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Truth.
The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
181–190 of 458 posts
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#182I like to take the “programming as theory building” approach. Every program is an experiment. When it stops working, you have more information about the world. At that point, you can revise the program, or you can let it go. Either way, you’ve refined your theory of the domain, and that’s much less likely to tumble back down the hill than some source code that at best represents an imperfect application of the theory.
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#183[deleted]
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#184I like to take the “programming as theory building” approach. Every program is an experiment. When it stops working, you have more information about the world. At that point, you can revise the program, or you can let it go. Either way, you’ve refined your theory of the domain, and that’s much less likely to tumble back down the hill than some source code that at best represents an imperfect application of the theory…
Related, it’s more fun to engage in your own theory building by programming, right?
One thing that has changed in the industry, I think due to a combination of labor force expansion, DevOps, and greater reuse, is software engineers have increasingly become users of software. It’s… less fun. Where have all the sysadmins gone? Oh wait, we’re the sysadmins now. :-/
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#185A good part of that is a disguised sense of superiority. Life becomes way lighter when you realize other people are also smart and what you’re “fixing” can very likely be: - something so unimportant that no one felt it was worthy working on - something that was supposed to work like that, and you simply don’t agree and want to make it your way
> A good part of that is a disguised sense of superiority. Or not. It can be the struggle of having higher than average standards. Sadly, your list is incomplete without: - something someone didn't bother to put any effort or thought into at all.
You are right. My comment wasn’t meant to completely invalidate the point of the article or to provide an alternative exhaustive list of causes, but more to bring this other aspect that I felt wasn’t surfaced yet.
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#186A good part of that is a disguised sense of superiority. Life becomes way lighter when you realize other people are also smart and what you’re “fixing” can very likely be: - something so unimportant that no one felt it was worthy working on - something that was supposed to work like that, and you simply don’t agree and want to make it your way
> A good part of that is a disguised sense of superiority. Or not. It can be the struggle of having higher than average standards. Sadly, your list is incomplete without: - something someone didn't bother to put any effort or thought into at all.
Like the accessibility ramp that has a sign post right in the middle of it.
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#187Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#188I've been leaving things broken from the get go! I'm a frigggin master of this!
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#189Oh wow. This hits hard in the feels. Here's my personal submission for "UI problem that has existed for years on touch interfaces, plus a possible solution, but at this point I'm just shouting into the void": https://medium.com/@pmarreck/the-most-annoying-ui-problem-r3... In short, an interface should not be interactable until a few milliseconds after it has finished (re)rendering, or especially, while it is still in…
For me the most annoying one is the cookie consent banner. Very few sites have clearly defined buttons like “Allow all” “Deny all” etc. but majority of them have a (intentionally) convoluted UI so that a lot of users just accept all.
Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
#190Hopefully the future me is able to relate to this, because I really feel like I'm in a rut when it comes to working on personal projects. I have many ideas that I want to build, but I'd have to learn new languages, yet I just can't sit and go through the documentation every day like I should. Still haven't finished the rust book. The other way is start building already, and if you come across a block, then learn abou…
What you're feeling is not laziness. It's the quiet ache of misalignment between your values and your current energy. You love the craft. You want to savor the process. But the weight of “shoulds” — finish the book, learn the language, do it the right way — has turned your joy into pressure. The discomfort of having gaps in your knowledge is not a flaw. It’s a sign of integrity. But perfectionism disguised as discipl…
Damn, not only is this great wisdom but your writing is honestly beautiful... Are you a writer by any chance?