Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

thecodist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 69 posts

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#11

Post by emgeee »

zzzcpan wrote: post #7

> Today keeping up is a ridiculous job sometimes. Even though he advises people to keep up, he actually kind of admits how ridiculous this is today. It's not possible to keep up anymore, there are just too many people creating too many things, like languages, frameworks, technologies.

I think what he's trying to get at is to stay on top of large industry changes in general. Even though there are many frameworks and libraries being created everyday, it's still reasonable to keep informed about the ones that have a substantial amount of traction.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#12

Post by aidos »

emgeee wrote: post #11
zzzcpan wrote: post #7

> Today keeping up is a ridiculous job sometimes. Even though he advises people to keep up, he actually kind of admits how ridiculous this is today. It's not possible to keep up anymore, there are just too many people creating too many things, like languages, frameworks, technologies.

I think what he's trying to get at is to stay on top of large industry changes in general. Even though there are many frameworks and libraries being created everyday, it's still reasonable to keep informed about the ones that have a substantial amount of traction.

And you don't have to get too deep into everything. Take frontend js frameworks. You could learn one, say angular and then read about how the others differ. Gives you insight into the whole field.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#13

Post by ryanobjc »

Interesting article, sounds like the author has really taken charge of their career and managed to do well.

Now, what about an alternative world where he did not "get oo" or perhaps a lifestyle where he had children and no time at work to learn. Or one of these newer not quite as successful software companies which has no money and no extra time.

Keeping up with new tech requires time, and money. Start ups provide neither of these. Even bigger "start ups" attempt to keep up the illusions of a smaller company including mandatory over time and no extras (eg tuition reimbursement, sabbaticals, more than 2 weeks of pto a year, etc).

The other thing, computing as a career is quite a bit harder, more complex, and highly competitive than when the author had their formative years.

The real rallying cry is how do you make an industry that respects career advancement?

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#14

Post by zzzcpan »

emgeee wrote: post #11
zzzcpan wrote: post #7

> Today keeping up is a ridiculous job sometimes. Even though he advises people to keep up, he actually kind of admits how ridiculous this is today. It's not possible to keep up anymore, there are just too many people creating too many things, like languages, frameworks, technologies.

I think what he's trying to get at is to stay on top of large industry changes in general. Even though there are many frameworks and libraries being created everyday, it's still reasonable to keep informed about the ones that have a substantial amount of traction.

What kind of large industry changes are we talking about?

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#15

Post by alashley »

I've talked to other developers and what I've understood is that the best way to learn new stuff is to get paid to do so. I'm just wondering how you keep up with stuff if your job demands so much out of you that you can't keep with with anything besides your main stack.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#16

Post by actsasbuffoon »

clmorg01 wrote: post #6

This is basically the choice I finally had to make for myself over the last couple years. It was just three years ago that my main responsibility was maintaining code on a black & yellow terminal for a VMS server. Another couple years and I could have easily have been one of those people pushed out of the industry with no easy way back in. Although my company has provide an avenue for me to transition to doing things…

When I was first breaking into the field I was also forced to work with legacy mainframe code. It was a nightmare. The code was horrible, the pay was low, and we had no respect. I spent a little over a year learning Ruby and JavaScript in my spare time, joined a startup, and have had a happy and successful career in the many years since.

I can only speak for myself, but the transition improved my life immeasurably. I can't even imagine how different things would be if I had stayed. Keep at it. If I can do it then you can too.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#17

Post by glanch »

I am very sympathetic to the idea of training your programmers on the job. I don't know where I would be if my first employer hadn't invested significant time in training me. I came out of college knowing my algorithms, but I didn't know how to actually __make__ something. All I really had to do was shadow a senior programmer for a week, watch how he worked, and ask questions. Within a few weeks I was rolling along, writing production code. But if they just asked me to get started from day 1, I would have been useless to them.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#18

Post by higherpurpose »

If I were you at this point (actually a 2-3 years ago) I would already starting going back to using Java for Android, too. iOS will be on a billion devices in 3 years, but Android will be on 3 billion, so the impact is much greater, and probably the revenues, too.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#19

Post by JackMorgan »

I have been writing and rewriting a post for the better part of a year on this same thing. I think I've finally accepted that a majority of programmers actually are not interested in learning new things.

I got into software because there was so much to learn and explore, so this realization still baffles me. Why on earth would someone want to do this job and not want to learn new things? It's like a baseball player who hates being outside.

Not only that, but often times I'm faced with the prospect like the author's, where people I've worked with actively prevent those around them from learning new things on the job. "No, don't write this standalone module in Python, our standard is PHP; it was good enough 5 years ago, it's good enough now!" (in a four man shop).

As someone who loves constantly learning more, it's suffocating to be around people who are so paralyzed. I simply cannot fathom the fear that drives someone to say to the offer to learn something new on the job, "no thanks, I'm happy becoming obsolete, and you can't learn it either, because I might have to one day support it, and I'm not interested in learning anything new!"

Post reply on HN