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I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

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Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#51

Post by jackmaney »

lampe3 wrote: post #23

Jesus when i read this Article I see me... I love to start new Projects but i never finish them(only when i must because i customer is kicking my ass)... I always have a lot of motivation... but when i sit down and must read or do something i lose focus very often and maybe work on it for 30 minutes or 1 hour and then i start to watch some stupid youtube videos... To this day i dont know how to focus... I got depress…

To make a very, very long story short, I've clawed my way into my second (and current) career from a very dark bout of depression. One thing that has helped me focus is the right combination of medications (after talking to a doctor, of course).

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#52

Post by pekk »

edw519 wrote: post #21

56 instances of the word "I". That's your problem. All the rest is fluff. OP, try rewriting this, substituting "he", "she", "they", or "you" for "I". Funny how quickly your perceived problems melt away as soon as you stop dwelling on yourself and start focusing on others. Edit: I realize that OP is being slightly sarcastic, but I took this as an opportunity: This is a condensed version of pretty much the same feedbac…

And yet if you don't use "I" then some other expert will tell you that this indicates a lack of confidence.

People who are hiring don't respond well to a lack of confidence. They will assume you suck and show you the door.

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#53

Post by marknutter »

I think the OP either has a fear of failure or a fear of success. The fear of failure may come from the worry that launching their "perfect" app might fall flat. The fear of success may come from the worry that if the app takes off the pressure will increase due to external expectations from users. After all, it's easier to let yourself down than it is to let thousands of users down. Either way, the OP continues to move the goal-posts so there's a definite fear of launching. They need to get over this, and fast, or they will never grow as a developer or an entrepreneur. Until you release your creation out into the world it's just mental masturbation.

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#54

Post by NegativeK »

nbevans wrote: post #34

I don't remember ever being so utterly inexperienced so as to firstly adopt a platform like Ruby on Rails, and then follow it up by making an even worse mistake in adopting Node.js. These platforms seem hip and cool but they actually need extreme levels of discipline, awareness and experience to actually use them in the correct way. I don't think the guy is a perfectionist at all. Perfectionists deliver finished work…

> Perfectionists deliver finished working products.

From the psychology definition of perfectionism, there's both the version that lets you accomplish a thing well and the version that hinders you from completing something.

Anecdote: When it comes to me doing anything remotely artistic, I get so bogged down in fixing the details that I ignore the big picture. In reality, trying to perfect the details means I'm focusing on things that are going to jump out at me, but not at other people.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" is a good proverb about this.

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#55

Post by ownagefool »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #37
jakobe wrote: post #17

That's why I still use vanilla PHP & Postgres for web projects. I don't use any hot new technologies, I don't use frameworks, I don't do unit testing. I try to use as little client side JS as possible. Whenever possible, I use static HTML. The advantage is that I can create a working prototype in days. I can show something to the client very early, and I don't spend months to fulfill specifications the client didn't…

Hmm , I kind of have the opposite experience having picked up a bunch of PHP projects over the years. Without tests I have less confidence with modifying another persons code. Without a framework it can be difficult to figure out the structure unless there is good documentation or the project has been well designed and structured (almost never the case). Also I tend to either find problems with SQL injection,XSS or C…

Well he was talking about a prototype. You don't necessairly need to worry about such things if you're just bashing something out as a showcase, otherwise I'd agree.

That said, they don't allow SQL injections because they don't have a framework, they did it because they're stupid. Using a framework (and following the docs) will help save us from their stupidty, but so would learning about security issues.

Frameworks are largely about speed. They should make you develop quicker because loads of code is pre-written and generally it is of a higher quality than what you'll knock out in a few days because hundreds of man hours go into those libs.

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#56

Post by pekk »

ownagefool wrote: post #46

It worries me that so many of us want to jump to this kids defence. He's right, you shouldn't hire him because a developer who can't ship is a developer nobody needs.

A developer who can't ship is a developer nobody needs. A developer who has shipped 0 things obviously can't ship. A developer who has shipped n+1 things isn't really different from one who has shipped n things. I mean, one product? That's not real experience. So, by induction, nobody needs any developers.

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#57

Post by heidar »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #44
lampe3 wrote: post #23

Jesus when i read this Article I see me... I love to start new Projects but i never finish them(only when i must because i customer is kicking my ass)... I always have a lot of motivation... but when i sit down and must read or do something i lose focus very often and maybe work on it for 30 minutes or 1 hour and then i start to watch some stupid youtube videos... To this day i dont know how to focus... I got depress…

A way I have found to get round this is to set small, achievable milestones, it sounds like you are getting caught up in the "enormity of it all" - when we started our company the aim was "to enter competition X", then "get £5,000 in grant funding", then "3d print a prototype", then "build a test rig to test prototype", then "raise some investment", then "get a professionally designed product", the "set up 1 trial wi…

Solid advice. Split the problem into many smaller problems and start working.

One thing to keep in mind though, TODO lists can give an illusion of progress and accomplishment[1]. That is assuming you split up the problem and create a TODO list out of it which seems like a reasonable thing to do.

I remember a discussion on HN about procrastination quite some time ago and there was a comment which made me think a lot. The commenter basically said that he procrastinates by writing code, because that is what he loves to do.

If you are procrastinating writing code by doing something else, perhaps you simply do not enjoy writing code and need to explore the world for whatever it is that you love doing?

I am still not sure myself, I enjoy writing code but there are other jobs which I think I would enjoy more.

[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/todont.html

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#58

Post by nnq »

jakobe wrote: post #17

That's why I still use vanilla PHP & Postgres for web projects. I don't use any hot new technologies, I don't use frameworks, I don't do unit testing. I try to use as little client side JS as possible. Whenever possible, I use static HTML. The advantage is that I can create a working prototype in days. I can show something to the client very early, and I don't spend months to fulfill specifications the client didn't…

...you lost me, I was expecting to read something like "as all the interesting stuff happens on the client side anyway" after the first part with using vanilla PHP, but you didn't, so you would either end up with a "thin-client + thin-backend" (which is close to... no site/app at all), or you end up with spaghetti. Care to share a github link of such a website or web-app to see for ourselves how easy it is to "pick up and implement changes within hours"? I bet it's more like diving headfirst into a pool of spaghetti once the project grows past a point...

Re: I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist

#60

Post by obviouslygreen »

jakobe wrote: post #17

That's why I still use vanilla PHP & Postgres for web projects. I don't use any hot new technologies, I don't use frameworks, I don't do unit testing. I try to use as little client side JS as possible. Whenever possible, I use static HTML. The advantage is that I can create a working prototype in days. I can show something to the client very early, and I don't spend months to fulfill specifications the client didn't…

I hope no one looks at this as advice... I was in this position for a long time, and looking back, it's a completely unsustainable (and, in my opinion, irresponsible) method of development.

Problems with PHP itself aside, rolling your own from scratch only ever works out well for projects that start small and stay small. Even if the code is sane and readable, a developer starting with a site like this will need to understand either all of the patterns that are being used or to read and understand all of the code before being able to confidently and effectively work with it.

Contrast this to a framework, where similarly-sane code will yield something anyone with experience in the framework can almost-immediately begin working with.

Both have an up-front cost; however, the first incurs that cost every time any new developer starts working with any project done in such a way. The second is incurred once, period, making the startup time on any project on the same framework dramatically lower.

Frameworks are by no means a silver bullet, but their utility should not be underestimated, and the very nasty maintenance cost effects of the parent's post should be similarly understood.

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