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Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
201–210 of 361 posts
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that interesting? The job of exploring a theory or model to such an extent that it can be expressed in computer code always seems to fall on the shoulders of a software developer. Other people can write specifications and requirements all day long, but until a software developer has tackled the problem, the theory probably hasn't been explored well enough yet to express clearly in computer code. It feels like s…
> It feels like software developers are scientists who study their customers' knowledge domains. I agree so much with this. It's why I feel so stifled when an e.g. product manager tries to insulate and isolate me from the people who I'm trying to serve -- you (or a collective of yous) need to have access to both expertise in the domain you're serving, and expertise in the method of service, in order to develop an app…
> so stifled when an e.g. product manager
Another facet of this is my annoyance at other developers when they persistently incurious about the domain. (Thankfully, this has not been too common.)
I don't just mean when there are tight deadlines, or there's a customer-from-heck who insists they always know best, but as their default mode of operation. I imagine it's like a gardener who cares only about the catalogue of tools, and just wants the bare-minimum knowledge to deal with any particular set of green thingies in the dirt.
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Production grade multi tenant databases want to *solely* run on RAM. > why would you not want to index? Because if you don't need an index it wastes RAM, as you've learned. Maintaining indices also has a cost. Index only what you need. In the sense of the blog post: A senior with decent DB experience would have told you. ;)
Everything "wants to" run solely in RAM, but we don't have infinite RAM, so a "production grade" database should also be able to fetch data from disk unless this is an explicit tradeoff. MariaDB and PostgreSQL do not require all indices to be stored in RAM. Obviously they can be accessed more quickly if they are in RAM but they are designed under the assumption they will often be stored on disk. It sounds like MongoD…
Every serious database that is designed to handle moderate to high traffic, will expect you to have RAM to fit all data and indices. Relational DBs do a solid job if that's not the case, but that also sabotages the efficiency you could get from them. It will work for some time. If it's enough for your, that's fine.
I am not experienced with MongoDB, I don't know if previous comment reports were the users fault or MongoDB's. But one thing is clear to me, complaining it uses too much RAM and not knowing the reasons for it, is a user problem. A common mistake is to setup a DB and expect it just magically does works. DBs are complicated beasts, you have to know how to deal with them.
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#204What I found is that my willingness to communicate and share my expertise is usually not in demand with more junior developers. In general, I find developers uninterested in finding a mentor. They don't look at your linked in profile, they don't look at you as a possible source of knowledge and expertise. So it's not like I have nothing to share after 30 years of experience in the industry, I just have nobody to shar…
I'm sorry this has been your experience. There are folks out there open to learning from us seniors.
I've been a mentor off and on for the last few decades, and I've been really lucky to have some strong mentees. Some I've followed for a better part of a decade and are crushing it out there. All I can really say is that they're out there, sorry I don't have any more helpful to say around how to find them etc. I'll mull on that for a bit..
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#205What I found is that my willingness to communicate and share my expertise is usually not in demand with more junior developers. In general, I find developers uninterested in finding a mentor. They don't look at your linked in profile, they don't look at you as a possible source of knowledge and expertise. So it's not like I have nothing to share after 30 years of experience in the industry, I just have nobody to shar…
All the senior developers I have worked with are absolutely allergic to coming into the office, working closely with junior developers, and in general talking to people. Whereas juniors are eager to chat, have lunch with you , and share what they’re working on, the seniors are guarded and solitary. Maybe that’s just my workplace though! And yes, the office is important.
In the senior realm here - would love to chat with folks over lunch, brainstorm, assist, mentor, guide, etc. Can't do that AND be expected to deliver code at a 'full time' expected pace. What I would be delivering is... some code, some guidance, some assistance, etc. I've seen inside enough places to know that many senior folks end up being guarded and solitary because the deadlines aren't ever set to accomodate that sort of work. You're a 'Senior Developer(tm)' and the measuring stick is... lines of code.
Orgs get what they measure for. If your team values that sort of interactivity and support, it will ... observe it, measure it, and hire for that sort of person. I've seen groups evolve towards that, and they've been great, but it doesn't seem to be a default - most groups/orgs have to work towards it and and keep working at it.
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#206It sounds like a perfect idea on paper until you notice that junior devs will not be able to learn about stable code. Unless AI get's good enough to write stable code, or good enough that no human has to look in the code, the next generation will face a bigger problem than now. Well it's AI that started it so let's make AI take responsibility... Oh they can't. Now what?
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think it’s the arrogance of youth. It’s just that this generation and honestly a big cohort of millennials are not used to gleaning information from people. A stunning number of people have been raised/educated solely by the internet. That’s the source for knowledge, not other people.
