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Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

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Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#571

Post by lamontcg »

mrfox321 wrote: post #285
lamontcg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep looking for a reason to write software using a proper DI container framework. In talking to Java devs most of them just mention injecting mocks for your database. You don't really need a full DI container for that you could use a service locator instead or some even lighter DI pattern. If you have that particular hammer though and know how to use it, then it becomes easy to achieve and use config to inject you…

At my bigco, there's no service-level DI (c++) Just vanilla C++ classes, and virtual interfaces if we need to mock things for unit tests. No automatic wiring of the hierarchy.

I'm thinking more like programmers working at the IRS or SSI or something like that, where you have million line long decades old codebases. Not anything that Google or Amazon would write. Applying a DI framework right from the start may actually be a best practice--that allows the codebase to evolve under the next 10 years of contract programmers--instead of just being the YAGNI that it would to anyone in the tech sector.

Although you might say that microservices are like a distributed DI framework that would let you rewrite or mock components provided that the rewrite/mock adheres to the API framework (curiously, I've actually seen that used in tests with a quick and dirty in-memory sequential unauthenticated server used for testing clients where the server passed the same API test suite as the real server).

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#572

Post by Baeocystin »

faddypaddy34 wrote: post #409
alphydan wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better question to ask yourself (you the white guy), is would you join a group [insert som hobby like hiking] composed 100% of Cholitas. If yes, are you sure? if not, why not? *Not singling out Cholitas, but it's a group that may feel "other" to you.

The better question is would that group let a lone white guy join?

In my experience of being that 'lone white guy' more often than not, the amount of general acceptance I get in any group where I've been the odd man out has been great. Life is very different offline.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#574

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

Here's a concept I still don't get, even after multiple attempts: quaternions!

I mean I get what they are and how they are used and could do operations with them by following the rules. But... I still don't really understand them.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#575

Post by abdullahkhalids »

tootie wrote: post #413
jahnu wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding #3, the following David Graeber quote always stuck with me: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

Sapiens by Harari covers this extensively. So much of human development is our ability to ascribe fictive boundaries and definitions to things. Rules, authorities, myths, money, culture, countries, companies. What are any of them? They're all made up. We could just stop believing in all of them tomorrow.

I often see Harari and Graeber's being discussed at the same time, and I am always surprised.

Harari write pop sci, a grand narrative with many liberties with both history and science.

Graeber's books are heavily referenced pieces of work. Debt: The first 5000 years ends at 73% on my Kindle, because the remaining 27% of the book (144/534 pages) is references and footnotes.

Their books are not in the same intellectual category.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#576

Post by JackFr »

tootie wrote: post #413
jahnu wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding #3, the following David Graeber quote always stuck with me: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

Sapiens by Harari covers this extensively. So much of human development is our ability to ascribe fictive boundaries and definitions to things. Rules, authorities, myths, money, culture, countries, companies. What are any of them? They're all made up. We could just stop believing in all of them tomorrow.

But it’s all fictive boundaries. Don’t stop at countries and companies -nothing exists until it’s named.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#577

Post by kuschku »

satvikpendem wrote: post #399
thyrox wrote: post #237

The power of follow ups (especially in sales) One thing which held me back for a very long time was not following up with people who didn't show much interest initially. I wasted so many good leads thinking it is impolite to follow up with people after contacting them once. My whole life changed once I understood the power of follow ups and understanding that most people are so busy that it takes at least 6 reminders…

Agreed. When I was doing sales, I would follow up with people seven times before they replied. I used to feel bad until I realized that it worked, then I just automated that part and didn't think about it further, the leads once they replied were sent to my CRM where I could then set them up on a call or some other action.

I've automated the opposite: three unsolicited mails, and I automatically send the sender's entire company to spam and reply with a friendly request to stop. Three more, and I send an automated cease and desist, threatening legal action (with receipt confirmation requested). If it still continues after that, I actually involve lawyers.

Most people are only willing to do something after repeated attempts because they're polite and want you to stop. If a website asks you whether you want cookies, you only click "yes" because the alternative is more work. If you constantly pester and threaten someone long enough, you'll always get a "yes" at some point. But that's not consent, which is why it's illegal.

Even if lawyers cost money, if I'm just expensive and stressful enough to stop people like you from sending even a single unsolicited message, it's worth it. Time is the most valuable resource we humans have, you've got no right to waste other people's.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#578

Post by [deleted] »

alphydan wrote: post #347
ShredKazoo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this. I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California,…

The better question to ask yourself (you the white guy), is would you join a group [insert som hobby like hiking] composed 100% of Cholitas. If yes, are you sure? if not, why not? *Not singling out Cholitas, but it's a group that may feel "other" to you.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#579

Post by intelVISA »

zabzonk wrote: post #121
rolenthedeep wrote: post #110

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to fully grok what object oriented programming really means. It's one thing to have someone tell you what an object is, but it's another thing entirely to build a fully object oriented system. I remember what made it click: I was designing an animation system, which had a bunch of different interdependent moving parts. Once I started treating each part like an object and lett…

I've always found OO programming completely natural. n fact, it's the only kind of programming i've ever really done - create a structure with data members, and then create functions to work on that structure. you can (and should) do this in low-level languages such as C and assembler. Of course, if you want to go the whole polymorphic route, i'd suggest using something like c++, but the key ideas are really structur…

I really struggle outside OO paradigms as well. Having classes is such a useful framework to organize how data is stored, operated on, and moved around.

The hardest bit is knowing when to stop, aiming for the RAII sweetspot in C++ is the goal not AbstractBeanFactoryFactoryBuilder().

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#580

Post by intelVISA »

sureglymop wrote: post #181
zabzonk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found OO programming completely natural. n fact, it's the only kind of programming i've ever really done - create a structure with data members, and then create functions to work on that structure. you can (and should) do this in low-level languages such as C and assembler. Of course, if you want to go the whole polymorphic route, i'd suggest using something like c++, but the key ideas are really structur…

I've always had a hard time because I was thinking.. why would I carry the performance hit of instantiating objects for a bunch of stuff?

Could be wrong but, at least in C++, there's realistically no overhead to creating a trivial object that you wouldn't have by manually instantiating the variables anyway.

(Ignoring virtual stuff, lengthy constructors -- code run is code run but a raw object I think is by itself relatively harmless.)

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