Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#51

Post by jackblemming » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 6:50 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45

silisili wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that this has become the norm. Sometimes, even most of the time, tight clean code and proper data structures and clean smart queries are vital for both cost and performance reasons. That smart(experienced) people think up how to approach a problem and throw it over the wall to the juniors makes me sad, even if it has become somewhat commonplace. I was actually offered a position doing exactly that for a rather…

Thank you. Agreed completely I see software as a form of literacy, and it both amuses and saddens me to hear things like "I used to write code, but since I moved to management I have stopped" We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped" It seems sad to note that this "move to management" is now also becoming the "move to senior engineering". This indica…

“Code is a liability” “Don’t solve problems with code that can be solved in other ways” “Code is grunt work, I’m an architect” “Projects fail from people problems, not technical problems”

There’s truth to all of these, and yet the people who repeat them dogmatically are often programmers or managers with ultra inflated titles who write blog posts or emails all day ;)

They probably didn’t even like programming and saw it as a fast track to management.

I’ll take the real programmers who get stuff done, thanks.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#52

Post by brunooliv » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 6:59 AM UTC

One more thing not in the article is that sometimes, leadership or whoever is responsible for the roadmap, can FAIL to do their due diligence and you can end up a few months working on something meant to be "a great product" just to realize after it ships, that the customer just isn't buying it.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#53

Post by watwut » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

> The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the problem.

This sounds more like one person doing it all rather then "being developer".

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#54

Post by watwut » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

jseban wrote: post #50

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Agreed completely I see software as a form of literacy, and it both amuses and saddens me to hear things like "I used to write code, but since I moved to management I have stopped" We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped" It seems sad to note that this "move to management" is now also becoming the "move to senior engineering". This indica…

I don't understand this, this is the way every hierarchy work, and how every single job/management role is functioning. It's to solve the problem of communication overhead growing exponentially with larger groups of people. Why does this make you sad? And is it better to have a dysfunctional organisation where people float in and out of poorly defined roles and everyone tries to do everything? Does that really make y…

It is sad, because the hierarchy is not solving that problem, instead the problem is moving down the hierarchy.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#55

Post by ge96 » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:06 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #25

I deployed by ssh-ing into a server and running git pull. That sounds wonderful. Let's do that again.

I am curious at what scale do you justify using containers.

I was just messing around in AWS making a cluster left it over night (few days), I had a $10 bill. Which is fine but yeah, in contrast my person apps/sites have been running on a $5/mo VPS.

Anyway it's still cool to know/eventually use this somewhere but I'm concerned how you keep it fresh if you don't personally use it.

edit: I left it on longer than that (90+hrs) but yeah, other one was EC2 NAT gateway hours

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#56

Post by watwut » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:08 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #16

jehlakj wrote: post #9

For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof. Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it. Unfortuna…

I blame this tendency to overabstract on the emphasis on top-down design / teaching methods. Beginners are taught to abstract whenever possible, and aren't taught when to stop. They don't see the reason behind it, and instead add abstractions dogmatically, dramatically increasing complexity in the process. When abstraction is used well it definitely decreases effort and increases flexibility, but all too often it's o…

I dont know ... way more common problem I see is unwillingness to abstract. Spaghettis are way more frequent than massive abstractions. Now the popular thing is move toward functional-like style, which leads to one stream of flow that is quite difficult to decipher.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#57

Post by bilekas » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:09 AM UTC

tornato7 wrote: post #23

I still reminisce about the first big project I ever built. As an intern I was told high level what to do and given two years alone in a room working eight hours a day to figure out how to build it, zero guidance from anyone. I didn’t really have any concept of importing libraries or using open source software, so literally every part of this huge and complex application was custom-written by me. All UI elements were…

This seems to be the extreme opposite though of other posts with badly structured responsibilities. As a senior I will always rely on having a set of eyes or other opinions and viewpoints. Its invaluable!

I wonder if you went back to the source code now would you feel the same about its brilliance! :)

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#58

Post by kqr » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #46

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Agreed completely I see software as a form of literacy, and it both amuses and saddens me to hear things like "I used to write code, but since I moved to management I have stopped" We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped" It seems sad to note that this "move to management" is now also becoming the "move to senior engineering". This indica…

I'd argue more people severely overestimate the need of communication quantity and management roles/responsibilities have inflated everything as a result. Worse, people who want to primarily talk are going to advocate for others to talk more. Regardless, whoever brings up what GP does is frequently bombarded with the old "communication important" or "soft skills matter" spiel in an attempt to validate the explosion o…

Many big modern organisations are built by bureaucrats whose specialisation it is to create more bureaucracy. Thus they spend a lot of time thinking up ways to measure the work performed from various angles, create reports for their superiors, and find other ways to ride on the work of others to earn their salary instead of doing actual work. This propagates downward and soon everyone (but perhaps the most junior contributors) is working in politics about meta-work, rather than doing the actual work.

It takes rebel managers to go "no, I won't participate in this seventh time allocation study" and instead do actual work to break the cycle.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#59

Post by feoren » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:23 AM UTC

oconnor663 wrote: post #5

> Things like indendetation, formatting, naming – god forbid you did it differently than I would have. I agree with chilling out about this when it's a human making the changes...except now that we have autoformatters we can actually be more pedantic about this than ever before :) If the autoformatter doesn't agree with what you wrote, bam, red CI. > Everyone writes tests A big thing I've learned over the years is th…

Much of the time, once my code is the way I want, there's almost nothing to test. Any tests I write would just be an echo of the implementation itself. I think if you're using your static type system to its fullest and writing clean, "obviously correct" code, 80% of your tests are simply not necessary at all. It goes:

- Bad code: almost no tests.

- Good code: lots and lots of tests.

- Great code: almost no tests.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#60

Post by punnerud » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:24 AM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #4

The truth I had to unlearn is that coding is a solitary activity, and that coding is the most important part of a senior software engineer’s job. Now I rarely have the chance to code for a few hours straight because if I have enough information to write code then all that’s left is the easy part. The hard part is coordinating, defining the problem, planning for the future, and communicating the current status of the…

I have switched on that, and figured out that there is more benefits of coding early than later:

- Users can give feedback ( theoretical exercises is hard for users that’s not technical)

- Get ownership over the product

-Easier to learn “what you don’t know that you don’t know” when you can iterate

-You have do so more development up front, but I believe you save it in the long run

Took me almost 10years to have enough examples that coding vs no-code activities should not be 20/80 but 80/20.