work through hypotheses to get faster. This isn't getting better at programming - it's getting better at reasoning.

In my mind, this is also one of the main value-adds of working on "useless" projects. The end product isn't the point, the debugging and problem solving practice is.

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#87

Post by user3939382 » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

icyberbullyu wrote: post #25

I really have to disagree with the disparagement of vim/scp at the beginning. It's a bit slower to start if you begin with command-line tools, but the dividends payed out by learning the standard command-line utilities are huge. Learning the command-line utilities means you have the tool-set to build your own tool-set; since it's a lot easier to using CLI tools as building blocks for larger tools. At both of the last…

Theory vs career training in college is not a simple issue. In reality many students are going to college because they want a job, that’s the goal, that’s why they’re there, that’s why they’re paying. Employers want graduates with practical skills.

This is a huge divergence from the University landscape in the 20s for example, where the purpose really commonly was “we’re here to think thoughts, for their own sake.”

I don’t necessarily mind the latter, it has a role and purpose for humanity, but it’s also not compatible with the existing paradigm that every HS grad has to go to college and accumulate debt to have any chance at a career.

Colleges do need to get real about their contemporary role or accept massive scaling back. Right now college enrollment is shrinking because of these issues.

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#88

Post by xphos » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 9:02 PM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #56

icyberbullyu wrote: post #25

I really have to disagree with the disparagement of vim/scp at the beginning. It's a bit slower to start if you begin with command-line tools, but the dividends payed out by learning the standard command-line utilities are huge. Learning the command-line utilities means you have the tool-set to build your own tool-set; since it's a lot easier to using CLI tools as building blocks for larger tools. At both of the last…

If the short term goal is to finish a project by a deadline, just use vscode. Teach yourself vim and scp later.

I think this type of attitude doesn't stop here. Vim is the topic but if you also are taking the easy paths you tend to get stuck. Sometimes you have good tools you just don't know how to use them. That doesn't mean you should throw out the tools you have and buy new ones immediately though. This can work for vim but in general reaching for something that is easy is not always the right solution especially while in college you hace classes yes but you don't have the pressure of actual deadlines and deliverables where you don't have the time to learn

Real life example I have a guy at work who didn't have the time to learn git beyond git clone. He's not a software engineer but his workflow to get things to "work" was to create a new directory everyday and clone the repos he needed. The next day he'd do the same thing again and again until his disk drive was full and than he'd delete the old directories because he thought he didn't need them anymore. This work style was ludicrous but he didn't have the time. 1, 1hour tutorial on git he nows safes the 5 minutes it takes everyday to clone the repo, and the hours lost when he deleted something he needed.

People can learn vim, and git, and insert tool here but we need a culture of teaching and a culture of asking questions. I'd argue the person in question didn't feel comfortable with sharing because they didn't want to look dumb and computer science departments tend to breed that what you can't do it mentality? That causes this problem like I mentioned and the hours of wasted time using vim and scp when you don't know how.

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#89

Post by agentultra » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

infrabr0 wrote: post #79

conor- wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even have to read a vim tutorial. The tutorial is already baked in. I learned vim by doing vimtutor every couple of months to learn more advanced features after getting basic navigation and editing motions down and forcing myself to use it for as much of my work as I possibly can. Learning vim early paid dividends in terms of productivity and also by forcing me to learn more about how to actually leverage o…

> I learned vim by doing vimtutor every couple of months to learn more advanced features after getting basic navigation I think you're missing the point. Should a novice programmer postpone their education by months because they need to satisfy the imaginary pre-requisite of learning vim via vimtutor? There's a lot of thinking involved at all levels let alone at the novice stages. I cant imagine how frustrating it'd…

I suspect there’s also no small amount of exaggerating how much work it is to learn enough about vim to get proficient.

The basic tutorial takes a couple hours? It’s not that big of a deal compared to how long it takes to learn how to program.

I just find it funny that for both VSCode and vim, the advice is the same but one is considered easier/better than the other.

Re: Advice to a novice programmer

#90

Post by zaxomi » Wed, Oct 25, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #27

ghostpepper wrote: post #2

This is great advice, although personally I will continue using vim over vscode. If vscode is a sharp kitchen knife then vim is a katana sword. Novice programmers should probably not start with vim.

I still don't really understand what Vim users see in it. They always seem to claim that you can edit faster... and sure you can if you're comparing with Notepad++. But modern editors have multiple cursors and tons of useful editing tools that let you be easily as fast with much less pain.

Some of the things I use in vim:

* Mark a position in the file, so I easily can jump back.

* Quick recording of a macro that to do the same type of edit multiple times (very handy when refactoring)

* regular expression search and replace, very easy to limit the scope.

* Easy to select, copy and paste lines or columns.

Everything without touching a mouse.