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The best programmers I know

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Re: The best programmers I know

#131

Post by carlmr »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #41
nvarsj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter are the ones that get promoted to senior staff+, or more likely become directors/VPs. There is a very low cap on career growth if you are purely focused on programming. So yes, if you want to climb the corporate ladder or run your own business, programming is a fraction of the skills required. I think though it's okay to just focus on coding. It's fun and why many of us got into the industry. Not everyone…

I don't know. Career plans aside, to me, making software is a means to an end. There is no inherent value to producing software, as there may be in producing car tires or bananas. The best software is no software. And then who is the better programmer, the one who knows more about how to make software, or the one who knows more about what software to make?

>The best software is no software.

Eh, I disagree. I like a lot of the software I'm using. There's inherent value to producing music with Ableton, cutting videos with Final Cut Pro, or just playing Super Mario for entertainment. Those are all more software than no software.

Re: The best programmers I know

#132

Post by irishloop »

epolanski wrote: post #52

I want to add another one, ability to handle emotions (mentioned but mostly in terms of patience) and ability to stay focused. Two programmers that start with similar levels at the thing that OP listed, but one able to stay focused and productive and the other jumping on YouTube, HN half the day (yes, that's me in many periods) etc are gonna have different impact and progression with time.

Do you think there's a way to train focus?

Re: The best programmers I know

#133

Post by Taek »

bob1029 wrote: post #103

Not guessing is perhaps the most important thing to the business. I developed a lot of my problem solving skills in semiconductor manufacturing where the cost of a bad assumption tends to be astronomical. You need to be able to determine exactly what the root cause is 100% of the time or everything goes to hell really fast. If there isn't a way to figure out the root cause, you now have 2 tickets to resolve. I'll thr…

I always get a lot of pushback for avoiding frameworks and libraries, and rolling most things by hand.

But, most frameworks and libraries aren't built to be audit-grade robust, don't have enterprise level compatibility promises, can't guarantee that there won't be suprise performance impacts for arbitrary use cases, etc.

Sometimes, a third party library (like sql-lite) makes the cut. But frameworks and libraries that reach the bar of "this will give me fewer complications than avoiding the dependency" are few and far between.

Re: The best programmers I know

#134

Post by lqet »

The best programmer and the best Linux wizard I knew had absolutely no background in CS, he stumbled into programming in this 20ies because he had to develop a tool for his Master thesis in a completely unrelated field (agriculture). He then quickly taught himself Java, Python, C++, JavaScript, PHP, and PostgreSQL scripting. By his early 30ies he was the established senior developer at the company I worked back then. He was very strong and quick in non-algorithmic programming tasks, but I also often marveled the naivete with which he approached algorithmic tasks: he would google around for a day, and then find out about standard undergraduate CS algorithms, would then get very excited about them, and quickly implement his own version.

Re: The best programmers I know

#135

Post by carlmr »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #129
vinhcognito wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, cars are a means to an end. And I can imagine a world without cars more easily than a world without software. Do you imagine that we just somehow evolve capabilities beyond it? or do we eventually produce universally perfect software solutions and leave it at that?

It's not really about that. If I hire you to make software for me, I don't really want software; I want a problem to go away, a money stream built, a client to be happy. Of course, that probably requires you to build software, unless you invent a magic wand. But if you had the magic wand, I'd choose it every single time over software. Not so with food, furniture or a fancy hotels, where I actually want the thing.

If I had a magic wand to make you satiated, you wouldn't need food. If you're in it for the taste I will magic wand you some taste in your mouth. If I had a magic wand to give you a roof over your head, protection and a bed, you wouldn't need a hotel.

The magic wand argument doesn't make sense. Then you can also get everything else.

Re: The best programmers I know

#136

Post by __jonas »

hk__2 wrote: post #93
notrealyme123 wrote: post #58

https://web.archive.org/web/20250409082704/https://endler.de... Otherwise rate limited

The best programmers I know don’t use cheap hosting that rate-limit your static blog.

The irony is that Cloudflare actually offers free static hosting with unlimited traffic, this just seems to run on a Cloudflare compute service for some reason? Perhaps it’s server rendered.

Re: The best programmers I know

#138

Post by agentultra »

the importance of writing cannot be over-stated.

If you want to solve nasty, hard Heisen-bug problems you need to write. Ask questions, write down the answers. Follow the trail.

Some times you need to be more formal. Learning how to write maths is invaluable. Distributed systems, security, performance at scale… all benefit from a solid understanding of some pretty simple maths.

Writing is thinking! Challenge yourself, examine your thoughts, and learn to write well. It pays off in spades.

Re: The best programmers I know

#139

Post by jppope »

Taek wrote: post #133
bob1029 wrote: post #103

Not guessing is perhaps the most important thing to the business. I developed a lot of my problem solving skills in semiconductor manufacturing where the cost of a bad assumption tends to be astronomical. You need to be able to determine exactly what the root cause is 100% of the time or everything goes to hell really fast. If there isn't a way to figure out the root cause, you now have 2 tickets to resolve. I'll thr…

I always get a lot of pushback for avoiding frameworks and libraries, and rolling most things by hand. But, most frameworks and libraries aren't built to be audit-grade robust, don't have enterprise level compatibility promises, can't guarantee that there won't be suprise performance impacts for arbitrary use cases, etc. Sometimes, a third party library (like sql-lite) makes the cut. But frameworks and libraries that…

I completely agree - though there are places where I trust an implementation of things like a well known algorithm.

However, to add onto this, I'm consistently shocked at how often it is much CHEAPER to "roll your own." We've done some reviews on systems after a few years and the number of bugs and security vulnerabilities we experience with code based around packages is much MUCH higher. Its hard to put a number to it because the time cost of fixing those issues is variable, but its substantial. Its also amazing to me that it can be cheaper to build your own vs using a 3rd party vendor for something that would appear to be highly specialized - of course opportunity cost is a real thing.

Re: The best programmers I know

#140

Post by Sxubas »

fideloper wrote: post #128
animesh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic: is the rate-limit because they host on a Cloudflare compute service? I ask because I would like to know if this feature would be available for just using the domain hosting.

That feature exists on cloudflare outside of using CF workers or their own compute stuff. It's part of their WAF featureset.

I don't think it is WAF related, it clearly says:

> If you are owner of this website, prevent this from happening again by upgrading your plan on the Cloudflare Workers dashboard.

Looking into it, my hypothesis is that the owners page is SSRd using cloudflare workers and they reached the daily limits.

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