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Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#31

Post by ebbv »

He's 100% correct. Learning new languages/frameworks/tools is fun and can be useful if you have projects that can make use of them. But they don't contribute to making you a "better developer" very much after a point. There's diminishing returns on learning new languages. So, once you've learned a dozen, then learning the thirteenth or the twentieth will not contribute greatly to your overall developer skills.

Creating a new project unlike any you've done in the past will do more to contribute to your skills as a developer, whether that project is in a new language or one you already know, than just picking up a new language and making your 10th simple blog.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#32

Post by d23 »

vitd wrote: post #28
dsp1234 wrote: post #18

Whenever a question like this comes up among the people that I am mentoring, I like to show them the "T-Shaped Employee" section of the Valve Employee handbook [0]: "We value “T-shaped” people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T). This recipe is…

It just sounds to me like they're saying they only want engineers who already know everything about everything. Sure, I'd want that too if I were hiring, but it doesn't seem very realistic. It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised.

Not to me. It sounds like they want people who have a wide variety of shallow-ish knowledge (but still an actual understanding of whatever area it is), while also having very deep knowledge in one or two areas in particular.

> It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised.

Weird that that's the conclusion you come to. Valve is an incredibly successful company with over a billion dollars in the bank. They've produced some of the most influential games of the past two decades (Half-life, Counter Strike, TF2, Left 4 Dead, Portal, DoTA2... it's actually hard to name them all).

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#33

Post by ckluis »

stalcottsmith wrote: post #24

I don't see these are in conflict at all. Both talk about spending the long period of time needed to attain Mastery. Mastering concepts is essential but mastering your way of working so as to maximize your productivity and the effectiveness of your practice is equally important. You do not want to be a dilettante who knows everything but produces nothing of substance or value. I wrote a book specifically on how to go…

fwiw - appexpress.io - shows me almost nothing. I can’t even see what types of application components you have available or how they could be utilized…

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#35

Post by zaphar »

When I started programming I was pretty bad at it. I didn't get good until I focused on "really" learning perl. I mastered perl fairly well quite a few years ago.

At some point I was no longer learning anything from perl and I tackled something different. Erlang was my next deep dive.

What Rich is saying has less to do with how many languages you've absorbed whether a lot or a few. What he is saying is that leveling up requires taking the time to truly absorb and understand what you are working with.

I'm fairly polyglot these days. But the number of languages that I know deeply is less probably about 3. With the time spent learning them measured in years not months.

Peter Norvig is actually saying something similar. He's advocating a slightly different route to the same goal. Learn the foundations of programming deeply. The 4 broad categories he lists are foundations of programming that any developer needs to learn deeply.

Both Rich and Peter advise investing the time to learn something thoroughly. They just came at it from slightly different directions. I imagine they would agree with each other though.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#36

Post by daemonfire300 »

d23 wrote: post #32
vitd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just sounds to me like they're saying they only want engineers who already know everything about everything. Sure, I'd want that too if I were hiring, but it doesn't seem very realistic. It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised.

Not to me. It sounds like they want people who have a wide variety of shallow-ish knowledge (but still an actual understanding of whatever area it is), while also having very deep knowledge in one or two areas in particular. > It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised. Weird that that's th…

Those were mods, and the decided to hire these ppl AFTER they've become successful.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#37

Post by jarcane »

d23 wrote: post #32
vitd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just sounds to me like they're saying they only want engineers who already know everything about everything. Sure, I'd want that too if I were hiring, but it doesn't seem very realistic. It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised.

Not to me. It sounds like they want people who have a wide variety of shallow-ish knowledge (but still an actual understanding of whatever area it is), while also having very deep knowledge in one or two areas in particular. > It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised. Weird that that's th…

They also haven't put out an entirely in-house game since the Orange Box.

The management failures at Valve have been pretty spectacular, and expensive, of late, it's just that because they are a private company, and because Steam makes all of the money, they can continue to have large expensive failures like the VR or the Steambox until doomsday.

Valve is not other companies, and their position is such that it's not advisable to take any too serious advice from how they run things into the real world.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#38

Post by lmm »

d23 wrote: post #32
vitd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just sounds to me like they're saying they only want engineers who already know everything about everything. Sure, I'd want that too if I were hiring, but it doesn't seem very realistic. It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised.

Not to me. It sounds like they want people who have a wide variety of shallow-ish knowledge (but still an actual understanding of whatever area it is), while also having very deep knowledge in one or two areas in particular. > It also makes me wonder about their ability to manage people with different skill levels and areas of expertise. And of course, having used Steam, I'm not at all surprised. Weird that that's th…

> they want people who have a wide variety of shallow-ish knowledge (but still an actual understanding of whatever area it is), while also having very deep knowledge in one or two areas in particular

Sure; every employer does. But it's dodging the more interesting question, which is: faced with one candidate who has broad but shallow knowledge and another who has deep but narrow knowledge, which do you pick?

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#39

Post by dfan »

Rich Hickey is one guy and this is what worked for him. That does not mean that his experience generalizes to all developers. Listen to lots of people, perhaps weight their opinions based on their success and your admiration of them, and then make your own decisions.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on Rich Hickey's advice on becoming a better developer?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

stalcottsmith wrote: post #24

I don't see these are in conflict at all. Both talk about spending the long period of time needed to attain Mastery. Mastering concepts is essential but mastering your way of working so as to maximize your productivity and the effectiveness of your practice is equally important. You do not want to be a dilettante who knows everything but produces nothing of substance or value. I wrote a book specifically on how to go…

[deleted]
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