Forklifts require training
zacsweers.dev
Forklifts require training
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Re: Forklifts require training
#2> How do junior developers level-up to get into private Slack spaces? Where do they learn from if Stackoverflow is hostile, Reddit is hollowed out, and social squares are empty?
Books seem to still work very well. I am not even sure all this social media learning was that much positive. A lot of it was based on trend chasing, shiny object syndrome and stuff like that in a completely a-historical context. It was always funny when some star social media coder re-discovered something that probably people did in mainframes before I was born and that you can find in a lot of books.
Re: Forklifts require training
#3Not obvious from the title, but this is a great post on why it's a terrible terrible time to be an entry-level developer right now:
* Job market sucks for junior devs due to the end of ZIRP and normalization of layoffs
* Dearth of good developer role models due to the "public sphere" getting worse (collapse of developer twitter community, rise of vacuous influencers). I'm a little skeptical about this one as I didn't really benefit much from these sources myself when getting into the industry. And there's always hacker news, which is doing fine!
* Loss of good mentorship opportunities due to rise of remote work
* AI tools are good for seniors who already know how to do things, but terrible for junior devs trying to learn. This is the forklifts metaphor. (And AI is probably not helping the junior dev job market either, although that was already bad for other reasons as mentioned above.)
I am truly worried about where the next generation of senior devs is going to come from. Some juniors, maybe 10% of them, will be fine no matter what: brilliant engineers who are disciplined enough to teach themselves the skills they need and can also adapt well to AI dev tools. I don't worry about them. But I worry about what happens to the median junior engineer, and consequently what our profession will look like in 10-20 years.
Re: Forklifts require training
#4I find it at the same time bizarre and fascinating the number of people I used to work with who have become AI influencers on social media.. Some of them have gained really big followings.
Most of them were pretty middling developers when I worked with them... So I guess that tracks.
Re: Forklifts require training
#5Not obvious from the title, but this is a great post on why it's a terrible terrible time to be an entry-level developer right now: * Job market sucks for junior devs due to the end of ZIRP and normalization of layoffs * Dearth of good developer role models due to the "public sphere" getting worse (collapse of developer twitter community, rise of vacuous influencers). I'm a little skeptical about this one as I didn't…
I used to have a good cluster of twitter accounts to learn from for AI and programming but that has really fallen apart with the algorithm changes.
Re: Forklifts require training
#6Michael, pop quiz: can you drive the forklift
I can and I have
Re: Forklifts require training
#7> How do junior developers level-up to get into private Slack spaces? Where do they learn from if Stackoverflow is hostile, Reddit is hollowed out, and social squares are empty? Books seem to still work very well. I am not even sure all this social media learning was that much positive. A lot of it was based on trend chasing, shiny object syndrome and stuff like that in a completely a-historical context. It was alway…
Yeah. Honestly my advice to a junior dev right now would be:
1) Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news. Be on the lookout for decent blog posts but ignore social media and most of youtube.
2) BUT your best bet for actually leveling up is reading these ten books I'll give you (Designing Data-Intensive Applications, etc. etc.), plus doing side projects to get hands-on practice.
Re: Forklifts require training
#8[deleted]
Re: Forklifts require training
#9> How do junior developers level-up to get into private Slack spaces? Where do they learn from if Stackoverflow is hostile, Reddit is hollowed out, and social squares are empty? Books seem to still work very well. I am not even sure all this social media learning was that much positive. A lot of it was based on trend chasing, shiny object syndrome and stuff like that in a completely a-historical context. It was alway…
Yeah. Honestly my advice to a junior dev right now would be: 1) Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news. Be on the lookout for decent blog posts but ignore social media and most of youtube. 2) BUT your best bet for actually leveling up is reading these ten books I'll give you (Designing Data-Intensive Applications, etc. etc.), plus doing side projects to get hands-on practice.
Hacker News is social media. It just lacks a pretty UI and is overall less vapid.
Re: Forklifts require training
#10> How do junior developers level-up to get into private Slack spaces? Where do they learn from if Stackoverflow is hostile, Reddit is hollowed out, and social squares are empty? Books seem to still work very well. I am not even sure all this social media learning was that much positive. A lot of it was based on trend chasing, shiny object syndrome and stuff like that in a completely a-historical context. It was alway…
Yeah. Honestly my advice to a junior dev right now would be: 1) Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news. Be on the lookout for decent blog posts but ignore social media and most of youtube. 2) BUT your best bet for actually leveling up is reading these ten books I'll give you (Designing Data-Intensive Applications, etc. etc.), plus doing side projects to get hands-on practice.
> Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news
frankly terrible advice, especially now that this website is just AI News. If you want to be a better programmer, there are better places, but I'm not going to advertise them here because I do not want to infect them with the HN commentariat which is much too focused on trends.
Engineering fundamentals have not changed in decades. Screw trends, especially at the beginning.
Books written before 2022 are a good bet. Maybe the value of traditional education has also returned.