Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#151

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 10:41 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #140

marcus_holmes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, it's not an entirely fair comparison. But from my understanding of the health industry, the consultants are absolutely the top of the food chain despite their whinges about management. This is not true of even highly-paid consultant programmers (and highly-paid tech consultants are almost never allowed to waste their time actually programming).

>and highly-paid tech consultants are almost never allowed to waste their time actually programming There are plenty of niche programming consultants that are highly paid to actually program--firmware reverse engineering, and cryptographic security specialists are 2 of them. There was a whole thread a few years ago where tptacek argued that $400 an hour is reasonable for certain specialty programmers, which is more t…

true, good point, but I still think (from my vast stock of unresearched and ill-informed opinions) that the combination of authority and respect is massively more common in surgeons than it is in programmers.

And if it isn't actually, then it certainly is in the public consciousness.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#152

Post by SiVal » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 10:52 AM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #70

encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

I AM a 10x programmer! [1][2] [1] When writing code to solve problems I've encountered frequently in one of the languages I've used long enough to thoroughly memorize all facets of the syntax and most of the available libraries. [2] Consistently using those 10x powers would quite possibly be the most boring life I could imagine as a software engineer ... give me a hard problem to solve once, then never ask me about t…

I strongly agree with your point [1]. I think the 10x programmer exists, and the phenomenon is primarily as you describe: you spend a long time figuring out how to do something with a lot of moving parts and hidden gotchas. You eventually track down every bug, resolve every misunderstanding, reorganize and simplify, and you remember what you learned.

Next time something similar arises, you blow the doors off anyone else starting from scratch. I've done it myself, and it has be to quite common.

I disagree with your point [2], though, at least in part. I would get bored, too, if all I ever did was to repeat things I had figured out years earlier, but if I put the effort into figuring out how to do something hard, I want to USE that hard-earned knowledge more than once. I don't want to always be a slow, awkward newbie at everything I do, which is what I am the first time I tackle most new, serious challenges, but I don't want to stop tackling new challenges either. I'd prefer a mix of the two: sometimes a newbie, sometimes an expert.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#153

Post by forloop » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 11:36 AM UTC

binarytrees wrote: post #117

Who cares if you're 10x, we'll all be 10x dead at some point. In 50-100 years I doubt most of your 10x work will still be around. Might as well go enjoy some life before it ends.

1) This sounds like rationalisation. Clearly there's advantages to being 10x at something valuable.

2) The premise of the 10xers not being around in 50-100 years could be correct. It depends on the amount of money invested in anti-ageing technology.

Coming down on one side or another, in a binary fashion: I think your comment is false.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#154

Post by MichaelGG » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 12:04 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #132

MichaelGG wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps if you have a poor definition of utility code. Sure if you spend all your time writing random string functions or a new web framework or whatever. But that's sorta tautological: writing useless code is useless and bad. I often find bottom up coding to be fantastic. I'll start with a general idea of what I want to do, then start writing low-level "helper" functions. Like "save image to blob storage", "perform…

I have heard the expression that wiring bottom-up is "building a DLS for your problem". That would explain why we don't see a lot of it in the Java world and therefore why "traditional developers" think it's useless - first, creating DSL may need stronger language than Java to be practical, and second, most of the DSL is already done as parts of Spring or JEE.

Ha! All this time I thought DSLs were more, well, languages. More flexible syntax, or at least differently behaving functions or operators. Like some of those fluent APIs (usually not a fan), or test frameworks love to do. I'd not thought of just regular domain functions to be a DSL.

I'm curious though, what do you mean that Spring is the DSL? Certainly that's the opposite, being so generic?

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#155

Post by supercoder » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 12:43 PM UTC

M8 wrote: post #150

binarytrees wrote: post #117

Who cares if you're 10x, we'll all be 10x dead at some point. In 50-100 years I doubt most of your 10x work will still be around. Might as well go enjoy some life before it ends.

GitHub and BitBucket are going to delete sources after a period of time? Could you please point me to that licence agreement paragraph? Are museums going to throw away paintings in 50-100 years as well?

What's to suggest the majority of peoples work is stored on github or bitbucket ?

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#156

Post by shawn-furyan » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 12:51 PM UTC

forloop wrote: post #153

binarytrees wrote: post #117

Who cares if you're 10x, we'll all be 10x dead at some point. In 50-100 years I doubt most of your 10x work will still be around. Might as well go enjoy some life before it ends.

1) This sounds like rationalisation. Clearly there's advantages to being 10x at something valuable. 2) The premise of the 10xers not being around in 50-100 years could be correct. It depends on the amount of money invested in anti-ageing technology. Coming down on one side or another, in a binary fashion: I think your comment is false.

