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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?

#211

Post by talkingtab »

Yes. I was with two friends in Quetico at a cabin. Temps of -20 below at night. Wood stove, no electricity no running water. We cross country skied over frozen lakes to the cabin. It was a log cabin and the logs were colder than ice cubes and stayed that way over the ten days we were there. In the center was a pot belly wood stove. A foot away from it, the temp was 50. Ten feet away it was 20. Cold.

There was a wood cooking stove and a second older wood cooking stove. We decide to start using the second wood cooking stove for more heat. There was one problem, the stove would smoke. My friend climbed on the roof and cleared the snow away, and we tried to seal leaks but it kept smoking.

One day I came back from drilling a hole in the ice to get water - through 24 inches of ice. I noticed something funny.

When I opened the door, the old wood cook stove stopped smoking. When I closed the door the stove started smoking. I stood there trying to understand. Opening and closing the door over and over. Open the door, no smoke. Close the door, smoke. I started to wonder why it would stop smoking and then it hit me.

The cabin was on fire. When the door was open it got enough air to burst into flame. No smoke. When the door was closed it smoked. I still remember standing there opening and closing the door. Over and over. What an idiot. But I learned something.

We looked underneath the cook stove. The reason there was a newer one wood stove became clear. The firebox on the old stove had rusted through. So coals from the wood were falling through the rusted out part onto the wood floor. We got a fire extinguisher and sprayed it. Then got piles of snow and packed it under there too.

That old adage "where there's smoke there's fire". Not quite accurate.

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

#212

Post by 4star3star »

bch wrote: post #102
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.…

So hard to resolve this in my head - unless it’s understood there’s a “detonate” button attached to the code, that it might escape, or worse, that it gets passed on or sold(!!) is a chilling thought.

Just leave comments for the most embarrassing pieces.

// really not the way to do this, but it works

// ideally, we'd do xyz, but this is good enough

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

#213

Post by tempie2024 »

Getting into Haskell because I was bored and assumed doing Haskell would be far more interesting. And that code would be much better written in Haskell, almost perfect because it is math based.

Haskell is amazingly interesting but very hard. There are few companies using it and the one that did in my city got taken over and usual management shenanigans. I didn’t get a job with them.

Haskell meet ups went over my head and I couldn’t keep up. Didn’t have the time to play catch up with the talented people in this scene.

Realized writing software is an artform, no language necessary makes it better and more fun. Appreciate the common languages more like C# Python and Go.

Haskell has great ideas but there is value in designed language with language features over making everything in the higher type systems.

So in short humbled into realizing what makes good software is more than using clever languages.

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

#214

Post by typ »

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.…

The lack of these design elements in a solo project does not define crappy code. More often, it's due to a codebase being modified by multiple contributors, each wanting to get their work done quickly without paying attention to the overall context or considering others' work.

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

#216

Post by tempie2024 »

mr-wendel wrote: post #187

Caught a senior sysadmin in a small company using a proxy on our infrastructure to hide misc web browsing from oversight. The logs were the give-away. It was typical misc IT/nerd news stuff... the kind of thing a different company culture (which did come later) would actually encourage. I was sure the right thing to do was to report it to the CEO (there wasn't anyone else higher in the hierarchy to consider) for cert…

That is a hard one. Best to report it I think.. but it is not clear cut in general.

There would be times when going against your employer by blowing the whistle or covering up is the more moral thing to do.

Deciding where that line is not simple and there is no guide.

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

#217

Post by tempie2024 »

projectileboy wrote: post #157
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.…

As a good friend of mine often says: We work in a field of people who envision themselves as artists, when all that is wanted are painters.

So we should put a bug in the room and if the painter whistles a tune while working, sanction them for slacking off?

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

#218

Post by aguacaterojo »

stevejb wrote: post #68
formerly_proven wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i think that the story is loaded with about 80% superfluous context and 20% story.

op worked at us airforce base managing access control to global intel systems. he delegated authorisation check to jr. jr told op they checked out, however, jr had not adhered to latest security protocol that required cross checking request against request database, relying instead only on physical credentials. op granted access however asked that an officer watch the civilians’ access directly.

a week later it turns out the civilians were conducting pen testing for the systems and op had to debrief how they gained access.

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

#219

Post by mr-wendel »

tempie2024 wrote: post #216
mr-wendel wrote: post #187

Caught a senior sysadmin in a small company using a proxy on our infrastructure to hide misc web browsing from oversight. The logs were the give-away. It was typical misc IT/nerd news stuff... the kind of thing a different company culture (which did come later) would actually encourage. I was sure the right thing to do was to report it to the CEO (there wasn't anyone else higher in the hierarchy to consider) for cert…

That is a hard one. Best to report it I think.. but it is not clear cut in general. There would be times when going against your employer by blowing the whistle or covering up is the more moral thing to do. Deciding where that line is not simple and there is no guide.

Imaging to do different was only one part of the lesson. The other, and bigger, part is acknowledging the difference between wanting to do the right (for not just me) thing versus that was sure to score points with authority.

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

#220

Post by canadiantim »

_ugfj wrote: post #204
canadiantim wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the explanation. I definitely didn't appreciate what's going on in your life, but that makes sense. Loneliness is of course a significant danger and I'm sorry your life circumstances are making it difficult to be with other people right now. May I ask what the danger is for your particular circumstance? Is it for your health or for a loved one? And it's something to do with compromised immune system? Su…

For my third shot they were still doing mass vaccinations in Vancouver and the way to get express treatment was by your doctor filling out a stupid form which had a number of conditions but didn't have a way to say "other" so he just gave me a generic doctor's note urging to get vaccinated. On site the nurse asks, ok, why do you need one ahead of your age cohort? I haven't even finished listing the shit I live with w…

Do you have a diagnosis yet? Sounds like it's a hard to categorize condition, likely chronic? Chronic illness can be very difficult to diagnose (correctly), as it's tough to know which symptoms are closer to the root cause when there's so many symptoms. Do you think there's a root cause (or a couple) to your cluster of symptoms? Do you think there's some testing that can help you identify some of the root causes?

I'm sure you've done testing for your health, but it can often be very difficult to do thorough testing in Canada. In my experience, you reeally have to press your doctors to get thorough testing, beyond just cursory basic panels for e.g. liver, immunity, etc. I understand they're triaging and saving public resources, but it's not ideal for patients.Likewise, a lot of OHIP-covered tests aren't the most up-to-date, which causes an industry for naturopathic tests to try and fill the gaps, but you obviously have to be careful which of those tests are actually good or not (but still there's some good non-OHIP covered tests you can do too).

idk, obviously I don't know too much about your health, but if I were in your shoes, and in a sense I can relate (going through my own health journey, but aren't we all?), I would be doing as much testing as possible to try and identify root causes and get those fixed. I expect that is what you are doing, but I know how hard it can be to navigate the health system and actually get proper testing.

In regards to your point on variant meaning vaccine resistant, that's a good point. Vaccines (the current iteration) necessarily have to try and predict the strains they're targeting, because the viruses evolve so quickly. But there's specificity and more generalized types of immunity in the body. We've got lots of immune systems and they're tuned in different ways. You can probably get more in-depth testing to see how these specific, relatively independent immune systems are functioning in your body if you want to try and figure out how at-risk you are for covid or long-covid. Again, I'm sure you are doing significant testing as obviously you care a lot for your health, but I would encourage you to press your primary care doctor to do more in-depth testing, and also consider some of the naturopathic tests (ignore their solutions, just use their lab tests), because they can also provide valuable insight into root causes.

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