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Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#21

Post by ozim »

voidfunc wrote: post #7

Learn how to write in a clear and concise way that is coherent and can be understood by other people. Learn how to write to different audiences. You communicate differently with programmers than you would executives.

Also reading others and understanding what they wrote - requires effort.

Accept that not everything can be communicated with 2 sentences summary and you have to put effort into reading and understanding.

I am avid reader and hope not worst writer - but people don’t read or read but don’t understand and jump to conclusions. Which was causing me a lot of frustration because I thought everyone is able to read at my level and a lot of people are not - they can be dyslexic or bunch of other issues like even having a bad day or not sleeping well last night.

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#23

Post by riffraff »

ggm wrote: post #6

Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.

What would be the proper resources to learn how to use excel (or Google sheets or other spreadsheet)?

I feel the major issue with excel (and other stuff such as CSS) is that one learns by cobbling things together and never through a formal process.

This means you end up inventing things that kinda work but you often don't use the tool the way it was intended.

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#24

Post by srvaroa »

neilv wrote: post #22

Most tech companies today work against your interests, to one degree or another -- even the companies that run expensive warm-fuzzy PR campaigns -- so try to minimize how much you have to trust any of them.

I can agree that interests of companies and individuals are not necessarily aligned and it's good advice to take this into consideration. I'm not sure it's necessary to add actual bad intentions from the part of all tech companies. In fact, I think it spoils most of what's good about the advice.

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#25

Post by BLKNSLVR »

appstorelottery wrote: post #19

IMHO programming comes down to understanding logic, breaking down many-step problems into their smallest elements and being able to express a process in a flow or state chart. There is an old saying "behave yourself or I'll replace you with a very small script", which I assume comes from the Unix world. ZSH and shells are surprisingly powerful in this respect. Perhaps consider automation technologies like Zapier and…

+1 here for "breaking down many-step problems into their smallest element".

If you can do this, then the technology to solve each element is much easier to determine, and it'll also be easier to ask (Google, ChatGPT, coworkers) more specific questions that provide more specific answers.

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#26

Post by riffraff »

DavidPiper wrote: post #18

Paraphrasing Stephen King's advice: Life isn't a support-system for technology. It's the other way around. If there's no joy in it, it's just no good. And my own thoughts: "Get better at using technology" is a vast possibility space. You'll never be able to learn, use, or even appreciate all modern technology like a specialist. Be intentional and figure out what you want to get out of your technology use, and learn w…

For those new to the advice, it's a quote from "On Writing", I saw it first in a Zen Pencils mini comic, and it moved me deeply, it seems like very good advice.

https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/king/

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#27

Post by Falmarri »

riffraff wrote: post #23
ggm wrote: post #6

Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.

What would be the proper resources to learn how to use excel (or Google sheets or other spreadsheet)? I feel the major issue with excel (and other stuff such as CSS) is that one learns by cobbling things together and never through a formal process. This means you end up inventing things that kinda work but you often don't use the tool the way it was intended.

>I feel the major issue with excel (and other stuff such as CSS) is that one learns by cobbling things together and never through a formal process.

This is literally all programming, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. As long as you keep learning and don't just keep doing the same cobbled together mess for years and years

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#28

Post by cpach »

raister wrote: post #15
ggm wrote: post #6

Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.

The problem with Excel, in my view, is that people start using it as a database, and things get convoluted from there on very fast.

Is it at that point they should upgrade to Access!? (Only half-joking…)

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#29

Post by rytis »

raister wrote: post #15
ggm wrote: post #6

Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.

The problem with Excel, in my view, is that people start using it as a database, and things get convoluted from there on very fast.

I always thought of it as a datastore. What else is it? A document with one or many tables, each containing rows of highly unstructured records (that can cross reference each other), but essentially it is a data store. Or is this view completely wrong?

Re: Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

#30

Post by withinboredom »

raister wrote: post #15
ggm wrote: post #6

Excel is a functional programming environment which works at scale. Yes, we hate it. Yes, date handling is a mess. If you learn how to drive excel you can do almost anything.

The problem with Excel, in my view, is that people start using it as a database, and things get convoluted from there on very fast.

There have been multiple points in my life where I’ve been tasked to create a plugin for excel for essentially this purpose.

It is a database though, one that is very accessible to most savvy people (aka, your domain experts) and you should lean on that instead of pushing them out. At least at smaller scales.

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