> A stunning number of people have been raised/educated solely by the internet. That’s the source for knowledge, not other people. On the internet you can learn from and sometimes interact with the best of the best, so the barrier of entry for what constitutes an "expert" is rised much higher.
To be quite honest I learned exactly this way myself, however nowhere near recently by any stretch of imagination; I learned through Usenet, bulletin board systems, IRC, and a heavy dose of (bordering on obsession) reading any and all technical manuals I could get my hands on from the local used book store.
I still vividly remember reading a z80 instruction set manual on a rainy day during summer vacation by a lake as a kid (maybe 14?)--writing my own assembly by hand in the margins for fun. TBH I probably still have that exact manual in storage somewhere. Had a green stripe down the front edge/binding iirc.
Back then I easily met folks like myself out there on the net, including many kids younger and smarter than me. It was awesome.
I do hope that some form of that 'net lives on in spirit somehow, given that the Internet I knew has largely fallen to corporate interests.
Now that I have my own kids, it's been painful to watch them have such an utterly different experience than I did.
Their Internet is based entirely on consumption and dark patterns designed to capture their attention, while providing nothing (to them) in return besides a dopamine addiction and body dismorphia.
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#208What I found is that my willingness to communicate and share my expertise is usually not in demand with more junior developers. In general, I find developers uninterested in finding a mentor. They don't look at your linked in profile, they don't look at you as a possible source of knowledge and expertise. So it's not like I have nothing to share after 30 years of experience in the industry, I just have nobody to shar…
This is the key sticking point.
"It takes two to tango" i.e. junior developers must first put in some effort and then proactively seek out seniors with expertise.
It may be a cliche, but a truism nevertheless; viz. the juniors are simply not interested in putting in the necessary time/effort to gain knowledge systematically. They want everything to be quick, easy and handed to them on a platter.
I think the main reason for this is; there is just too much out there to learn and everything is being propagandized as being the most important and most indispensable; This swamps the juniors and hence they feel lost and try to keep up with everything which is a fool's errand.
Juniors need to keep the following in mind;
1) Change their learning mindset as follows; - Browse a lot, Read a subset and Study an even smaller subset.
2) Always focus on the essentials and not on the frills. This is determined by your specific goals/needs.
3) Be okay with not knowing everything. Do not base your self-worth on others evaluation of you.
4) Do not compete with others. Do the best you can and always improve on your yesterday's self. As the adage goes "drops of water falling, if they fall continuously, can bore through iron and stone".
5) Be confident in your own intelligence. As Sherlock Holmes said "what one man can invent another can discover". What might seem impenetrable in the beginning will over time become clearer and easier when studied regularly.
6) Everything is dependent on Self-Effort modulated by Timing, Context, Means Employed and finally Random Chance (i.e. lady luck). Manage the last by factoring in its payoffs as part of your self-effort itself (i.e. hedging). Focusing on the above five parameters before starting on anything will guarantee success.
7) You can always short-circuit your studies and gain knowledge quickly by asking seniors with expertise to teach you. Your attitude and way of approach is very important here i.e. you must be sincere and committed.
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#209Because the most important parts of the expertise are coming from their internal "world model" and are inseparable from it. An average unaware person believes that anything can be put in words and once the words are said, they mean to reader what the sayer meant, and the only difficulty could come from not knowing the words or mistaking ambiguities. The request to take a dev and "communicate" their expertise to anoth…
A non-trivial part of the big difference between the juniors that seem talented and "get it", and those that don't is precisely their ability to form accurate enough world models quickly. You can tell who is going at the "physics" of software and applying them, and who is just writing down recipes, and doesn't try to understand the nature of any of the steps.
It's especially noticeable when teaching functional programming to people trained in OO: Some people's model just breaks, while others quickly see the similarities, and how one can translate from a world of vars to a world of monads with relative ease. The bones of how computation works aren't changing, just how one puts together the pieces.
Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
#210What I found is that my willingness to communicate and share my expertise is usually not in demand with more junior developers. In general, I find developers uninterested in finding a mentor. They don't look at your linked in profile, they don't look at you as a possible source of knowledge and expertise. So it's not like I have nothing to share after 30 years of experience in the industry, I just have nobody to shar…
All the senior developers I have worked with are absolutely allergic to coming into the office, working closely with junior developers, and in general talking to people. Whereas juniors are eager to chat, have lunch with you , and share what they’re working on, the seniors are guarded and solitary. Maybe that’s just my workplace though! And yes, the office is important.
The last two jobs I've had ended up with teams spread across multiple offices and time zones. I don't hate the idea of coming in to the office, but every time I do I end up only talking with people from other cities on calls anyway.
That said, I completely agree. I learned most of what I know from being in the same room with senior developers and asking questions. Something that just isn't happening these days.