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I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

blog.carolynworks.com

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Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#21

Post by derleth »

freerobby wrote: post #10

I don't understand why you are portraying concentrated education vs liberal arts education as a women's issue. I'm a male who also earned a CS degree at a liberal arts school, and I had similar struggles in trying to balance my technical workload alongside literature and politics.

> I don't understand why you are portraying concentrated education vs liberal arts education as a women's issue.

Well, when everyone around you is telling you all your problems are nails, you try to fix everything with a hammer.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#22

Post by true_religion »

OncomingStorm wrote: post #15

If the author of this blog post reads this then if I may, I have a few comments, and everyone else should take note as-well ;) "When they talk about how they live to program and never leave the lab" THEY ARE BORING. I LOVE programming, however I also LOVE playing with my 2-year old, playing poker with the fella's, practicing origami, watching movies, working on my (admittedly horrible) art skills. I know exactly wher…

In defense of the obssessed, let me say that "fun" is relative.

Lets' take CS out of the equation and consider the case of many basketball players. In their college and highschools, they found themselves mixed in with people who were good at sports but had no great innate talents, and also didn't obsesses about practice. These people punched their clock---coming in for after school practice---then went home to enjoy other hobbies.

Now the outliers---the ones who would eventually make it to the NBA--were a different breed. Not only were they innately talented, but they obsessed about the game from the point of view of a 'normal' player. They practiced their free throws till they were perfect, they re-watched their games till strategy was second nature, they pushed their natural abilities to the limits and as a result had far less time to do anything else.

The same applies to prima-balerinas who often started training at age 6, to young chess grandmasters who simply played and studied chess more than anyone else their age, to anyone who's field was competitive enough that mere talent wouldn't take you to the top.

Is Usian Bolt boring? Was Pierina Legnani boring?

And for that matter--do they consider their training to be boring?

Coming back to CS, computer science encoompases a wide enough range that one can have a "hobby" that is in CS that isn't similar to their job or studies. For example one can specialize in logic programming as their job, but come home and play around by (a) making a procedurally generated game with their kid, (b) a poker-bot for those online games they play, (c) a flash card program so they can better learn Japanese, (d) a better Netflix recommendation engine, or (e) art with RaphaelJS. All of these involve some level of programming, and some level of Computer Science. Are they all boring just because they still involve CS?

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#23

Post by sabalaba »

I know I belong and sometimes I wonder don't seem to belong together here. We all have busy chores to do and things that we know that we NEED to do, but what you're studying, working on and 'doing' with your life should be something that you absolutely LOVE. I love coming up with ideas that solve hard problems, I love coding and I love staring into the dark abyss known as the global market economy and asking, "What do you want?".

If you have difficulty staring at yourself in the mirror and saying "I love what I do every day", then you should seriously reconsider what you're doing.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#25

Post by wyclif »

cyrus_ wrote: post #14

In any competitive field, from computer science to ballet, there are those who practice for hours and hours per day. The author does not want to be a competitive computer scientist, and is happy being a casual one -- skilled enough to make a 40 hour-per-week living with it, to be sure, but not obsessed enough to advance the field itself. She made a great choice going to a liberal arts school. When she compares hersel…

I was with you until you advocated the 80-hour work week. That's a sure recipe for burnout, not necessarily excellence.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#26

Post by praptak »

I think I might add some different perspective to that. I was (and to a degree still am) one of those guys who went home from the lab to spend some more time on programming for fun.

Besides the obvious non-IT-related downsides (made me obviously less social), it also has some IT-related downsides. Even on the purely technical career path (programmer->senior programmer->tech leader->architect->???) the more you advance the more you need the skills and knowledge outside the IT field, even if it's only to keep a lunch conversation with those weird non-technical people who decide about IT spending :)

My point is that even if you consider this only in the context of your career in IT, spending your time outside programming might be quite a good investment.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#27

Post by strlen »

As jerf has pointed out, this is Impostor Syndrome. It is present in men as well. Ironically, the better programmer I've become, the stronger it has gotten. The thing is, while scary, it's perfectly normal. The only advise I can offer is just to ignore it. So what if it is true and you "don't belong" or you're a bad programmer: so what? It's still something that you enjoy and can make a career, a rare luxury for most in this world.

