131–140 of 143 posts
(As for the Lisp enlightenment, I havent yet learned Lisp deep enough to feel it, and maybe I'll never will; but I certainly appreciate Lisp's "idea efficiency". It's amazing how much Lisps can do with basically a single piece of syntax).
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I think it is also illumiating, if somewhat obvious, that people tend to have well thought out reasons for doing something. So if you see someone doing something obviously stupid, you are probably not seeing the whole picture. It is extremely worth it to try figuring out why they do that. And in figuring that out it is important not to dismiss the other person's ideas out of hand.
people tend to have well thought out reasons for doing something. So if you see someone doing something obviously stupid, you are probably not seeing the whole picture I used to think this, until I read more about advertising and how it's designed to trigger an emotional response. More and more, I think it's really emotions that motivate most behavior. There are many people, when asked "Why did you make that decision…
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Sure there is. You take each programmer’s self-ranked hardest N problems and get the other programmer to try and solve them.
People are not actually fungible. Each of us has different skills, insights, strengths, weaknesses, and life experience. What caused one of us months of misery might be the next person's perfect problem, what they were born to solve flawlessly.
This is so odd to me. There seems to be some sort of obsession with making sure everybody knows that programmers “Aren’t Normal People.” It’s just a job, doing it well doesn’t make you some Superhuman Logic Machine. I’d love to see a post like this that includes “Pathologically Obsessive Need For Self Aggrandizement” as one of these ~ Coder Feelings ~ that only the Chosen Folks can experience.
Right; Agreed 100%! Other than requiring little more than average persistence and curiosity, there is nothing "superior" about it. Anybody can learn "Programming". We are natural born problem solvers and the only thing there is to learn is how to instruct a machine to do the same in a structured manner.
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Sure there is. You take each programmer’s self-ranked hardest N problems and get the other programmer to try and solve them.
And if one person has had a career of spending 1 year on each research problem while the other person has had a career of spending ten minutes on each UI micro-bug? You swap the problems, and person A spends 20 minutes, person B spends half a year, and you think person A is better even though they're actually 4x worse.
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Right; Agreed 100%! Other than requiring little more than average persistence and curiosity, there is nothing "superior" about it. Anybody can learn "Programming". We are natural born problem solvers and the only thing there is to learn is how to instruct a machine to do the same in a structured manner.
I agree in spirit, but I no longer believe that anyone can necessarily learn programming, maybe because some of those other elements are missing. That's just based on witnessing people who don't seem to be able reason though even the smallest unit of logic expressed in visual form. I believe that most people probably can though to some extent
Nothing grabs you in an article like the person saying everybody in your field has no external personality.
The key is talking to people. Too many people on here complain about meetings, 1x1's, and that they hate interacting with people who don't understand what they're asking for, like management. The real reason is cause many people (especially new grads) think all their job centers around is code. It absolutely does not. Having fun actually interacting with people around the abhorrent minutia of everyday life is not onl…
The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component) is emotional management. Staying in a long debugging session without ragequitting and getting to the fix. Pushing through when I feel really dumb for not knowing how a react hook works or how to test a particular feature. Not getting bored (or recognising it and pus…
> The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component) I love the little rat race we’ve created for ourselves. When did staff engineer become a thing? I’ve just noticed it but feel like it’s probably been around for a few years. Next question when you get to staff engineer what next? Do you become a lead engineer or s…
Some places have a manager equivalent of senior engineer but that’s also sometimes a role you’re expected to rapidly leave: either via promotion or back to IC.
The key is talking to people. Too many people on here complain about meetings, 1x1's, and that they hate interacting with people who don't understand what they're asking for, like management. The real reason is cause many people (especially new grads) think all their job centers around is code. It absolutely does not. Having fun actually interacting with people around the abhorrent minutia of everyday life is not onl…
I prefer the company of fellow robots. Being expected to remember the minutia of the lives of others is annoying and unproductive for both of us.