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On Coding, Ego and Attention

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Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#51

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

xouse wrote: post #40
moksly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about working on yourself is that it’s actually work. Reading an article, or a book on behaviour, self-improvement and what else doesn’t actually change you any more than reading Harry Potter does. It’s the years of applying Zen Buddhism, scheduling your chores or staring at the mirror telling yourself you’re a great person that changes you. I know because I recently recorded from a major depression and anx…

The way I look at it, information is a force multiplier on action. If there's no action then 50 times zero is still zero.

But then if there’s no information, zero times 50 is still zero.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#52

Post by webmaven »

lostmyoldone wrote: post #13

Big tired after an intense day, and I haven't really sat down and digested the article, but it seems close enough that I think my - admittedly primitive - tip can be of relevance. If you get stuck, you tell yourself in whatever way you want, and honestly, some version of the following: "I don't understand this thing that is happening, but I know there is a cause. It does not happen without cause." Honestly, it's a bi…

> I started trying this out after puzzling about why it's unreasonably common to figure out the answer to something only moments after you get up from your desk to go ask someone else for help, even when you might have worked with it for hours. It had to have a reason, although I don't know exactly what it is!

Well you've heard the advice on looking at a problem from a different point of view, right? Usually this is intended in the sense of changing the context or reframing the problem, and it works, but takes effort because we all have our default go-to mental models. But it turns out that changing the mode of your thinking (eg. visual vs. kinesthetic, etc.) is just as helpful, and the act of trying to phrase the problem verbally is usually just different enough from just thinking about it (I believe even if you are mostly a verbal thinker) to do the same trick.

Hence "rubber duck debugging" where you solve the problem by describing it to a rubber duck rather than another human.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#53

Post by mettamage »

abvdasker wrote: post #35

In my experience, the best way to insulate yourself from the pangs of imposter syndrome and unproductive self-doubt is with experience of past successes. Early in my software engineering career I would constantly and painfully wonder if I was actually capable of fixing a certain bug or solving a new or difficult problem. But then after working hard on a solution, 99% of the time it would work out. After going through…

> I still sometimes panic when initially faced with a very difficult programming problem, but I can put those fears to rest much more easily by saying, "ok, I've solved hard problems before. I may not know how to solve this particular problem yet, but I feel confident that I will be able to figure it out just like I did in the past with difficult problems X, Y and Z."

The following this just my experience, but it's a bit of an odd one! So I thought I'd share for fun :)

I have this too and I only have 1 year of work experience.

What helped for me doing a course where I needed to know:

- C

- X86

beforehand.

The course was about analyzing binaries and malware. I didn't know any C and almost no x86. I did the course as a challenge, but it to date has been the most difficult programming challenge of my life. Teaching yourself 2 prerequisites while following a normal course load at the same time, while feeling insecure and have a strong suspicion to not be intelligent enough was tough, for me.

I've worked at 3 companies in that little 1 year of experience (2 times as a freelancer) and it hasn't come close yet. I'm hoping where it finally gets tougher, but I've heard from people who actually are experienced full-stack devs for 4+ years that that course was way harder than anything they have ever done.

So long story short: do super hard courses. If they're not the hardest courses of your life, then it isn't hard enough.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#54

Post by andrewzah »

jwilber wrote: post #28
greyvmatter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming isn't necessarily the best way to get better at programming, there are a bunch of related skills that also need to be improved. Thinking about how you program and behave as a human will unlock many doors

Programming is certainly the best way to get better at programming. Some other things may help improve your ability to program, but there is no substitute for the act itself.

No.

Programming -with intent- is the best way to get better.

If I code up a 10k LOC main.cpp with stringly typed data structures, I'm not really better at programming, am I?

It's like that saying: practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.

Programming is not literally just typing, as we all know, nor is it simply getting a Thing to compile. A lot of it is educating oneself on different types of data structures, algorithms, math, architectural practices, and so on. Expanding our workbench of tools, as it were.

And -then- putting that into practice when actually programming.

I'm not good at Rust merely because I've worked with Rust a lot; I've also read books on Rust, and I've read many web articles on Rust (found from Rust Weekly) and various libraries, etc.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#55

Post by moreaccountspls »

webmaven wrote: post #39
moreaccountspls wrote: post #27

"This is ego distraction. It’s about putting off uncertainty till later to buy temporary relief. To protect our ego from a perceived threat. Things like hard problems, the possibility of failing publicly, or negative feedback all become threats when they’re linked to my identity." I disagree with this [at least for me personally]. Being a good programmer is just straight up not something that's part of my identity. T…

> It's same with mastering any skill. Learning to play guitar, becoming an Olympic athlete, whatever. You can't Zen Buddhism your way out of the fact that you're going to spending years and years practicing until your fingers bleed, or until you're completely exhausted, etc. The point of the article isn't that there is a shortcut around having to put in the time, it is that ego sabotages your efforts to put in the ti…

>it is that ego sabotages your efforts to put in the time

Sure, but what I'm saying that that statement is almost meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Is not letting your ego get in the way a necessary part of getting to mastery? Absolutely. But no matter how much you change your thought process, or analyze the problem, you still need to eat the proverbial whale.

