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Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

thecodist.com

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Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#31

Post by vitd »

ZeppelinDePlomo wrote: post #4

If it has nothing to do with a way to increase production, then the company has no business by investing in you learning that. BUT, if the company can benefit from you learning those skills, then it could be a missed oportunity not give you the resources to do it (learning it while on the company's time). Of course it's all a product of culture and supply-demand (systemic), if there are enough great programmers that…

I get what you're saying, but at the same time, how can a company possibly know whether any given technology is useful to them if they don't have anyone evaluating it?

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#32

Post by TulliusCicero »

adamredwoods wrote: post #21
arms wrote: post #5

Terrific post. This is exactly the type of individual I want to work with - someone who recognizes that they're in charge of their own advancement, and doesn't lay blame on any outside factors. As developers/builders/hackers we are ultimately responsible for our own success or failure.

i disagree somewhat. the article was a bit heavy on the narcissism, i wouldn't want to work with such a person. i'd rather work with the Brazil-esque Robert DeNiro type: "Listen, kid, we're all in it together."

It has to sound narcissistic because he's using himself as a successful example.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#34

Post by dinkumthinkum »

JackMorgan wrote: post #26
zzzcpan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are interested, learning is fun for them too. But not everyone is interested in learning the same things you are. For me, for example, there is absolutely nothing more boring, than some new fancy framework, API or a language. I am, however, very excited to try things that might reduce amount of bugs and potential security issues in my code, make it cheaper to run, cheaper to support.

So long as you don't have to learn a language, API, or framework to do it... I'm not sure what things are left you could do differently? Your list excludes all technology-related changes, so the rest becomes meta-activities: pair programming, documentation, planning, a good nights sleep, etc. Those are excellent, but I'm curious why are you willing to change those other areas but are resistant to technological ones?…

There are a lot more interesting things in CS than 100 different mvc frameworks and 20 upstart languages that do exactly what LISP did in 1960.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#35

Post by dinkumthinkum »

JackMorgan wrote: post #27
adamredwoods wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some people feel that their lives do not revolve around programming, that there are other interesting things like traveling and child raising that take a chunk of their ever precious and limited time. so it's not to say they aren't interested, but rather lack the time to dedicate. therefore, it helps if the company they work for can offer a little time to learn new things.

I'm talking about developers who when offered a chance to learn something new at work reject it, usually while getting pretty defensive. My current hypothesis is people get so used to internally defending their neglect of the skills that earn them travel and shelter that when the opportunity arises to actually get paid to improve, all the reasons they normally use prevent them from even doing that.

I thinks there's truth on both sides of this. There are many blub programmers that know some narrow scope of Java or C# and a little SQL and that's their whole programming life. This is true regardless of age.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#36

Post by krob »

I see it this way, the better the company you work for, the more responsibility they will generally have towards feeling you need to stay up on education and possibly provide opportunities for you to stay educated in the field you're paid to do. The poorer the quality of company, and generally the more you have to do on a regular basis as the primary individual to do your job, the less chance you will have to learn new technologies. Unless your company feels external pressure for you to pursue these new tech's you are on your own. Small shops with bad scheduling will make it so you are unable to schedule time for new technology stacks. You inevitably end up pigeonholed to stick with what you always use.

I think ultimately, many people in the industry, they only get to learn new tech when they leave for their next job. The pressure is momentarily reduced while they learn at their new job.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#37

Post by Derbasti »

JackMorgan wrote: post #19

I have been writing and rewriting a post for the better part of a year on this same thing. I think I've finally accepted that a majority of programmers actually are not interested in learning new things. I got into software because there was so much to learn and explore, so this realization still baffles me. Why on earth would someone want to do this job and not want to learn new things? It's like a baseball player w…

A former coworker of mine said it straight out. He said: "I don't want to learn anything new. I'm too old for that.". He is 50, and a terrible C++ programmer, a good assembler guy and quite the hardware wizard. But he refuses to learn anything new. He still can't type with more than four fingers, despite spending half his life programming. He programs object oriented C++, with obvious lack of understanding of almost everything about OOP.

I am baffled by him. After spending two years with him, I still can't understand his motivations. I quit that job in large parts because of him.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#38

Post by noelwelsh »

RogerL wrote: post #29
JackMorgan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as you don't have to learn a language, API, or framework to do it... I'm not sure what things are left you could do differently? Your list excludes all technology-related changes, so the rest becomes meta-activities: pair programming, documentation, planning, a good nights sleep, etc. Those are excellent, but I'm curious why are you willing to change those other areas but are resistant to technological ones?…

Let's see, I'm learning about unscented Kalman filters, moving object tracking in computer vision, PCA, and more. I'm learning about the problem domain that I'm working in. I have no interest in learning yet another API unless I absolutely have to, because it isn't really interesting knowledge that I have to call the fibble() function before calling xacxtyor() in this poorly documented API. That's not learning, it's…

This is great, but it's not addressing the point, which is "I am, however, very excited to try things that might reduce amount of bugs and potential security issues in my code, make it cheaper to run, cheaper to support."

Also, if you like math go learn some functional programming. The ideas of abstract algebra, which you will encounter in FP, are increasingly relevant to machine learning as well. E.g. http://jmlr.org/proceedings/papers/v28/izbicki13.pdf

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#39

Post by noelwelsh »

zzzcpan wrote: post #22
JackMorgan wrote: post #19

I have been writing and rewriting a post for the better part of a year on this same thing. I think I've finally accepted that a majority of programmers actually are not interested in learning new things. I got into software because there was so much to learn and explore, so this realization still baffles me. Why on earth would someone want to do this job and not want to learn new things? It's like a baseball player w…

No, they are interested, learning is fun for them too. But not everyone is interested in learning the same things you are. For me, for example, there is absolutely nothing more boring, than some new fancy framework, API or a language. I am, however, very excited to try things that might reduce amount of bugs and potential security issues in my code, make it cheaper to run, cheaper to support.

If your main concern is reducing bugs and security issues, then you really should look into modern typed languages like Rust.

Re: Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You

#40

Post by auvrw »

RogerL wrote: post #29
JackMorgan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as you don't have to learn a language, API, or framework to do it... I'm not sure what things are left you could do differently? Your list excludes all technology-related changes, so the rest becomes meta-activities: pair programming, documentation, planning, a good nights sleep, etc. Those are excellent, but I'm curious why are you willing to change those other areas but are resistant to technological ones?…

Let's see, I'm learning about unscented Kalman filters, moving object tracking in computer vision, PCA, and more. I'm learning about the problem domain that I'm working in. I have no interest in learning yet another API unless I absolutely have to, because it isn't really interesting knowledge that I have to call the fibble() function before calling xacxtyor() in this poorly documented API. That's not learning, it's…

> But the endless march of APIs is pretty tiring to me

i hear you on that one

> and I do everything I can to isolate myself from that.

but still, you can't stop thinking about design entirely. when a new ideally-pure-C-but-C++-if-you-really-need-stl library is ready to actually be put to use you'll have to put an api of some sort on it. hopefully that api will be informed by your use of other people's apis, both good and bad.

don't forget that the whole point of computers is that they're immediately useful. you can still do most of the math you want with a pencil, paper, and stack of books.

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