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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?

#171

Post by mablopoule »

lr4444lr wrote: post #104
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 think the other replies miss an important part of your comment: Some of these projects were so late in their deadlines that had to be canceled Speed is really important a lot more often than devs like to acknowledge when a company is small and fighting for its life to get revenue, let alone become profitable, and the code debt is often worth it. Fixing the code debt itself doesn't need to be any more thorough than…

> and the code debt is often worth it.

This is something that I like about the metaphor of 'code debt', and which tends to go over peoples head: debt can be a perfectly fine instrument, and just like a real debt, it can be a good thing when leveraged wisely. The issue is more when debt is treated as 'free money', and is used carelessly.

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

#172

Post by smeej »

brailsafe wrote: post #151
smeej wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to try working in tiny startups, if any of your skills would make that work. There, gaps in resumes and random ends to employment are expected. Nobody asks about mine, and I end up taking a full year off every 4-5 years whether I want to or not (but I usually do want to). No, my normie friends don't get it at all, and everyone ALWAYS asks me "how the job search is going" even when I've told them ever…

Ya that would be my ideal next place, unfortunately it's also an economic downtown in Canada, so I'm sort of doing the latter part of your comment and throwing DMs and my resume out whenever something comes up. Honestly I'm thankful that I've had the time off, and because I expect any given job won't last long, I save my money quite aggressively. Eventually something turns up.

Yeah, exactly. I was blessed with inexpensive tastes, so I find it easy to live well below my means.

Plus, one lucky break with some early equity goes a long way.

It's not the right game for everyone, but it's totally viable once you get the hang of its rules. And many of us find they're a better fit than the normal rules ever were.

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

#173

Post by jjmarr »

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.…

There's a discrepancy that the top comments here say that "some people can produce a ton of value by not caring about code quality" and "I didn't care about code quality and got bit later on". And people discuss that incurring technical debt with bad code can sometimes be worth it and sometimes not be worth it.

The logical implication of technical debt having an interest rate (i.e. It costs more to fix something later than now) is that like money, features have time value. This is what makes it worth it to incur technical debt.

Thinking about the implied interest rate of technical debt makes it easier to rank what should be prioritized for a fix. High interest debt should be paid off first. But you might also focus on refactors that reduce the interest rate, such as by modularizing your code so it's easier to replace down the line.

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

#174

Post by massysett »

motoxpro wrote: post #153
massysett wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”?

Wait so you are a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut? Stop thinking global maxima (everyone in the world) and start thinking local maxima (you) and I promise there is someone that beats every local (you) metric you have.

Nope. There is no one that beats me at every metric I have. Does anyone know my family as well as I do? No. Does anyone know my staff as well as I do? No. Does anyone maintain my house as well as I do? No.

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

#175

Post by yen223 »

massysett wrote: post #148
yen223 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many people do you personally know play way too much video games? And out of them, how many has made a successful living out of playing video games?

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

#176

Post by chx »

canadiantim wrote: post #160
chx wrote: post #142

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 remo…

Why'd you leave Canada, if I may ask?

Because y'all don't mask any more and if all I can do is sit at home then why not be warm while at it? And be closer to family, too.

I can travel wearing the Halo to visit my brother's family (in the UK) and my parents (in Hungary) but that's all. Otherwise, by and large, I don't go anywhere any more. I can't. That's the new reality. I wear a positive air pressure respirator to risk such activities as boarding a bus. And while it's quiet it's not silent so cinema, theatre etc is totally out. You can't possibly imagine how lonely life became even for an introvent who has worked from home all his life. I didn't quite get suicidal over the 2022 holidays but let's just say I understood why suicide statistics climb up over the holidays and I decided this can not be borne any more and changed things so it's easier to visit what few family I have left. I have no other human contact than these visits every few months. Sometimes I don't leave my apartment for several days at all and if I do, it's mostly for lonely walks (very rarely the post office or the pharmacy). The few friends I had in Vancouver got lost during Covid -- and I know no one in Malta. (Perhaps this helps explaining some of my recent post history.)

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

#177

Post by a_t48 »

mablopoule wrote: post #96
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 don't remember where I saw this quote, but... "It's okay to half-ass something, when all you need is half an ass". EDIT: Totally agree about the 'important mindest for startup', I had a similar eye-opening experience, working in a startup with 'cowboy' code that was actually quite good, but I had to unlearn a bit of stuff I read as a junior/mid-level developper. It was code that was well-architected, had well-conci…

Well-architected + well designed means you can go back later and fix the code if the project survives. I'm hitting this personally right now - the amount of code I can write is dwarfed by the amount of features needed to get something like a working demo out the door - I can spend time and make every thing perfect, or I can squint and imagine how I will implement fixes later and focus on making sure that I don't have to rearchitect.

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

#178

Post by krisoft »

massysett wrote: post #111
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…

> 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…

It sounds like there is a misunderstanding here. Two kinds. You are taking too literally the “every category” part and your bar for “excelling” is higher than it is commonly used.

In your comment you talk about being the best of the best. “Excelling” doesn’t have this connotation. You could say that someone is “excelling” at business if they have a nice, well-run pizza shop. They don’t have to be the literal Steve Jobs. Excelling in classes would be someone who effortlesly gets good grades, not someone who has a Nobel prize. Much lower bar.

Also the “every category” is not the same as “literaly everything”. Just everything the commenter cared about at that point in their life. Probably popularity with others, popularity with girls, academics, sports, something creative like music, maybe dressing, humour, etc.

I would not, unless otherwise qualified, would assume that the person was literally excelling at neurosurgery, and astrodynamics, and crystalography, and parliamentary rules and customs. But since those topics don’t just naturally come up in real life the commenter had no way of knowing that.

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

#179

Post by buffalobuffalo »

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 think one of the most valuable lessons I have learned in software engineering is that you can write entire projects with the express plan of rewriting them if they actually gain traction. If I want to prototype something these days, I will often write code that, while not quite spaghetti, would definitely not pass a proper code review. It's actually kind of fun. Almost like a cheat day on a diet or something.

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

#180

Post by zamalek »

becquerel wrote: post #70
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.

Give it a go sometime. OSS contribution is rife with amazing free mentorship, you have a really high chance of getting out more than you put in. Especially with .Net.
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