Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#191

Post by sk5t » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #13

When I was about 3 months into my programming career I performed a minor refactor to some code. Unfortunately, the program was difficult to test (no unit tests) and very important, and difficult to verify correctness of output as well. (As in, you can't just look at it and say "yeah that's numbers lgtm"). Also unfortunately the previous author had not been very consistent in their programming style, so there was a lo…

> I'm not sure exactly what all it taught me

Make curly braces mandatory with a linter, of course!

Also, add tests before changing the thing.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#192

Post by _carbyau_ » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

oblib wrote: post #81

I was in my early 20s talking with a friend who was at least twice my age. I was bitching about a guy who'd look at the work I was doing who really didn't know squat about it and start telling me how I should be doing it. After listening to me for a bit he quietly said "Well, you can learn something from everyone if you focus on that." I spent a couple days pondering that. At first I tried dismissing it because he wa…

Yeah, I still like the premise, not just for what you learn but what you should respect.

In one workplace one guy was socially awkward, coke bottle glasses etc. But an absolute machine on the tickets. And when I looked over his shoulder he was simply getting shit done. But being socially awkward he never got the reward, negotiated raise etc he deserved.

Another guy was an absolute psycho career player. Do anything to make others look bad while doing mediocre work himself. Grab easy tickets for himself but sabotage other team queue tickets by making a promise to customers - not note that in the ticket - so when it was picked up by someone else they'd already breached a promise to the customer and get downrated.

One guy I respect. One guy got a promotion out of there.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#193

Post by protocolture » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:29 AM UTC

protocolture wrote: post #182

1. Seeing my boss just completely side step an issue, where his switch was sending vlan tags to his carrier causing the carrier to shut down the port, by purchasing a switch that didnt support vlan tagging. I died on the inside but lesson about end user troubleshooting learned. 2. Being able to break into a 24 hour data centre because the data centres building management just didnt give a shit. Turns out they had fir…

Oh and one more.

My customer was a mid sized ISP. They contracted us in to replace a network engineer who was leaving who they couldnt replace. He wouldnt say anything about why he was leaving, other than he wanted to spend time with his newborn. Fair enough.

Soon after the entire C level resigned. The new C level execs immediately went wtf.

The business had:

1. Sold to an investor, the former owners becoming the C level.

2. Had an agreement that they would stay on for x years and deliver xyz revenue before they got paid for the business.

3. They had been selling services with massive install fees, and then not delivering those projects. Sales in this manner had kept the book completely green. What they had delivered didnt meet spec. They just massaged relationships to pretend it didnt happen. They also opposed any kind of internal documentation of these problems.

4. They had 15 or so of these projects in the pipeline when they left the business, right on the 3 year mark. Most of them were undeliverable for one reason or another.

So what happened was that the incoming C level guys had to basically deliver on a bunch of over promised contracts, without the build costs in the bank, while also fending off a business owner who didnt acknowledge the problem, and customers with existing issues who were quite angry.

They lasted ~3 months before they quit too.

Lesson: No business is big enough to avoid the consequences of its actions. A business can look good even on the books but have the "Find out" in the future. Nothing in business is ever settled or guaranteed.

Also:

Being a contractor means largely being insulated from these issues in a way that allows you to observe things falling apart. Just dont fall in love with the customer.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#194

Post by tcj_phx » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:29 AM UTC

I used to think the United States took the idea of inalienable rights seriously. I've since learned that "missionaries get eaten by cannibals."

The quote above was kindly used by the founder of an organization to explain why he couldn't help me expose the injustice I experienced after I was arrested for trying to use a valid court order to free my friend from unlawful confinement in a local hospital's emergency room.

Later my defense attorney explained to me that my accuser was the state's largest non-Walmart employer, and that it was much easier for my trial judge to rule against me than against a retired drug cop employed by a billion-dollar "nonprofit" that pays its employees quite well.

In 2022 Dr. Palmer published a book [0] about the 80+ years of scientific research establishing that I was correct to protest my friend's tranquilization with defective prescription drugs. Nonetheless people are still being sacrificed to the mental health industry's obsolete degenerative interventions.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40487118

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#195

Post by bee_rider » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:33 AM UTC

koeng wrote: post #138

bee_rider wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to learn to dance (hated it). It is a bit of a weird thing though, there as social events where people feel like it is OK to really try and pressure people into dancing. It is really annoying.

I've had very good experiences with swing dancing. People are so nice (LindyGroove in Pasadena). No pressure, and everyone is very accommodating to newbies. I'm not sure why, but there is a very high percentage of engineers.

I tried Contra dancing a couple times. The people were nice enough, no complaints there, it was just like… I could be doing anything else and be happier, hahaha.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#196

Post by randomdata » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:39 AM UTC

mablopoule wrote: post #96

hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

I don't remember where I saw this quote, but... "It's okay to half-ass something, when all you need is half an ass". EDIT: Totally agree about the 'important mindest for startup', I had a similar eye-opening experience, working in a startup with 'cowboy' code that was actually quite good, but I had to unlearn a bit of stuff I read as a junior/mid-level developper. It was code that was well-architected, had well-conci…

> since it had no unit test

But aren't unit tests the half-assed solution? They are a wonderful help if you want to deliver something fast, but if you had more time you'd probably do something else.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#197

Post by adolph » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:48 AM UTC

mablopoule wrote: post #96

hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

I don't remember where I saw this quote, but... "It's okay to half-ass something, when all you need is half an ass". EDIT: Totally agree about the 'important mindest for startup', I had a similar eye-opening experience, working in a startup with 'cowboy' code that was actually quite good, but I had to unlearn a bit of stuff I read as a junior/mid-level developper. It was code that was well-architected, had well-conci…

> "It's okay to half-ass something, when all you need is half an ass".

Going to mule that over.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#198

Post by gradschoolfail » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

projectileboy wrote: post #157

hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

As a good friend of mine often says: We work in a field of people who envision themselves as artists, when all that is wanted are painters.

Some of the best are in fact also painters.

https://paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#199

Post by teaearlgraycold » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #78

In college, meeting someone that was better than me by every conceivable metric. You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. Perfect grades, involved in many communities, and generally pleasant to be around. There was no caveat, no excuse. Dude just straight up rocked. I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my moto…

Being great only matters if you need external validation. I want a life I appreciate. If there’s anything to win it’s the game of having a good time.

All of the suffering people impose on themselves, on their children, on their society, to be great and envied is wasted. Be successful as a means to be happy and have excess to share with others.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#200

Post by canadiantim » Mon, Jun 03, 2024, 1:53 AM UTC

chx wrote: post #176

canadiantim wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why'd you leave Canada, if I may ask?

Because y'all don't mask any more and if all I can do is sit at home then why not be warm while at it? And be closer to family, too. I can travel wearing the Halo to visit my brother's family (in the UK) and my parents (in Hungary) but that's all. Otherwise, by and large, I don't go anywhere any more. I can't. That's the new reality. I wear a positive air pressure respirator to risk such activities as boarding a bus.…

Thank you for the explanation. I definitely didn't appreciate what's going on in your life, but that makes sense. Loneliness is of course a significant danger and I'm sorry your life circumstances are making it difficult to be with other people right now. May I ask what the danger is for your particular circumstance? Is it for your health or for a loved one? And it's something to do with compromised immune system? Such that you want to limit contact to avoid infecting either yourself or the loved one? Wishing you all the best tho eh, I'm only asking to try and help brainstorm solutions.