Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment? • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by __turbobrew__ » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:07 AM UTC

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.

Playing video games for that long destroys your body, I personally know from experience. Exercise also makes you better in every other thing in your life as well (including video games).

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

#252

Post by jasfi » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:10 AM UTC

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.…

Similarly, some entrepreneurs (non-tech)e who can produce a basic MVP that generates money from the start, sometimes to an insane MRR. They use something like Google Sheets, Bubble or pay a dev shop a fraction of a corporate project to get it done.

As a struggling solo tech founder, I'm in awe.

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

#253

Post by a_t48 » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:11 AM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #241

a_t48 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ask yourself: Will the amount of work it takes to "do this right" increase over time? (And by how much?) I drew some quick placeholder art for a game I'm working on for fun. One day I might sit down and draw some good art, but not today. When the day finally comes to finish the art, the difficulty of creating that art will be no greater than it is now. In fact, with improving art tools, it may be easier to do later.…

Exactly.

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

#254

Post by leetrout » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:12 AM UTC

h2odragon wrote: post #2

I took a mauser .25 pocket pistol apart. one of these: https://sportsmansvintagepress.com/read-free/mauser-rifles-p... Eventually got it together again, but it required assistance from my uncle who had given it to me. He laughed long and hard when i described the predicament, then said "yup, that one got me too". He also rebuilt Mercedes diesels as a hobby, so he was full of entertaining critiques of German engineeri…

I got stuck with the Ruger Mark III .22 pistol. Reassembly after field stripping you have to know the trick to turn the pistol up (or even upside down at a 45 degree angle) with the magazine in place before you can get the mainspring housing assembly to seat correctly.

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

#255

Post by Paul-Craft » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:29 AM UTC

keepamovin wrote: post #239

mkl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a false dichotomy because it falsely implies there are only two options. Better than either are the other options which lie in between.

Oh, I see. That's a good point. But I don't think hu3's comment was suggesting there's only two options, just illustrating some possible margins to describe the landscape. Maybe stavros' was hallucinating that strawman reduction in there, is what I think. Like you don't have to say it's a false dichotomy unless that's the only way you read it. The existence of something between the margins, should be obvious. Anyway,…

Well, it almost always becomes an actual dichotomy soon, for sufficiently large values of "soon."

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

#256

Post by techproblems » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:30 AM UTC

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.

I can't agree. By far the biggest lesson that you can verify even on this thread, is that the biggest tech problems are actually people problems. Even things like tech debt are all over the place framed as project/people management rather than tech stuff at its fundamentals.

The comment already established the senior sysadmin is generally a valuable person who does a lot to flourish the company. Going out of the way to be a encumbrance towards someone who is verifiably doing their job anyways, means you're actively creating a people problem. I;d rather people learn the correct, bigger lesson here.

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

#257

Post by wanderingmind » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:39 AM UTC

Meeting less competent people be extremely successful in life compare to the more competent folks. Through my life, I have seen people less curious, less innovative, no passion to learn, not interested in working hard, but are good at gaming the system excel and succeed. They become rich, financially independent, have great success. While people much smarter than me, more curious and innovative fail again and again to make a dent just because they had a late start, poor network, wrong time and place etc.

It made me realise that success is not because of what you are capable of. To, most extent its about how you fit into the system and work it to your favor.

So, while I'm still curious and interested to learn (why else to visit HN), I have stopped feeling bitter about my efforts not providing the returns. Its just the way world works.

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

#258

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:39 AM UTC

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.

It's cliche, but I really do feel reading the Art of Unix Programming gave me a very good sense early on for how to walk this line carefully. Unix programs are high quality - but they're also, ideally, small, and written with an eye to compositionality with the rest of the ecosystem. The best architecture is in the middle, and often the best first draft is a simple series of pipes.

https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/

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

#259

Post by icelancer » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:41 AM UTC

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.

No one wants to be a "programmer."

They'd rather be called "engineers."

With none of the licensure, mandatory education, and so forth. But the world needs programmers and technicians for most of the work we have to do. I do comparably little "engineering" and the little I have done that qualifies for such a statement I recall. Majority of the work is programming and technician work. Nothing wrong with that.

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

#260

Post by ozr » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 4:43 AM UTC

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.

It's a guy browsing the internet a bit. This is not some deep philosophical question. You're just advocating being the type of person we'd all hate to work with.