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Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#61

Post by fifilura »

rpgwaiter wrote: post #44

I went from hacky hobbyist programmer to working on core business logic for a startup that eventually the whole company would rely on. I was mostly a one-person team at the company, and I kept a lot of my bad unscalable tendencies from making small fun projects. No formal testing, very little documentation, hundreds of “TODOs”, breaking API changes without really telling anyone, no QA process, no monitoring/reporting…

Would the code have been there and the demo have happened if you had done everything by the book?

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#62

Post by fifilura »

jv22222 wrote: post #54

I was asked by a pro. documentary maker (who I met on the plane flying in to London) to get some B role for a G&R concert he was filming (with his spare video camera). I was given the camera and sent in to the mosh pit to film from that perspective. After the show I gave the camera back to him. He said, "where's the footage?" I had been "filming" looking through the view finder, but I had forgotten to press record. G…

G&R = Guns N'Roses

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#64

Post by zamalek »

I contributed System.HashCode to .Net Core. I was overzealous with inlining hints to make it go fast. jkotas popped his head into the PR and noted the 2MB of machine code per generic type parameter. The bigger problem was that I knew better, and preached better at the time, but had my head too deep in the weeds. I'm better at occasionally popping my head out of the weeds nowadays to make sure I don't have tunnel vision in a daft direction.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#65

Post by johnchristopher »

smeej wrote: post #11

I don't think this was dumb exactly, just naïve. I didn't know fireflies were real until my 20s. I thought they were just a made up thing in storybooks. I was rooming with a girl I barely knew for the summer and was looking out the window while washing dishes. You know how fireflies tend to sync up? Suddenly I see hundreds of tiny yellow lights turn on and then off. On and then off. I yelled for her to come in (at le…

Hey, you were one of the ten thousand that day https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ten_thousand.png !

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#67

Post by fifilura »

_boffin_ wrote: post #25

When I was younger, I had an issue with external vs internal validation. Sadly, it heavily skewed towards external validation. I was on the chunkier side for a lot of my childhood and into high school. Joined wrestling and stayed with it. Lot the weight, grew, and gained muscle. Also started to get a lot of attention from the opposite sex. That, with the external validation issue, leaned into it and just had fun. It…

Oh, external validation vs internal validation has certainly been a humbling experience for me too.

So humbling I could compare it with a train crash. Sadly possibly over-compensating for it now, but I don't want to go back to the external validation spiral.

Amd thank you for sharing, and putting into words what I didn't manage.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#68

Post by stevejb »

formerly_proven wrote: post #59
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #24

From 2011-2012 was Senior intelligence officer for Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, which is one of the most strategic bases in the United States department of Defense. As SIO you are statutorily responsible for the joint worldwide intelligence, communication system (JWICS), maintenance, security, growth, interruptibility, etc… in addition to managing all Perssec for SCI holders, and maintaining control, security and f…

While it's an interesting story, I don't think this Ask HN was meant as a "what's your greatest weakness" job interview question.

Why this comment? This was a really interesting anecdote about how complicated situations in life can be.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#69

Post by riehwvfbk »

daymanstep wrote: post #38
brailsafe wrote: post #36

Idk what my most humbling moment would be, but there's been a few. I've spent the majority of my career looking for wook rather than doing work, and have lost at least 7 jobs in the first 12 years for one reason or another. This is going on the 3rd time I've spent more than a year without working at all in any job. It never gets easier, and each time I get to spend a ton of time reflecting on how things went and what…

Honest question and genuinely curious: what is difficult about showing up on time?

Untreated ADHD can make this really really really hard. And the worst part is: nobody will understand because it is not hard for most people, so everyone assumes that being late is a character issue.

To understand how hard it is, imagine that you have periodic blackouts during which you completely forget not only that you need to be on time for work, but that work is a thing that exists in this universe. You cannot control when one of these blackouts will hit, you just get to deal with the fallout.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#70

Post by becquerel »

zamalek wrote: post #64

I contributed System.HashCode to .Net Core. I was overzealous with inlining hints to make it go fast. jkotas popped his head into the PR and noted the 2MB of machine code per generic type parameter. The bigger problem was that I knew better, and preached better at the time, but had my head too deep in the weeds. I'm better at occasionally popping my head out of the weeds nowadays to make sure I don't have tunnel visi…

Just wanna say thanks for contributing to the platform that is currently paying my wages.
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