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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?

#141

Post by DoreenMichele »

I was a full-time mom and military wife when my kids were little. We moved into a 2 bedroom, 50 year old duplex at a new duty station and there was a low-ceiling basement that was mostly consumed by a giant boiler but there was one low-ceiling room down there and we made it a playroom because our two kids were sharing a really tiny bedroom.

So we set up a TV down there and it's a rental so we don't want to drill holes anywhere and I'm talking to my 8 year old about going to the store, buying like 100 feet of cable and running it the long way around the outer wall of the room etc. when he says "What about the hole (in the wall, directly behind the TV and the other side is the stairs)?"

To be fair, he spent time in that room and the opening in the cement block wall or whatever was full of insulation, so it wasn't obvious, but man did I feel stupid for a minute.

And then very relieved because we already owned a long enough cable to set it up through the hole in the wall. The 100 foot cable would have been a bit of a financial burden and going to buy it and then run it the long way around would have eaten the rest of my day and this was resolved in minutes because I always encouraged my kids to ask questions and didn't treat them like that was "disrespecting my authority" or something.

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

#142

Post by chx »

I have been living for 12 years in Canada in an apartment with a baseboard heater. Came an unusually cold winter -- for Vancouver at least -- and I have acknowledged the heater just can't cope with this much cold. Old windows, not much insulation, the works. I bought three three 1500W ceramic heaters and AWG 12 extension cords and it was OK.

Then a visitor told me the baseboard heater had a cover which you could remove. How was I supposed to know?? https://i.imgur.com/Gncty0s.jpeg see that long hole in it? Well, the cover was always on it and it got painted over and I had no idea it can be removed. I grew up in Europe, behind the Iron Curtain actually, childhood heaters in prefabricated buildings were like this https://i.imgur.com/8KMuAKO.jpeg but even more modern ones were on the wall https://i.imgur.com/s6NWHDM.jpeg and I never before had a baseboard heater.

There are things you expect to be problematic with immigration. This was certainly was not one. Another was finding a laundry basket when I came over. Not really an online thing, not then, not in Canada at least. So I asked someone in the elevator. That was weird.

Past immigration shopping, surprisingly, even in 2024 is a problem. I just moved back to Europe after more than 15 years. Now I can't find a travel size and packaged lemon juice anywhere. Not in Malta where I live (not a surprise) but neither in the UK either (WTF). https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/search?&searchTerm=lemon%... https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/SearchResults/lemon%20ju... this and Amazon UK has an appropriate size https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07W1KGCZJ but it's a weak cover, it will spill if it gets jostled in the backpack. I am drawing a total blank: https://geizhals.eu/?fs=zitronensaft+100ml&hloc=at&hloc=de&h... In North America I could get https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BZSUWPY but now that I live within ferry distance of Sicily, I can't? Nothing for succo limone 100ml site:it either. scratches head

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

#143

Post by blackhaj7 »

mtmail wrote: post #14

Took me several days to realize why some cars in the UK have white license plates, some have yellow ones. (They don't: one colour is on the front, one on the back). I no longer call myself a 10x engineers, now it's 9x only (that's a joke, I'm hardly 1x).

TIL as a 35 y/o British person

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

#144

Post by massysett »

mablopoule wrote: post #129
massysett wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. This is literally impossible. A person cannot be Einstein and Picasso at the same time. A person cannot be Steve Jobs and Pope Francis at the same time. We all have limited time in life, and it is only possible to excel in one thing by focusing on it and, as a result, not focusing on something else. Th…

You just need to meet someone like that, they are rare but they exists. It doesn't means that they are good at everything , just that they are better than you in every way. I had a colleague like that. She was super nice, super smart, very good looking, was well-balanced emotionally, and dated a professional athlete. The kind of person who has a very good career, and then train for the marathon on the weekend. Even h…

> just that they are better than you in every way.

Nope, I have never once met a person like that and am confident I never will. OK, so John Urschel plays football and is great at math. Are you telling me he is also a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut? If not how is he good at “everything”?

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

#146

Post by deadbabe »

hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

I wonder if you’ll still admire them when they leave and the burden of maintaining the mess they left behind falls on you.

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

#148

Post by massysett »

yen223 wrote: post #131
massysett wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. This is literally impossible. A person cannot be Einstein and Picasso at the same time. A person cannot be Steve Jobs and Pope Francis at the same time. We all have limited time in life, and it is only possible to excel in one thing by focusing on it and, as a result, not focusing on something else. Th…

Person A spends their 8 hours playing sports, reading books and socialising Person B spends their 8 hours only playing video games I would expect Person A to be better than Person B in every notable category, except for video game skill.

Why are you discounting the importance of video game skill? With esports people are making a living on it. Person B is specializing in a skill and mastering it. Person A is a jack of all trades and master of nothing.

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

#149

Post by emseetech »

bicx wrote: post #89
hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

My way of planning and writing software shifted a good bit after I went from working at a mid-size tech company to working for myself. Suddenly I cared very much about how long it took to reach a functional product and very little about developing sophisticated architectures.

Simple UX too. Early adopters are so much more forgiving of a boring but functional user interface than we want to admit. It doesn't have to look amazing out of the gate. It just needs to do something cool.

Plus a lot of our overcomplicated architectures on the frontend are because we shoot for a UI that competes with products that have been iterated on for 15 years now by teams of dozens or even hundreds.

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

#150

Post by xattt »

netsharc wrote: post #82
nicbou wrote: post #78

In college, meeting someone that was better than me by every conceivable metric. You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. Perfect grades, involved in many communities, and generally pleasant to be around. There was no caveat, no excuse. Dude just straight up rocked. I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my moto…

But why does it have to be a competition, of thinking "I have to be the best at X, if someone else is better, I feel unworthy.". I ask rhetorically, that sentence probably describes me more than my impression of you from 3 paragraphs.

Not OP, but I will feel an internal sense of frustration at the cards I’ve been dealt with.

Edit: To add, the frustration is projected onto the other person, given they are a physical manifestation of what you are not.

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