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Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

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Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#21

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

mrits wrote: post #4

Googling how to bubble sort seems a bit extreme. I'm not much for Cracking the Code Interview type questions but this would certainly be a red flag.

Part of the problem with things like "implement Bubble Sort" is that most actual programming tasks are "here's a problem, find the best implementation". There aren't many sorting tasks where Bubble Sort is an appropriate implementation: a _better_ interview question would be "here's a list of numbers, sort them without using a standard library function." Followed by "what are some advantages/disadvantages of the method you used? Can you think of a better way to do this?"

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#22

Post by goto11 »

mrits wrote: post #4

Googling how to bubble sort seems a bit extreme. I'm not much for Cracking the Code Interview type questions but this would certainly be a red flag.

I have never needed to implement a sorting algorithm, so time spent memorizing them would be pretty wasteful compared to learning something useful.

I do remember Barack Obama advising against bubble sort though.

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#23

Post by leetcrew »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #7
bjornjajayaja wrote: post #5

I tend to disagree with many of the sentiments. In particular, many software folks don’t know the most rudimentary data structures and algorithms. Those should be memorized, frankly. Lately I have been exploring old programming books on archive.org and realize how downhill the industry has gone from fundamental principles, which leads to “language-z” zealots to satisfy some business need. The author mentions COBOL as…

I forget what I don't use. Should I rememorize those things every 6 months?

99% of the data structure decisions I make at work are whether I should use a vector, a tree, a hashmap, or (very rarely) a list. the standard library implementation of whatever I choose is almost always sufficient. I wouldn't expect the average programmer to be able to implement all of these on the spot, but if you don't use them enough to understand the basic trade-offs, I have to wonder wtf you are doing all day?

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#24

Post by xiphias2 »

ajarmst wrote: post #9

An observation: a lot of these---especially 'soft skills'---can't be properly learned earlier. They're a side effect of experience, and the 10 years doing the job is the only way to properly get them. The things I most often hear from potential employers when we ask what we should focus on more in teaching them are "soft skills" and "troubleshooting". My response is now to ask which of the long list of technical skil…

This is the good type of soft skill, and there is the bad type: soft skill when a person can just talk very nicely, and suck it up to his upper management, do the very simple things (like fixing all lint errors and following 30 other recommendations inside the company) instead of providing real value to the company and the users to get promoted.

I had a manager like that, and I made the mistake of confronting him for ,,safe'' and bad technical decisions (in which case the higher level person always wins), instead of just nicely switch teams without confrontation.

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#25

Post by throwaway98797 »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

Good read, especially the part about soft skills. Sometimes it seems to me like it's almost impossible to change them. It's "easy" to learn something hard and defined, like coding. But changing how you communicate? How you react to conflict? Your body language? It's even harder if you're trying to change these soft behaviors of someone else, like a partner. Not sure what the takeaway is here, just wanted to express m…

Pick one reaction you consistently have that you want to change.

Every time you have the “wrong” action think about the “right” reaction. Over years your “natural” reaction will change.

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#26

Post by mgkimsal »

davzie wrote: post #18
mgkimsal wrote: post #14

> "Sure, I could make an extra 10% every year, but would that make me happier than working from home, on my own terms?" If it allows you to provide more ('stuff', or security, or stability) for a family, then yes, it might make you happier. I read articles like this and they mostly tend to be from the perspective of younger people and/or folks without families to support. An extra 10% pay increase, over just a few ye…

As someone with a family, my preference is that I can work from home to be around my family more. I feel this is more valuable to them than some more money in our savings account but that’s just me. To each their own!

Had a colleague die a few years ago. He'd lost some project work, and let his life insurance lapse. Had a heart attack just a few weeks later, and left a wife and 3 kids with very little. He worked from home and spent time with them, but had hit a point where money was a problem. The story sticks with me because he'd contacted me just a couple months before he died asking if I had any work/referrals, and I had nothing at that time.

The older I get, the more I see less the great outcomes when adversity hit people I know (whether death or illness or some other big hit). Money isn't everything, but in many of those cases, having an extra $k saved up would indeed help smooth people through those rough patches. I'm actually amazed at how many folks work for decades, then something happens, and there's a gofundme set up for the family to help with day to day bills.

If you have all your financial ducks in a row, everyone is comfortable, and you have the life you want, that's great. To each their own, indeed! :)

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#27

Post by dehrmann »

mrits wrote: post #4

Googling how to bubble sort seems a bit extreme. I'm not much for Cracking the Code Interview type questions but this would certainly be a red flag.

IIRC, bubble sort is only useful if you're sorting a doubly linked list in constant memory. Linked lists aren't that useful either. If you're iterating over the entire list and making changes in the middle, you're better off rebuilding the list as a vector because lower memory overhead makes two vectors smaller than one linked list. The most frequent correct uses of linked lists that I've seen are lock-free, concurrent data structures and hashtables that save insertion order.

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#28

Post by Moodles »

zikzak wrote: post #12
Moodles wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people would google FizzBuzz unfortunately.

I'm about to do some interviewing and I am much more interested in how they would handle a credit card provider being down when processing a transaction. Or if they can articulate that solution verbally. Or if they handle me taking an opposite position as devil's advocate well, etc.

Absolutely. You want both but I would also value what you’re talking about a lot more.

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#29

Post by joelbluminator »

mgkimsal wrote: post #14

> "Sure, I could make an extra 10% every year, but would that make me happier than working from home, on my own terms?" If it allows you to provide more ('stuff', or security, or stability) for a family, then yes, it might make you happier. I read articles like this and they mostly tend to be from the perspective of younger people and/or folks without families to support. An extra 10% pay increase, over just a few ye…

Hmm 10% sounds quite negligible in terms of security/stability etc. Way more important, for you and your family, to be happy with your work than to provide 10% more income imo.

Re: Things I Wish I’d Learned Sooner After Being a Developer for 10 Years

#30

Post by leetcrew »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #16

> “ Don’t like your new boss? Just quit. Enough people do it, and their boss will fix it. You don’t like your company’s policies around privacy, diversity, inclusion, human rights? Quit.” This is psycho advice. It ranks up there with the crazy myths about just being able to instantly get new software jobs (when the actual time of job searches is usually longer than 6 months, despite the tone deaf wave of gainsaying c…

recruiter: based on your impressive linkedin profile, I think you'd be a great fit for a full-stack role with my client! let me know if you have some time to discuss opportunities this week.

my linkedin profile: literally just desktop c++ work in a completely different domain.

yeah, something tells me these messages are not likely to lead to a real job.

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