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After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

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Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#151

Post by polishdude20 »

cyrialize wrote: post #121

I think the hard part of programming, or programming related things, is environment setup. Even with things like Docker, you can still run into SO many issues. Programming by myself is always easy. Programming within a company can be difficult because of this. There are definitely places out there that make environment setup super simple. Even then, you can still run into something that hasn't been encountered before…

Also just slow, fragile environments once they are set up.

At a previous place I worked, tests would be slow, builds would frequently break and you had to recite the correct incantation of commands to fix them again. We had a common saying: whenever someone would say their build process is broken, we'd say "ah you must have pulled master".

Environments that are fast, stable and get out of your way are a godsend. Unfortunately when working in a monolith, everyone's special build changes are shared with everyone else. Then those build changes break things.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#152

Post by polishdude20 »

Frummy wrote: post #111

I really, really agree. I learned programming on leetcode and took the short feedback loops and automated tests for granted. Then working on legacy software on legacy hardware without automated tests and lots of interactions with other programs and databases, that was a shocking reality check.

Enter modifying your local database manually to set up your state so you can then run a test by hand to see if your thing didn't break other things

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#153

Post by polishdude20 »

mrozbarry wrote: post #100
ericyd wrote: post #86

> As "wordsmiths," programmers often neglect reading. However, reading is an essential part of quickly improving your programming skills. I'm always surprised to hear that most programmers dislike code reviews. I've found code reviews to be one of the most useful ways to learn new design patterns and language features. I personally believe that adopting a mindset of curiosity helps make code reviews enjoyable rather…

The biggest thing is people have bad experiences with reviewers, and people have a lot of insecurity when their work is scrutinized. The biggest issue with code reviews as a process is it's always positioned as being adversarial. Often, you set up a pull/merge request, and someone later does a review, but it's not personal, it's cold and blunt data. Even with a reviewer who has the best intentions, it's tough. Pair p…

At a previous place our code reviews just turned into a quick glance at the code without a real understanding of anything. On one hand I'd like to say it was built on trust in the engineer and test suite, on the other, there was just so much complication and tediousness in some things we did that it was hard to know what was going on in the first place.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#154

Post by polishdude20 »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #133

Working on big projects is difficult af. The context width required for programming exceeds that of normal human beings. There is just A LOT of stuff to keep track of, it's not logic that's difficult that's the easy part.

Do you have any methods for keeping track of all the context? I usually go for a flowchart app and flowchart all the things and systems in order to better understand what's happening. I find the act of writing the flowchart actually helps me more than having a completed one.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#155

Post by Frummy »

polishdude20 wrote: post #152
Frummy wrote: post #111

I really, really agree. I learned programming on leetcode and took the short feedback loops and automated tests for granted. Then working on legacy software on legacy hardware without automated tests and lots of interactions with other programs and databases, that was a shocking reality check.

Enter modifying your local database manually to set up your state so you can then run a test by hand to see if your thing didn't break other things

We have 4 test milieus, and multiple test people. It's not like it's impossible to test things, but it's certainly not automated.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#156

Post by coolThingsFirst »

polishdude20 wrote: post #154
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #133

Working on big projects is difficult af. The context width required for programming exceeds that of normal human beings. There is just A LOT of stuff to keep track of, it's not logic that's difficult that's the easy part.

Do you have any methods for keeping track of all the context? I usually go for a flowchart app and flowchart all the things and systems in order to better understand what's happening. I find the act of writing the flowchart actually helps me more than having a completed one.

I use Joplin/Typora and text only and I play detective few hours before I even have a clue what on earth is even going on. We run like 7 or so docker containers and the code is undocumented. So it's basically like descending into those maze like underground tunnels.

Keep in mind I'm juniorish so others may have much better ideas about this.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#157

Post by terr-dav »

pjerem wrote: post #145
nhatcher wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic. I didn't know what TFA was so I googled. It didn't help (a cursory search). So I asked chatgpt, that helped. The Full Article. I, of course, knew what you meant.

Oh, i was thinking about another f word.

That is more consistent with RTFM: read the f-ing manual, which I assume came before RTFA.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#158

Post by samatman »

MarkSweep wrote: post #141

A lot of these points are why I still enjoy programming as a hobby, but less so enjoy it as a profession. It is much easier to program something where you are the only customer. No project manager alternates between asking me increase and decrease the number of story points per task. No one comes with a last minute request to create a throw away demo for some executive who can only understand pointy-clicks things. Di…

This kind of task is a great fit for a parsing expression grammar. Unfortunately most implementations are awkward to use and suboptimal in execution, but if you can find one which is neither of these things (they exist) it's ideal.

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#159

Post by samatman »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #22
ben_w wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with just programming, I'd agree with what simonw wrote. Over my life, I've done Commodore 64/BBC/REAL/Visual BASIC, C/C++, IDL, python, bash, Java, PHP, ObjC, Swift, and JS, all of which have their own "right way" as they have different abstractions. Even just with those last three, the "right way" has changed significantly since I first started using them — used to be of vital importance to understand manual m…

maybe I'm just super smart but I don't have that difficulty and I've been doing this for 25+ years now. At some point in your career the challenge has to stop being about the mechanical aspect of programming and become about larger, more holistic, concerns.

You're defining programming down to "the part of programming which beginners have trouble with, that eventually gets easy", and using this to make some tautological point which didn't need to be made.

What's the point of that?

Re: After 14 years in the industry, I still find programming difficult

#160

Post by samatman »

arrowleaf wrote: post #77
cafebeen wrote: post #9

Greg Lemond wrote about fitness, "it never gets easier, you just get faster", which perhaps applies as well to programming.

I've always hated this saying, and I think the reason applies here too. If you take up running and it never gets easier, that means you're never managing your pace and you're always going full throttle. That's a straight shot towards injury if not chronic disability. Most aerobic benefits happen at zone 2, where your heart rate is just above 'easy effort'. When you start out, this might just be walking, so it makes s…

It applies to lifting for sure, no lifelong disability or overtraining needed.

When finishing your reps get easy that's how you know it's time to put on more weight. Just like that, no longer easy.

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