I don't want to be a Real Programmer • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#51

Post by AznHisoka » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 2:09 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #47

chriswarbo wrote: post #18

It can be quite humbling to realise how large a particular field is, but it in no way makes one an 'imposter'. Pro tip: Those 'Real Programmers' who's JS experiments make your CSS look quaint aren't the world's best programmers . They're 'yet another frontend guy' to, for example, those who write Java servers. Guess what, those writing the Java servers are 'just end-users' as far as the JVM hackers are concerned. Lik…

lol, I know this problem. I wrote frameworks in PHP. But if someone on an interview would ask me to _code_ a solution to a simple problem in PHP on paper, I would probably fail.

Same here. Ask me to build a distributed web crawler with a Lucene-based search engine in Rails or whatever, I can code it in a month. Ask me to write a function that does something stupidly simple like converting a character to its ASCII equivalent, and I'll fail.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#52

Post by emersonrsantos » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 2:13 PM UTC

Mother I'm afraid

I do not want to malloc

Mother I'm afraid

I do not want to learn ARM

Mother, I am afraid

Waking up as Tron Guy

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#53

Post by rdudek » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 2:17 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #9

It seems the OP is trying to compare himself with the internet. We may hear about great achievements every day, but often those achievements while only taking minutes to read about took years or even decades of work and labor and were hardly achieved by one person alone. A Real Programmer is simply one who keeps on learning and doing. It is important to look back occasionally on what you have achieved, instead of wha…

Agreed. Reading it, looks like OP is reading too much into things yet fails to understand that each person he listed, those folks have spent years understanding and developing.

I fell into the same trap in the past. I started learning one thing, others were quick to comment on that I should learn this , this, this, and that as well! That caused me to spread out way too thin.

Programming can be overwhelming. Once you start digging into it, you'll then realize how much you don't really know and how much of it is out there.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#54

Post by BasDirks » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 2:21 PM UTC

OP is indeed not a real programmer. I guess that ends the conversation.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#55

Post by eropple » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 2:26 PM UTC

mattlutze wrote: post #37

amirmc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread seems to assume that there's a clear distinction between 'work' and 'not-work'. That isn't always the case as it's entirely possible that someone can love what they do to the extent that the lines completely blur (yes, that means those people could be exploited for that passion). An example of this is academia where every prof I've met 'works' insane hours but are completely (and happily) absorbed in thei…

The "work is their passion so it's not work" contrarian-ism is certainly not uncommon. But the argument against 80 hours is generally stress-induced health and productivity related. Given, if a person "loves what they do" then the stress part is probably lower, reducing the negative effects of the first. But the other argument is that, after so many hours, returns on effort are reduced, and I don't see a good argumen…

It gets a bit fuzzy when what you do for a job is also a fun hobby. I don't spend 40 hours a week hacking on code outside the office, but a productive week (working on my game or on another side project) might put me around 20.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#56

Post by likeclockwork » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC

I would usually never respond to so,ething like this. But.. "programming" isn't just one thing. "Real programming" is pretty specific to your own values as a programmer.

Look around, find out what interests you.. probably look away from the web, because the web is over-caffeinated with a lot of churn that resembles real progress. (Not that there isn't a lot of cool stuff on the web, just that it's a confusing ecosystem to measure yourself against.)

It's an art and a science.. it's not about 80 hour weeks and writing 10,000 libraries a year. Maybe there's something you have to contribute that you only work on for 5-10 hours a week and it takes you 2-3 years to complete it and it still blows our socks off.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#57

Post by unoti » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 3:00 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #47

chriswarbo wrote: post #18

It can be quite humbling to realise how large a particular field is, but it in no way makes one an 'imposter'. Pro tip: Those 'Real Programmers' who's JS experiments make your CSS look quaint aren't the world's best programmers . They're 'yet another frontend guy' to, for example, those who write Java servers. Guess what, those writing the Java servers are 'just end-users' as far as the JVM hackers are concerned. Lik…

lol, I know this problem. I wrote frameworks in PHP. But if someone on an interview would ask me to _code_ a solution to a simple problem in PHP on paper, I would probably fail.

Like everything else, that is a matter of practice. Coding on paper or whiteboards is a skill you can become proficient with. Get a whiteboard, get something like skienna's algorithm book, and start practicing coding problems there while talking through what you are doing. Start simple then go more complex. After enough hours, this will become second nature. I realize this is a silly exercise, but if want to work in the circus, sometimes you have to jump through hoops.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#58

Post by verybadalloc » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 3:10 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #15

The real issue is a guy who has been programming for 3 years is trying to compare himself to people who have programmed for 30. Practice makes perfect - if you've only been coding for 3 years, I can almost guarantee that you don't understand a big chunk of the code you use. Once you've been coding for awhile though, you really can get to a stage where you understand everything from the bottom up. At that point, creat…

I have a feeling that feeling satisfied with one's knowledge will also come with experience. I couldn't agree more on your second sentence though: not only will you learn a lot more, you will be able to hone your problem solving skills, which is what I wish to achieve now.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#59

Post by imsofuture » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 3:12 PM UTC

This 'Real Programmer' thing is a dumb strawman.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#60

Post by chriswarbo » Wed, Mar 19, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

CmonDev wrote: post #44

chriswarbo wrote: post #18

It can be quite humbling to realise how large a particular field is, but it in no way makes one an 'imposter'. Pro tip: Those 'Real Programmers' who's JS experiments make your CSS look quaint aren't the world's best programmers . They're 'yet another frontend guy' to, for example, those who write Java servers. Guess what, those writing the Java servers are 'just end-users' as far as the JVM hackers are concerned. Lik…

A sufficiently high-level static-typed language is similar to Math. Are mathematicians 'just end-users' to someone? In your world of abstractions you are the god.

Maths is a noble pursuit that's been around for millenia. The greatest achievement that a programmer can aspire to is writing/improving/optimising the libraries (linear algebra solvers, numerical routines, etc.) which enable Mathematical advances.

On the other hand, Mathematicians are just those people who write blog posts which tell the Web designers which type of graphs to use in the analytics section of their app, once all of the real work has been done.

Everything is relative.