Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 704 posts

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

#221

Post by porksoda »

hnthrow289570 wrote: post #166
deadbabe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm numb to it. It's just a fact of life because tenures are so short, quality is often very opinionated, and jobs are readily available, and you usually get a raise from the next job too. You do what you can to stay employed until you can get the next job lined up. It has become overwhelmingly obvious that the industry is never going to reach a state where technical debt and bad code is exceptional and high quality…

I had only one job so far where code quality was a primary objective it was fantastic, but it was also extremely slow and expensive. Slower and more expensive even than what you're probably thinking right now. I was shocked.

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

#222

Post by JohnMakin »

jjmarr wrote: post #173
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 late…

I learned this lesson when working on very fast paced projects with way fewer developer resources than needed. to ship a feature on time, shortcuts in quality have to be made, but you learn to make the shortcuts in a way that are easier to go back and clean up later.

I became very fond of #TODO ‘s.

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

#223

Post by nlh »

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…

The Internet did this to me for a lot of things -- when I was an island, I used to think I was really good at a lot of things: Table tennis, Tetris, some other video games. And relative to my friends and sometimes even the people a few circles away from them, I was!

And then, The Internet. And I discovered that I am absolutely NOT good at table tennis. I am not even CLOSE to good at Tetris. And I am TERRIBLE at every video game.

Oh well -- so much for competition! Time to enjoy ;)

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

#224

Post by 4star3star »

scrapcode wrote: post #186

This might be a different response, but I think about this a lot. From my earliest memories, I have loved technology and especially software development. I got involved in a very large low-tech industry early on and I now have the golden handcuffs on. I've kept up with development, even finished my CS degree. I held on to the idea that I would hold the title of a real "software engineer" one day, instead of solo-ing…

I work with a guy who makes a lot more than me, and he describes his salary as "spending money" because he has so many other ventures, contract jobs, and investments. His attitude about code is that no one in the future is going to look at your code like it's the Iliad. It's not art. It's just a tool. Almost none of us have any legacy to speak of with regard to this work. Your priorities as a father are worth it. You and your child will remember and cherish a day at the park far more than a well designed program.

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

#225

Post by bloomingeek »

In 1993 I was interviewed for an operating job in a power plant for a major airline, assigned to their data center. At my current job, I was working in a high rise office building with sixty-six floors.

The operating system computer was a JC8520, which was running a version of MS-DOS. All commands had to be typed in correctly or nothing would happen. While operating the plant, several commands had to be entered every shift, since the owners didn't purchase a very automated package.

In the interview for the data center job, I was asked if I had any experience with Windows. I didn't understand the question because I wasn't aware they were talking about a computer operating system! So, I replied at the office building I worked in there were outside contractors who cleaned the windows.

After my reply all seven of the interviewers were all grinning and I was aware I said something they weren't looking for. One of the men politely told me Windows was a computer operating system. My reply was, "Oh, I see."

When I returned home I told my wife what happened and we shouldn't get our hopes up. To my utter shock, a week later I was offered the job, which I took and after some training, learned something I didn't know before.

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

#226

Post by keepamovin »

stavros wrote: post #202
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.…

This is a false dichotomy. On one end, you have "overarchitects everything so much that the code is soon unmaintainable" and on the other end you have "architects the code so little that the code is soon unmaintainable". Always write the simplest thing you can, but no simpler. Finding that line is where all the art is.

That's not a "false" dichotomy, that's an actual dichotomy: it's a real thing. Reading your comment, even tho you don't say it, I get the feeling you'd be with the rallying cry, "Bikeshedders Assemble!" hahaha! :)

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

#227

Post by kaba0 »

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…

At the same time, companies often fail to invest into long-term goals, like maintainability, increasing test coverage, or even bettering the internal UI, even when it’s their core, business-critical product.

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

#228

Post by kaba0 »

nlh wrote: post #223
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…

The Internet did this to me for a lot of things -- when I was an island, I used to think I was really good at a lot of things: Table tennis, Tetris, some other video games. And relative to my friends and sometimes even the people a few circles away from them, I was! And then, The Internet. And I discovered that I am absolutely NOT good at table tennis. I am not even CLOSE to good at Tetris. And I am TERRIBLE at every…

That’s a good life philosophy!

I think it’s also humbling to look at these opportunities as a learning experience. “If you are a smartest person in the room, you are in a wrong room!”

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

#229

Post by fuzzfactor »

Relearning something I already knew because I forgot I already knew it.

Which you figure out just as the final lesson or exercise is drawing to a close :\

It doesn't bother me since I don't always hesitate to re-invent the wheel either, and when I do go forward I always come up with something in addition to the same old thing I was working on.

When life gives you lemons, make cheesecake.

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

#230

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN