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You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

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Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but internally, insecure people can be reached (not easy) How? Any advice?

Well, I have found that finding things in common with people is usually a great segue into improving relationships. Learning more about them, also helps a lot. Find the things they care about. It can be surprising. I have learned to make the first move, myself. It doesn’t work, if I insist on them doing it. Also, I need to accept their value system. If they truly have values that I can’t deal with, I usually “compart…

> Also, I need to accept their value system. If they truly have values that I can’t deal with, I usually “compartmentalize” things, so I don’t deal with them, in those areas.

It feels like working with all sorts of people (and sometimes working around them) is an important skill that’s not usually focused on enough, which is how you get people that might be brilliant but also are really hard to work together with.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#412

Hard to disagree. I can usually tell what type of type of experience devs have by the snarky, dismissive responses I've gotten on various internet forums over the last two decades. e.g. "Oh but you would never have this problem if you performed proper code review" - Random_Rockstar_Dev_254 However not all legacy projects are bad to work on. If they're decently developed, then often you'll find that most of the pain i…

Maturity and humility are key factors in being a senior developer. Those who lack humility will often cry about how its not their code that's messed up, delaying actual bugfixes and wasting developer hours, or worse producing a toxic work culture.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#413
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > very arrogant > a defensive shell around personal insecurity. could just be despair and honesty. I was reading about the kindle os here and wonder how many people are facing giant hairballs in their professional life. > the Kindle’s OS is a mess of Java, Javascript, Lua, Native and React Native code. ... > The Kindle runs stripped down Linux with a React Native frontend along with Java backend applications. https…

From your post: > The Kindle runs stripped down Linux with a React Native frontend along with Java backend applications. Honest question: what exactly is wrong with this setup? There's the OS, there are services and user land apps written in java and misc native code, and from the link there's a single component where Lua was used as bridge code. The GUI is React Native, which is just a framework to simplify the desi…

It isn't using their preferred stack.

Preferred stack: The one they know.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for the misunderstanding. Sounds interesting, but saying you can't prove it, and nobody will believe it is a tough sell. I guess I find it hard to believe like others, but you are talking in very abstract terms, and not being able to (or refusing to) give any kind of details sounds like you are trolling or don't realize that your solution does only work for what you work on. I'd say I could be proven wrong,…

No need to apologize. I assure you I'm not trolling. Yeah I am talking in abstract terms because I don't really want to get into a debate on the topic. The reason is because any design style in this area is basically unprovable and leads to endless debates. There's no point. I do have something that explains my pattern and serves as support for it. But it's no proof because such a thing isn't really provable. Anyway…

Those are pretty well known FP oriented guidelines that many developers here on HN are familiar with. I don't think that your fear of not being believed is warranted.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#415
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to apologize. I assure you I'm not trolling. Yeah I am talking in abstract terms because I don't really want to get into a debate on the topic. The reason is because any design style in this area is basically unprovable and leads to endless debates. There's no point. I do have something that explains my pattern and serves as support for it. But it's no proof because such a thing isn't really provable. Anyway…

Those are pretty well known FP oriented guidelines that many developers here on HN are familiar with. I don't think that your fear of not being believed is warranted.

HN is mostly not hardcore fp programmers. There’s a good amount of fp programmers but they are not the majority. Plenty of go and c++ lovers here and people who don’t understand the guidelines above.

The point is I don’t want to argue about it with someone who doesn’t get it.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot grok this. Are you saying that “juniors with tons of experience are very common?” Do you mean that there are seniors with a lack of experience? I believe yes I was also making that same point. Ageism in the industry also encourages seniors to appear to be plugged in with the newest shiniest thing, so we kind of do it to ourselves with our hiring practices. We need to divorce seniority from talent.

“Juniors with tons of experience are common” means that people with many years of experience who are nonetheless at the level of a junior engineer are common. This phrase is divorcing seniority from talent, albeit perhaps not in the way experienced engineers might prefer.

Seniority from skill, most likely, talent wouldn't change over time

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is usually doable until it's DEWS/SAGE radar code from the 50's. That's what NASA started with and the last guy died in the 90s. We got every other subsystem off the mainframe, but had to keep it around for the radar stuff until 2004 or so.

I sense an interesting story. Details please ;-)

https://www.baen.com/rip_moc

1990: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/MCC%20Development%2...

Pirates: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/the-nasa-pirates-that-transformed...

Head Pirate: https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist...

WEX/Display builder/etc: Even when I was there my young peers weren't too keen on legacy/back-end understanding. GUIs were the cool thing. I worked on something that touched many legacy subsystems so got to work with a lot of "dinosaurs" (what the Pirates called them).

MCC testing was all AM shift, pirates/youts up front, retired controllers in the back. Test MOC took 30 minutes to recycle. I always sat in back if they'd let me.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of younger developers like to come into a new project and slap on the latest frameworks or coding practices that they've picked up recently, without acknowledging that breaking the standards of the project lead to higher mental load to maintain that code over the long term. Using the latest framework improves their future job prospects. Whatever company they work for will lay them off in a split second and wo…

Personal pride? I flat out don't respect a developer who refuses to do anything right because of nebulous hatred of any and all employers. No they don't care about you, no that isn't a good reason to go full apathetic.

It's not hatred but indifference towards the employer. That indifference is mutual. I'm not saying that I agree with it, but I get it.
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