Books that changed my career as a software engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#291

Post by closeparen » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #214

thewakalix wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe some people take to programming like a fish to water, but plenty of others struggled at first. Knowing when to give up is important, but part of that is knowing when not to give up. That is a complicated and individual question; an ignorant gatekeeper who discourages anyone who's not immediately successful isn't helping here.

The gordon-ramsey (army coach, sports coach, theatre director, ballet director...) school of "encouragement" prescribes the opposite. That is: if you arent passionate enough to overcome discouragement, you arent passionate enough to excel. Of course, we dont need excellent programmers en-mass. However, it is interesting to observe that this "egotistic troupe leader" is a fairly common form of small-group excellence-s…

In several of those contexts, quitting is going to be even more painful than perseverance (in terms of both social shame and punishment). You don’t need to worry about alienating captives.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#292

Post by joshgrib » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

aesyondu wrote: post #164

wiseowise wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clean code... To this day I cringe when I see methods/functions over 20 lines long.. Or when I see commented code blocks in one function.. To this day I cringe when I see dogmatic opinions of a fraud taken like an absolute truth.

Interesting. This is the first time I've seen Robert Martin to be referred to as a fraud. I'd like to read an elaboration of this. I looked around and found this video [[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb9VPWbrqmE][Uncle Bob (Robert Martin) is a Fraud!!!]] but most of the comments are dismissive of the review.

I was a fan for a while until I learned all this other stuff about him

https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/robert-martin - this is a good article

> While Martin advocates for a small, dogmatic, and incorrect set of technical ideas for making code better, that's not why most people are upset with him — it's far more common for people to be upset about his views on race and gender, and particularly the way that someone in a position of power expressing those views hurts people in the communities that he's a part of

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#293

Post by Breza » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

_n_b_ wrote: post #189

underdeserver wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find the opposite. Many books belabor the point and take a chapter to explain what a paragraph could. It might sometimes be useful - for example, to explain a scenario to a newbie who can't relate from their own experience - but for someone who's been in the industry for a while, most of that information is just not useful.

Relatedly, but I've always wished there were a series of books like, "I'm Already a Programmer but I'd Like to Learn ____" Trying to pick up a book about a new programming language that is trying to explain the concept of an 'array' or whatever is annoying--I wish there was something to just lay out (still in a thoughtful and guided way) the concepts I needed to understand for that language based on already knowing s…

Agreed! I've only found a few great examples of books like this, such as Advanced R. There's a lot of "You can skip this chapter if you already know how to answer the following questions..."

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#294

Post by Breza » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

pastage wrote: post #185

underdeserver wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find the opposite. Many books belabor the point and take a chapter to explain what a paragraph could. It might sometimes be useful - for example, to explain a scenario to a newbie who can't relate from their own experience - but for someone who's been in the industry for a while, most of that information is just not useful.

Called US writing style over here, just being overly verbose. Course literature, e.g. Calculus, suffers from this. It is a style in which you wax on and drive home the point by repetition. This style is popular nowdays and finding books that succintcly describes a subject is hard. This is mostly because you need to have common ground, and writing for the smallest common denominator is better.

Writing succinctly is a difficult skill that requires practice. The US government has put a lot of work into making things easier to understand in recent years. I have a Masters in Public Administration. My professors hammered home the idea that lawmakers and the public aren't going to read your 50 page policy analysis, so matter how brilliant it is. My final paper in Project Management class was worth 25% of my final grade and had a one-page limit. It's one of the most difficult projects I've ever had. If you're interested in learning more about this style of writing, check out plainlanguage.gov.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#295

Post by Breza » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

exdsq wrote: post #49

The thing that changed my career as a software engineer, in terms of seniority & remuneration by time and effort, was by changing my efforts from learning arbitrary tech to learning the domain I worked in. Asking useful domain-related questions gets you noticed in stand ups and helps you write the right code. I work in fintech so the best bang for my buck I’ve had was reading an entry level cert in investment finance…

Totally agree! I have a background in government data science. As I rose up the ranks at the government contractor where I work, more and more of my job focused on corporate stuff that was outside of my wheelhouse. I used to be intimidated by phrases like "That's SG&A, don't take it off the topline." I told me professor friend and she gifted me a copy of Berk & DeMarzo. It's been more useful than any single programming book I've read. Turns out corporate finance isn't that hard, it just has its own language that takes effort to learn.