591–600 of 704 posts
I don't think anyone should be expected to intuitively understand engineering inventions. Double so, since they are covered with pretty plastic trim that hides the insides.
Most humbling learning moment: Read some books, science and philosophy, figured out a bunch of beliefs I had were probably wrong. Then I did a real world check, found out my original beliefs WERE wrong. Now I'm a realist.
I was at the climbing gym this one time, working on a route. There were two copies of it side-by-side, as though for a race – ooh, fun! By this point I'd been climbing occasionally for about a decade and considered myself a beginner plus. I was never very good, being both overweight and lacking strength, but I did spend dozens of hours practicing. My first time trying this route, I got halfway up but missed a jump. A…
I want to his this really hard. Being good at a lot of things, but not being the best at any one thing, is sort of a super power on its own.
I always say that I'm never THE expert at any one thing, but if you give me three days and an open internet connection, I can become AN expert at anything at all.
Learning is hard for a lot of people. If you excel at learning, that could be the thing that you're the best at. Never forget that.
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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.
I went to an engineering school. Actual engineers design bridges and machines and biochemical whatnot, and of course require licensing. I push code around.
I even try to subvert company culture and say things like "Well developers will need to update that API" instead of "engineers".
Honestly, it happens regularly in jiu-jitsu (and is one of the reasons I love the sport). I've been training for a number of years, and while I lose to higher belts I typically know what happened. Occasionally I get to roll with people who are world class level (another cool thing about the sport), and they make me feel like it's day 1 all over again. Then they'll give me a few pointers that look completely innocuous…
I'm waiting until he turns 16, and in the adult class himself, to start jiu jitsu at the same gym. It will line up nicely for where I am in life now and where I will be then. He is desperate for me to do the classes with him.
I am not excited to get DESTROYED by my child in the first class.
I did a phone interview with Christopher Poole of 4chan fame (moot) when I was a fairly mid-level engineer. This was for his startup, Canvas. One of the interview questions was to explain every detail of what happens after entering an address into your browser and hitting "go". I completely stumbled through my response and was humbled on that phone call. He was polite, but at the same time made me feel like an absolu…
That's absolutely hilarious to me. I did not know that.
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…
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You must have absolutely nailed the rest of the interview!
It was the early nineties. If you've touched a computer, companies would assume that any skill gap you had you could straightforwardly bridge yourself, on the job. It wasn't like today where you have to be a perfect cinnamon roll of a candidate who ticks all of HR's required-skill checkboxes before you can move on to the grueling 5-6 rounds of interviews.
HR does that so they can empire build. If it takes 200 hours of HR work to hire someone instead of 20, then the director of HR has 10x the staff and can command higher prices.
I consider myself fairly literate and a decent communicator. Until recently I pronounced ‘segue’ how it is spelled. No one ever corrected me. I shudder to think about the meetings where I pronounced it incorrectly.
This happens to people who read more than they talk. I never hold it against them.
Because like you said - that means they spend more time learning than they do with their mouth open. That's a good thing.
I did a phone interview with Christopher Poole of 4chan fame (moot) when I was a fairly mid-level engineer. This was for his startup, Canvas. One of the interview questions was to explain every detail of what happens after entering an address into your browser and hitting "go". I completely stumbled through my response and was humbled on that phone call. He was polite, but at the same time made me feel like an absolu…
Wait. Did moot start Canvas, the educational platform that many, many, many universities use? That Canvas? That's absolutely hilarious to me. I did not know that.
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And the 'fast' can be optional. But sometimes you already have something that works, is correct and fast, but you still want to simplify: for example, when understanding _why_ that code is correct is too annoyingly complicated to explain and understand.
With AMD having 128 core CPUs with a 192 core coming soon... Depending on what you're doing, and how you're doing, there's a LOT of raw horsepower you can throw at a problem. For example, a classic RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, etc) over more complex No/New SQL solutions.