2) Well, given the associated uncertainty, that's not strictly true. The relationship between money spent on aging research and lifespan extension could converge on a marginally higher average lifespan rather than growing infinitely long with infinitely increasing expenditure. Until better than marginal gains are realized, I would say it's premature to hold massive lifespan lengthening out as a realistic possibility since we don't know what road blocks lie ahead. Sure, it's possible in the 'anything is possible' sense, but, IMO, not as a practical consideration.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#157

Post by nathan_long » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #75

etherael wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programmers as a blue colar job ?

Not blue-collar because we wear blue collars or perform physical labour, but because programmers are not professionals - we're not architects, we're bricklayers. In the conventional business mindset programmers just implement a plan devised by someone else. Consequently we are fungible (easily replaced by cheaper alternatives), and a cost rather than an asset.

> we're not architects, we're bricklayers. In the conventional business mindset programmers just implement a plan devised by someone else.

I think this analogy is wrong. Like architects, we can and must help requesters understand what's possible. "Architect, please design me a house supported by tiny pillars." "Programmer, please solve the traveling salesman problem for me."

> Consequently we are fungible (easily replaced by cheaper alternatives), and a cost rather than an asset.

The more central to a business their code is, the more this mindset will hurt them.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#158

Post by forloop » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

shawn-furyan wrote: post #156

forloop wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) This sounds like rationalisation. Clearly there's advantages to being 10x at something valuable. 2) The premise of the 10xers not being around in 50-100 years could be correct. It depends on the amount of money invested in anti-ageing technology. Coming down on one side or another, in a binary fashion: I think your comment is false.

2) Well, given the associated uncertainty, that's not strictly true. The relationship between money spent on aging research and lifespan extension could converge on a marginally higher average lifespan rather than growing infinitely long with infinitely increasing expenditure. Until better than marginal gains are realized, I would say it's premature to hold massive lifespan lengthening out as a realistic possibility…

Say a 10xer is 30, and the average lifespan is 80 years. If ageing could be halved, then the remaining 50-year-left-pre-intervention results in 100 years of life. But has there already be any substance which has doubled lifespan? Yes[0]! In rats. Humans aren't rats; but it's a clue to what's possible in mammals (verses C. elegans, or yeast).

> Until better than marginal gains are realized, I would say it's premature to hold massive lifespan lengthening out as a realistic possibility since we don't know what road blocks lie ahead. Sure, it's possible in the 'anything is possible' sense, but, IMO, not as a practical consideration.

People are working on the problem of radical live extension today. So even if you consider it impractical, that's certainly not a view held by everyone.

Plus, a gradual improvement is all that's needed. As long as someone can live long enough to reach longevity escape velocity[1], that's the problem solved!

[0] http://www.kurzweilai.net/fullerene-c60-administration-doubl...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#159

Post by zapu » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #84

encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

Its rather strange you would bring up Notch, as I wouldn't consider Notch-run Minecraft a marvel of engineering. I'd hate to be the guy who cleans up after him, and while Minecraft works (and it is a really great game), most people consider to be terribly built.[1] So yes, while Notch is a rather speedy engineer, I wouldn't consider the skills of an engineer based on how fast they code. Maintainability is an importan…

Even though Minecraft is not top quality code, you've provided very weak source. See [0] which provided memory usage analysis, that turn out pretty bad. It credits Notch (remember that he stopped working on the game at some point) as author of more optimal code, though ("The original Notch code (pre 1.3) was allocating about 10-20 MB/sec which was much more easy to control and optimize.").

There are other problems with original Minecraft, that surfaced when people started to actively disassemble (or deobfuscate) it. But those are mostly unsourced, and I do not feel the authority to speak about it.

[0] http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/optifine-modder-rips-the-minec...

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#160

Post by smoyer » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #152

smoyer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I AM a 10x programmer! [1][2] [1] When writing code to solve problems I've encountered frequently in one of the languages I've used long enough to thoroughly memorize all facets of the syntax and most of the available libraries. [2] Consistently using those 10x powers would quite possibly be the most boring life I could imagine as a software engineer ... give me a hard problem to solve once, then never ask me about t…

I strongly agree with your point [1]. I think the 10x programmer exists, and the phenomenon is primarily as you describe: you spend a long time figuring out how to do something with a lot of moving parts and hidden gotchas. You eventually track down every bug, resolve every misunderstanding, reorganize and simplify, and you remember what you learned. Next time something similar arises, you blow the doors off anyone e…

I think we actually agree on point [2] ... using the hard-earned knowledge again while solving a new problem (of sufficient complexity) still requires significant problem-solving (puzzle solving?) skills. I've also mastered making web interfaces that perform CRUD operations against databases ... I don't want to spend my career reliving the ground-hog day of CRUD interfaces.