Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 73 posts

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#41

Post by card_zero »

TillE wrote: post #19
MrVandemar wrote: post #8

"Programming on and off" sounds like you haven't approached the field in a structured way. You can learn and accomplish a great deal that way, but it also means you have some gaps. Ever implemented a linked list? Compared sorting algorithm efficiency? Doing a course in computer science will probably give you a better grounding. Also, people have niches. I'm guessing you're knowledgeable in your particular niche, and…

I have no idea if this applies to the OP, but I see a ton of people in game development communities who just jump in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff. It's particularly terrifying when they're trying to use C++ that way. If you want to take this stuff seriously, absolutely study computer science, and a little computer engineering as well. Wh…

I question why "terrifying" applies given that they're writing games.

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#44

Post by lanthade »

blitzed wrote: post #30

[dead]

Reminds me of my first time reading the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook when I was just getting into the live sound field. Read it again a year later after a lot of time in the trenches and the things that were gibberish at first now made complete sense.

To the OP, if you find something interesting but it's above your head dig in and you'll learn. Otherwise just smile and nod. I'm by no means a software engineer though I can (and do) write code to get various jobs done. Lots of stuff here is interesting to me but lots also is of no interest and/or way above my pay grade. I'm happy to be surrounded by stuff that has the potential to challenge me to grow.

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#45

Post by UtopiaPunk »

TillE wrote: post #19
MrVandemar wrote: post #8

"Programming on and off" sounds like you haven't approached the field in a structured way. You can learn and accomplish a great deal that way, but it also means you have some gaps. Ever implemented a linked list? Compared sorting algorithm efficiency? Doing a course in computer science will probably give you a better grounding. Also, people have niches. I'm guessing you're knowledgeable in your particular niche, and…

I have no idea if this applies to the OP, but I see a ton of people in game development communities who just jump in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff. It's particularly terrifying when they're trying to use C++ that way. If you want to take this stuff seriously, absolutely study computer science, and a little computer engineering as well. Wh…

Game development is a lot more than programming. If someone is just making projects on their own, it really doesn't matter much if the code is "good" or not. You just gotta have a game that works.

If you want to get hired as programmer in AAA game development, then your job role starts to become more specialized as you move up, but that's true in a lot of environments. And jobs for AAA game development are admittedly competitive, so the more value your bring, the more likely you are to be hired. Sometimes that means being an uber elite coding ninja, but it also might mean that you are able to wear a lot of different hats, including skills that aren't programming.

Anyway, I just want to say that jumping "in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff" is awesome, actually, especially if your end goal is making games itself. Just do it!

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#46

Post by bbwbsb »

Ignorance is the natural human state, and no one should feel ashamed of it. Everyone is ignorant of more things than they are not ignorant of.

Often feeling dumb/not understanding is just a product of not having the prerequisites for something. Basically all ideas and fields are accessible to people of modest intelligence with sufficient effort (and ability to pick one thing and stick with it). The ones that are not fill with charlatans. It can be boring to pay attention to technical details. There is no moral superiority in doing so.

When I've taught people who thought themselves to be dumb, I found that the negative self talk about being dumb was often rooted in either a feeling of guilt/badness or obligation, and the label of dumb solved the unhealthy feeling: "I'm just dumb, nothing I can do". This is even more pronounced in cases where there is some resource the person needs that they don't have, where trying harder causes worse performance, or where they feel obligated to because they think like their preferred activity is less valuable/lower status.

Realistically, it is necessary to pick how to spend your time, and math and programming without compensation are frankly a waste of time (if you are not enjoying it, finding fulfillment). As Satre said, we are condemned to be free - to chose what we specialize in, and what we skip, with no one to give us the correct choice.

If there are N things you could do, every time you do something, there are N-1 things you are not doing in that moment, which are way more than you will ever do.

I relate to the feeling. For me 'ex falso quod libet' - the idea mixing up truth and falsity once with collapse the foundation of everything I know is worse than any scary movie. The fear I'll forget faster than I learn, or that I'll never really understand. The yearning to understand the world, to know and not doubt.

If you are able to see some highly technical post you don't understand and then sleep soundly, you far wiser than I.

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#47

Post by vector_spaces »

I felt that way for the first year or two when I was first learning to code on here

A lot of the stuff written here deploys in-jokes, memes, jargon/shibboleths of various tech subcultures:

1. (Coastal) startups. Joining a YC startup and being surrounded by startup folks probably was the biggest factor in helping me to understand stuff here. At my first job, I picked up a broad mix of SV tribal knowledge, technical skills, stuff about finance & investing, Agile and scrum and kanban and standups, stats knowledge, + the cool-kid tech products used by this subculture ("what? you got paid with paychex? uhm. never heard of it. here we use gusto") -- it was essentially an immersion course in 70% of the stuff you see on the front page of this site

2. Free-software types. When I taught myself to code, I just stuck with Linux since I couldn't afford a macbook back then. I participated in various open source projects and learned emacs, which made a lot more stuff on here understandable (like I started understanding acronyms like rms and esr, trivia about weird Linux/Unix shit I've had to debug like pulseaudio and systemd and CUPS, secret longstanding wars among various factions within this subculture)

3. Academics. I went back to school and started doing research, and spent time learning about the weird CS-theory stuff that I find beautiful like abstract interpretation and programming language theory and functional programming. My research area is far away from that stuff, but having some awareness of it helps me recognize the topics when they pop up here

Also, keep in mind that the content on this site also tends to reflect specific technologies and practices that are common within these cultures. There's a definite skew towards web and data oriented tech, so it makes sense that as a game dev, much of it wouldn't be comprehensible since you don't have context for it.

It's also easy to forget if you mostly just get your tech news from this site, but most developers tend to work on Windows targeting Windows-oriented stacks (i.e. Azure, on-prem Windows servers, ASP.NET Core, Power BI, SQL Server, etc) rather than macbooks -- so I suspect much of what you see on the front page of this site that is tech related is foreign to most developers. In any case, I wouldn't feel too bad, and certainly not dumb for it

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#48

Post by Pomfers »

No one understands everything here. When it comes to software development, everyone I know says they're only really knowledgeable about what they work on. Most other areas, they'll have at best some passing knowledge of. It's like how doctors become specialists in just one part of the human body. There's maybe 5 people in the world are are a qualified dermatologist, endocrinologist, neurologist, and cardiologist at the same time. It's the same thing with engineers.

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#49

Post by hello_computer »

According to the internet, Al Einstein once wrote or said, “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” Whether he said it or not, it is true. To my dismay, I understand a lot of what is being posted here, and I can assure you that at least half of the part I understand is confusion and dead-ends from the outset. You may say, "Yeah, but so-and-so released such-and-such software and made millions!" So what? Having a hit doesn't make a man infallible. People in this scene who are legit don't spend much time here. They are either too busy getting shit done, or too busy enjoying early retirement.

Re: Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

#50

Post by blooalien »

If you want to "lurk" somewhere to learn about game development, download you a copy of the free (and open source) Godot game engine and lurk in one of their discussion / live chat channels on Discord or Telegram. Always folks there pointing out worthwhile tips, tricks, and beginner through expert level knowledge about the topic.
Post reply on HN