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How to be a wizard programmer

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Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#41

Post by stepanhruda »

lubonay wrote: post #17
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're demonstrating why people become afraid to ask questions, and stop doing so even when they should. I'd much rather have someone ask when they get stuck, or even if they're kinda stuck. If someone happens to ask me a question that's easily found via poking around a bit more, I'll show them how they could have found the answer, and then they'll have learned two things: the thing they wanted to know and a new patt…

Somewhat inexperienced team leader here. IMO, working on improving the team's knowledge as a whole is so much more rewarding than working on your own knowledge and snapping at people who want you to share it. The style I favor when the junior devs ask me questions is to ask questions right back at them, kind of like in a Socratic dialogue. This makes them reluctant to come to me for easy answers and think more about…

Thanks for this

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#42

Post by [deleted] »

lubonay wrote: post #17
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're demonstrating why people become afraid to ask questions, and stop doing so even when they should. I'd much rather have someone ask when they get stuck, or even if they're kinda stuck. If someone happens to ask me a question that's easily found via poking around a bit more, I'll show them how they could have found the answer, and then they'll have learned two things: the thing they wanted to know and a new patt…

Somewhat inexperienced team leader here. IMO, working on improving the team's knowledge as a whole is so much more rewarding than working on your own knowledge and snapping at people who want you to share it. The style I favor when the junior devs ask me questions is to ask questions right back at them, kind of like in a Socratic dialogue. This makes them reluctant to come to me for easy answers and think more about…

[deleted]

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#44

Post by mxuribe »

dozzie wrote: post #43
stepanhruda wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hierarchy goes pirate, ninja, wizard, rockstar and guru. /s

Where is "commando" in there?

For many years now "commando" is no longer a title but rather a state; a state where one lacks under garments, and of course a lack of support. ;-)

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#45

Post by blowski »

norswap wrote: post #21
tubs wrote: post #6

Until the more senior member quits because they are wasting the vast majority of their time answering questions that could have been answered by just trying for more than 30seconds after hitting an obstacle...

Parade: always ask "what have you tried?" first. Then it's acceptable to just give just a direction (the simplest of which is "try googling for it") and to tell them to come back when they've tried if the problem persists.

I found this the most useful thing about StackOverflow - it taught me how to both ask and answer questions more effectively.

Bad:

> "I have an error. What do I do?"

Better:

> "I have this error: {BLAH}. What do I do?"

Best:

> "I'm trying to do X. I have this error: {BLAH}. I read the documentation and tried doing Y, but it didn't fix it. How I can I do X?"

Similarly, I try to avoid giving answers that are just "change this line to x". You're just a code-fixing machine into which you pump questions and answers are spat out. Nobody learns anything that way, and you're going to answer the same question over and over again, and get annoyed.

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#46

Post by mikekchar »

weego wrote: post #30

I'm going to be the token buzz-kill senior dev: If you run into problems none of the senior devs have experience in and have no answers for, my first concern is that you're massively over complicating something we've solved in a simpler and less risk-exposed way. My second concern is that you're intentionally reinventing the wheel in a way that is massively over complicating something we've solved in a simpler and le…

Unless your question is: "How does this legacy system work? Why can't we make it do what we want to make it do?" I built my career on this :-) Give me your worst code! The best thing about this is that nobody gives a crap what you do with that stuff as long as you don't break it. Say goodbye to the endless conversations of how to indent your code.

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#47

Post by lloeki »

collyw wrote: post #20

Is wizard better than ninja or rockstar? (Am I the only one that gets put of by job ads asking for nonsense titles like these?)

Once upon a time it used to have a sensible meaning[0].

Nowadays I'm more interested in people that are effectively building stuff and just s/[:buzzwords:]//g.

[0]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/W/wizard.html

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#48

Post by whack »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #11
tubs wrote: post #6

Until the more senior member quits because they are wasting the vast majority of their time answering questions that could have been answered by just trying for more than 30seconds after hitting an obstacle...

You're demonstrating why people become afraid to ask questions, and stop doing so even when they should. I'd much rather have someone ask when they get stuck, or even if they're kinda stuck. If someone happens to ask me a question that's easily found via poking around a bit more, I'll show them how they could have found the answer, and then they'll have learned two things: the thing they wanted to know and a new patt…

Ironically enough, it's always been the same people who snap about being bothered with questions, who are the first to go running for help when they are confused by something outside their domain of expertise.

That's been my experience at least. My very first job was especially bad. There was an entire culture built up where tech leads and senior engineers would never answer chats/emails sent by junior engineers. If you really needed a clarification, you had to hunt them down in their cube, where if you're lucky, they would answer your question without any condescension. At my very first performance review, I was even dinged for "asking too many questions."

At the time, I thought there was something wrong with me. Looking back, the reason why I had to ask so many questions was because there was zero documentation, the code base was horrific, and we were using stone age tooling. My only regret is that I hadn't left even earlier than I did.

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#49

Post by taeric »

tubs wrote: post #6

Until the more senior member quits because they are wasting the vast majority of their time answering questions that could have been answered by just trying for more than 30seconds after hitting an obstacle...

The correct answer isn't always the end result. Instead, make your answer where you sit with them on the "try" for that thirty seconds.

Obviously, you could have someone that will always ask and not try. My gut, though, is that spending that thirty seconds just a couple of times will save you hours of future work.

Re: How to be a wizard programmer

#50

Post by rasz_pl »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #11
tubs wrote: post #6

Until the more senior member quits because they are wasting the vast majority of their time answering questions that could have been answered by just trying for more than 30seconds after hitting an obstacle...

You're demonstrating why people become afraid to ask questions, and stop doing so even when they should. I'd much rather have someone ask when they get stuck, or even if they're kinda stuck. If someone happens to ask me a question that's easily found via poking around a bit more, I'll show them how they could have found the answer, and then they'll have learned two things: the thing they wanted to know and a new patt…

>then they'll have learned two things

I used to do that. What would happen is people learn they _dont need_ to poke, because this sucker has all the answers on a platter, so why bother.

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