If you're worried about that the programming world implies less balance, consider this: the big advantage of programming is that you can get a job that coincides with your passion. That means, meetings and other bs aside, a significant chunk of your work is what you'd consider leisure time devoted to one of your hobbies. It means you actually have more time to pursue non programming hobbies.

That said, you should consider programming a bit outside of work and class. It's very easy to lose focus of what is the general industry trend when you're focused on your specific job. It can be as short as an hour a few evenings a week and a few hours on the weekends. It doesn't need to be anything "cool", it should be something you get a kick out of building that you don't get a chance to do at work: it's perfectly fine to re-invent the wheel, learn a language that isn't used in industry, write a software to facilitate a non programming hobby e.g., I love classics of literature, so I once built a "beautifier" for Project Gutenberg works that would convert them to LaTeX and type set them.

The fact that you love programming should be enough of a reason to continue doing it. Especially if you're skilled in areas outside of programming, you won't have any issue staying employed. Since you have less ego and arrogance, you'll be able to learn more from others, opening fields that are often close to people who are convinced they can't be taught anything about programming in a university setting.

P.S.

If you really are an impostor, that's likely a much more rare and valuable skill than being a programmer!

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#28

Post by roel_v »

wyclif wrote: post #25
cyrus_ wrote: post #14

In any competitive field, from computer science to ballet, there are those who practice for hours and hours per day. The author does not want to be a competitive computer scientist, and is happy being a casual one -- skilled enough to make a 40 hour-per-week living with it, to be sure, but not obsessed enough to advance the field itself. She made a great choice going to a liberal arts school. When she compares hersel…

I was with you until you advocated the 80-hour work week. That's a sure recipe for burnout, not necessarily excellence.

No it isn't, there are plenty of people working hours late that and slugging through it. And it's true that 80 hour weeks don't 'necessarily' lead to excellence; actually it's quite obvious. However, there aren't many people who do achieve excellence without extreme dedication. So working 80 hours will add to the results you will achieve.

It's not for everyone, fine. Not everybody can be top 1%. By definition, 99% can't, obviously. But let's stop pretending that we're all equal and everybody is the best. We're not, and only the brightest who work the hardest and smartest, and have some luck, will be the best.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#29

Post by roel_v »

j_baker wrote: post #13
alain94040 wrote: post #2

This has nothing to do with women in tech. It has to do with specialization vs. generalist. The image of the ultimate hacker assumes a specialist. 100% focused on their expertise. It could lead to a great coder. but a company will also need someone with a decent technical background who can also relate to the end-user for instance, or align more than one sentence when a customer calls. That would be more a generalist…

I don't think it's a specialist/generalist thing. I think it's a "do you have interests outside of programming" thing. In my experience, the image of the ultimate hacker is someone who eats, breathes, and drinks programming (which used to be me). As I've grown older, I've learned to appreciate the value of learning things outside of programming.

'value' to who? You yourself and your direct environment, presumably. How much did your other interests contribute to your software skills? Maybe a bit, but not as much as other skills would have that you could (with directed effort) have learned in the time you spend on other things.

I'm not saying it's wrong, I too live my life for myself, not for others, and not to be the very best developer I could potentially be at the exclusion of everything else. I like to do things outside of software as well, every now and then. But that doesn't take away from the fact that I could have been better if I'd spend the time on it.

So, 'the ultimate hacker' (as in, 'the theoretical ideal of the very best developer') is someone who eats, breathes and drinks programming (or at least 'software development' in the broad sense). Socializing, a family, learning macrame - all of those things do not add to being the ultimate hacker.

Re: I know I belong in computer science, but sometimes I wonder.

#30

Post by heresy »

strlen wrote: post #27

As jerf has pointed out, this is Impostor Syndrome. It is present in men as well. Ironically, the better programmer I've become, the stronger it has gotten. The thing is, while scary, it's perfectly normal. The only advise I can offer is just to ignore it. So what if it is true and you "don't belong" or you're a bad programmer: so what? It's still something that you enjoy and can make a career, a rare luxury for most…

So what would you recommend someone self-taught who just bombed his past couple of interviews do?

Nothing like failing on elementary math questions to make you feel like a class A idiot, especially if your title is 'Senior Software Engineer', and here I go, bombing on freaking word problems in a numeracy test.

I feel like a total fraud, like I'm in the wrong field, I could have done those easily straight out of high school.

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