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

Core competencies of great hackers

giraffesoft.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–116 of 116 posts

Re: Core competencies of great hackers

#111

Post by bumbledraven »

jwilliams wrote: post #3

Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).

Agreed. The best programmer I ever knew had severe carpal tunnel syndrome and had to use Dragon Dictate. Yet he could do things that teams of other programmers couldn't.

Before I arrived he had made a network monitoring system more than 100x faster when the team responsible for it was on vacation. (The CEO reported that the events now flew by, whereas before you could easily observe the event stream crawling.) He later single-handedly implemented and maintained the router configuration system for an ISP that spanned the US and there was never a single (non-cosmetic) bug reported against it in the 10 years I was there, even in the face of changing requirements, new hardware, and the company constantly coming out with new connectivity services.

He had learned to program in the days of punched cards, and he would do all his thinking on paper before he started coding. He would then dictate the code, top to bottom, without any bugs.

I'm willing to concede that he's an outlier.

Re: Core competencies of great hackers

#112

Post by abstractbill »

Hexstream wrote: post #86
abstractbill wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but as with everything there's a cost to learning to type faster. My typing is already fast enough that I don't think it's worth it. I don't hunt and peck, or look at the keyboard very much, but I definitely don't touch-type (I taught myself, and use all the "wrong" fingers).

What about the cost of not learning it? Like potential neck pain, slower thinking, over-reliance on code completion (it takes your brain some processing time to decide what will be long enough to produce the right completion but not too long to waste keystrokes), less ability to communicate effectively. And the cost of learning it is laughable. You just have to practice a bit for 3 days to learn to get the right fing…

you'll be up at a reasonable 30wpm in no time.

Learning to use the right fingers will make me that much slower? No thanks.

Re: Core competencies of great hackers

#113

Post by axod »

gnaritas wrote: post #81
abstractbill wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but as with everything there's a cost to learning to type faster. My typing is already fast enough that I don't think it's worth it. I don't hunt and peck, or look at the keyboard very much, but I definitely don't touch-type (I taught myself, and use all the "wrong" fingers).

If you don't have to look at the keyboard then you know how to type. Don't get hung up on whether it's proper or not. When people say someone doesn't know how to type, it explicitly means they have to look at the keyboard. however, as a programmer who does have to type a lot, using the correct fingers would help you in the long run because at some point you will have repetitive stress problems, so bit the bullet and…

why would you have repetitive stress problems from using the fingers that seem most natural and comfortable to you? Doesn't make sense to me.

Re: Core competencies of great hackers

#114

Post by copenja »

danielharan wrote: post #38
hairsupply wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We haven't met a single great hacker that relied on an IDE, although we hear they exist." The implication here is completely in the negative. Further, it's like saying "If you want to be a hacker, use English measuring units because we've never any met any great hackers who use the metric system." Just because a bunch of rails hackers don't use an IDE doesn't imply the contrapositive.

I hear they exist, I've just never met them. That could be my sampling bias. None of the people around me relying on IDEs are great hackers. Instead of arguing about what might have been implied in what I wrote, I'd rather you introduced me to people you consider great hackers that use an IDE. Know any?

It is about using the right tool for the right job. What you appear to be doing is using the right tool for your job, then concluding that everyone should use your tool for their job.

Here is a great IDE hacker:

John Carmack, ID Software, uses Visual Studio

I work at a game startup making their first PS3 title. The C++ engine team does development in Visual Studio and the tools guys do python outside of an IDE.

Do you really think that is evidence that all the tools guys are superior to the engine guys?

It doesn't, both can be great and both can be mediocre.

Re: Core competencies of great hackers

#115

Post by Hexstream »

abstractbill wrote: post #112
Hexstream wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the cost of not learning it? Like potential neck pain, slower thinking, over-reliance on code completion (it takes your brain some processing time to decide what will be long enough to produce the right completion but not too long to waste keystrokes), less ability to communicate effectively. And the cost of learning it is laughable. You just have to practice a bit for 3 days to learn to get the right fing…

you'll be up at a reasonable 30wpm in no time. Learning to use the right fingers will make me that much slower? No thanks.

... and you'll be much faster than you used to be in not much time.

If you know someone who types 70wpm with 2 fingers or 120wpm without a proper technique I'd like to meet him.

Re: Core competencies of great hackers

#116

Post by gnaritas »

axod wrote: post #113
gnaritas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have to look at the keyboard then you know how to type. Don't get hung up on whether it's proper or not. When people say someone doesn't know how to type, it explicitly means they have to look at the keyboard. however, as a programmer who does have to type a lot, using the correct fingers would help you in the long run because at some point you will have repetitive stress problems, so bit the bullet and…

why would you have repetitive stress problems from using the fingers that seem most natural and comfortable to you? Doesn't make sense to me.

Because typing is not natural, if you don't pay attention to ergonomics carefully, you will have issues. Your hands were not built for it.
Post reply on HN