Think of all the people who've ever played basketball and have had any aspirations of joining the NBA. For the vast, vast majority of them, they just were never going to be good enough. They didn't have the talent. It didn't matter how much they practiced, how much they got their ego out of the way, how badly they wanted it. Only about 3,000 people have ever played in the NBA.

Now, I'm not saying you need to be in the NBA to be a "successful" basketball player, or whatever you want to call the equivalent of that for programming. What I'm saying is that everyone has ceilings for how good they can become at something. Maybe on the relative scale, the best you can ever be is a pretty good programmer, and that's it. No shame in that!

After all, part of Zen Budhism is accepting who you are and your limitations.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#56

Post by verall »

rubicon33 wrote: post #41

I read this, and I have also read "The Practicing Mind" which is exactly what this post is about. My issue isn't in understanding the premise. It all makes sense, and I get a sense of "ah hah!" every time I read it (I've read it twice). The issue for me is that I really struggle to turn this theory in to effective practice. Each time after reading "The Practicing Mind" I have tried to cognitively remind myself whenev…

I'm guessing that you've already heard this from like 10 people, but have you experimented with a lower dose or other ADD meds? I have heard that methylphenidate and vyvanse have weaker effects on mood while still helping calm down distractions. Their effect is bit less noticeable in general.

As always ymmv, and good luck :)

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#57

Post by sild »

mettamage wrote: post #53
abvdasker wrote: post #35

In my experience, the best way to insulate yourself from the pangs of imposter syndrome and unproductive self-doubt is with experience of past successes. Early in my software engineering career I would constantly and painfully wonder if I was actually capable of fixing a certain bug or solving a new or difficult problem. But then after working hard on a solution, 99% of the time it would work out. After going through…

> I still sometimes panic when initially faced with a very difficult programming problem, but I can put those fears to rest much more easily by saying, "ok, I've solved hard problems before. I may not know how to solve this particular problem yet, but I feel confident that I will be able to figure it out just like I did in the past with difficult problems X, Y and Z." The following this just my experience, but it's a…

Would you mind sharing which course you took please? It sounds very interesting.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#58

Post by iambrj »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #25
halfcreative wrote: post #14

I feel like for me, reading and writing articles like this are a major source of distractions. I often find myself reading articles like this, lessons of self-improvement and tips of motivation and ways to be a better programmer, instead of doing what actually makes me a better programmer (actually programming). To extend upon the article, I feel like one of the easiest distractions from self improvement is constantl…

Once you've read enough philosophy and psychology (both academic and pop), articles like this start becoming repetitive. You realize Jean Beaudrillard was right, and in the post-modern world there truly is nothing new under the sun, everything is just a variation of a variation of a variation of something that came before. A better use of your (professional development) time is thinking about and writing actual code.

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” - Alfred North Whitehead

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#59

Post by eikenberry »

Did anyone else find the "Relative Distance" section seeming wrong. Not the harvard-vs-random school thing but the conclusion they draw, that you perform relative to your standing. How are students aware of their positions? Do some schools post rankings or something? When I was in school you're standing/grades were private and no one knew another students standing (aside from the obvious, people failing out and such).

If I was guessing at a cause, I'd put it more on the teachers/school. That they have it in their mind that there should be a range of performance in the students and they enforce that idea. Eg. if everyone gets an A in their course they start making it harder until they get the distribution they expect.

Re: On Coding, Ego and Attention

#60

Post by moreaccountspls »

mtalantikite wrote: post #36
moreaccountspls wrote: post #27

"This is ego distraction. It’s about putting off uncertainty till later to buy temporary relief. To protect our ego from a perceived threat. Things like hard problems, the possibility of failing publicly, or negative feedback all become threats when they’re linked to my identity." I disagree with this [at least for me personally]. Being a good programmer is just straight up not something that's part of my identity. T…

> You can't Zen Buddhism your way out of the fact that you're going to spending years and years practicing until your fingers bleed, or until you're completely exhausted, etc. Many Zen Buddhists know how long and hard practice for mastery is. Practicing meditation is in many ways skill acquisition as well, which is why it is called a practice. You’ll of course be spending years and years practicing programming, and t…

> You’ll of course be spending years and years practicing programming

You can't just 'of course' this! I mean, you can, but that's the whole point. If you, or anyone reading this enough cares enough about being a great programmer, you wouldn't be on this site in the first place. Which is fine, I enjoy wasting time on here as much as anyone. But the people who are actually really good at programming? They're not reading blogs about ego. They're not writing blogs about ego. They're programming.

Look at what Fabrice Bellard has accomplished in the last 20 or so years: https://bellard.org/ . QEMU, FFMPEG. I will never even be close to the level that he is. I'm much closer in relative skill to the person who just wrote their first hello world yesterday, and I've been programming for 15 years or so. And that's totally fine with me. Programming is not my only interest in life.

For the blog author, it seems that they're searching for a reason that they're not as good at programming as they think should be. I mean, he's already a Staff Engineer at Circle CI. He's not someone who's been programming for a year. It's very possible that's he pretty close to being as good as he'll ever be. Sure, he'll keep improving, but he'll never be Fabrice Bellard. If he was, he already would be and wouldn't be writing a blog about why he's not.

So what I would say to him is: that's fine! Life is not just programming. "The Second Truth is that this suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire." You wrote an article about how your ego gets in the way of you becoming a better programmer, but its your ego that makes you want to be a better programmer in the first place!

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