Live data from Hacker News

The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

skorks.com

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#21
The most valuable thing I learned in school, kindergarten through university, was how to learn. If my learning had stopped at the time I finished high school, I would have had only enough to survive; if it had stopped at the time I finished college, I would have had enough to hold down a steady job; but in neither case would I be doing what I do today.

In the same way, a developer that can only reuse code from a Google search can survive, a developer that can program decently in a number of languages can hold down a steady job, but a developer that can differentiate themselves by their ability to deeply understand a business need or language or technology can excel.

Learning for learning's sake is useful onto itself--the brain muscles that are exercised when a person learns the violin are the same that become exhausted learning deep domain knowledge.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#22
post #6

Wise words spoken by the wise are wise. Wise words spoken by the foolish are foolish. It's wise to learn by doing things that interest you and picking up the required skills as you go. It may be wise to avoid wasting time learning things you haven't encountered a need for that are on somebody's list of "stuff you should know" since there's legitimate disagreement over what people should know, and you only have one li…

...and wisdom is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#23

It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer", the guy who understands how all parts of the system interact -- because without a holistic view, you're lost at sea when it comes to scalability, reliability, performance and security. I'd also say that more projects fail because of problems with "soft skills" and project management than from anything else. When your marketing divis…

It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer"

It used to be like this, back in the day. When I started doing Java professionally (1996, yes really) anyone who did Java did all of Java and could reasonably be working on a GUI one day, a network server the next, databases, native code, compiler internals...

Fast forward to say 2001 and the game has changed, now there are specialists, I did JDBC and Swing and never touched mobile edition, and barely touched EJBs, etc etc. It just got too big. Greybeards I know tell me stories like that on the Mac, System 6 was the last MacOS where one person could hold the entire thing in his or her head. Come System 7 you had to specialize.

Maybe nowadays you can be full-stack in something relatively simple, e.g. LAMP but even then, the L is Linux and the guys who do both LAMP websites and Linux kernel hacking you could probably count on one hand.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#24
Different people like different things. Some people like to study computer science for its own sake, do research, develop algorithms, AI, machine learning, natural language processing, graphics, etc. A lot more people just want to apply their software knowledge to build a product of value to society. Among those, most do not require heavy algorithms or optimizations. It's just data in data out. Supply and demand are well balanced proportionally among the various sub-needs, but the field in general is undersupplied.

PS: "We all communicate really well". I wholeheartedly disagree! I think you just got lucky with where you worked.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#26

It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer", the guy who understands how all parts of the system interact -- because without a holistic view, you're lost at sea when it comes to scalability, reliability, performance and security. I'd also say that more projects fail because of problems with "soft skills" and project management than from anything else. When your marketing divis…

Amen - I forget the interview, but there was a great interview with Steve Jobs where he said that to make great things happen, you need a broad range of life experience. That tends not to apply to engineers who stay in front of the computer all day.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#27
I read this when it was posted earlier this year, and I see where the author is going ... but I also see how he could be misunderstood.

All he's saying is that you should try new things, take some time out and actually build something in a technology that interests you ... not just read about them.

Its the only way to actually expand your skillset and your programming IQ. The really great developers that I've met do this constantly ... Erlang? Check. Haskell? ... been there! Clojure? ... built a webserver in it last night ... for fun. Node.js? ... built an analytics program in it with mongo db while I was on vacation.

Of course some of us aren't blessed that kind of ability to pick up and be productive in a language in a weekend, but it just means that we just need to be more selective with the things we commit to trying out. As with all things ... doing it more often actually makes it easier to pick up new things as they come up, since you get used to the mechanics of actually trying things out.

What I've found is that the 'cross pollination' of ideas from the different languages/frameworks you use will make you a better programmer across the board.

So yeah, don't wait till you actually need a skill to scramble around trying to pick it up ... do half the leg work up front and you'll reap the dividends down the road. Thats how I see it anyway.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#28

It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer", the guy who understands how all parts of the system interact -- because without a holistic view, you're lost at sea when it comes to scalability, reliability, performance and security. I'd also say that more projects fail because of problems with "soft skills" and project management than from anything else. When your marketing divis…

I can tune apache s maxClients and most crockfords javascript good practices are just natural now, not to mentional the whole lot in between. but at interview this never helps me.

Everyone interviews for specialists.

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#29
post #6

Wise words spoken by the wise are wise. Wise words spoken by the foolish are foolish. It's wise to learn by doing things that interest you and picking up the required skills as you go. It may be wise to avoid wasting time learning things you haven't encountered a need for that are on somebody's list of "stuff you should know" since there's legitimate disagreement over what people should know, and you only have one li…

...and wisdom is in the eye of the beholder.

Isn't it more in the ear?

Re: The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

#30
post #23

It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer", the guy who understands how all parts of the system interact -- because without a holistic view, you're lost at sea when it comes to scalability, reliability, performance and security. I'd also say that more projects fail because of problems with "soft skills" and project management than from anything else. When your marketing divis…

It seems to me that the specialist that's most needed is the "full stack programmer" It used to be like this, back in the day. When I started doing Java professionally (1996, yes really) anyone who did Java did all of Java and could reasonably be working on a GUI one day, a network server the next, databases, native code, compiler internals... Fast forward to say 2001 and the game has changed, now there are specialis…

I don't hack the linux kernel for fun, but I'll sure write an emergency kernel patch to keep an overstressed server on its feet.
Post reply on HN