My biggest regret as a programmer: not sitting in correct posture for 30 years :/
On the bright side: I'm correcting this now, and I really feel like a different person.
My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
61–70 of 634 posts
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#62I have been working as a programmer for 8 years. I agree with him. It is exciting to learn new things and implement elegant code but if the bottomline is money, my experience is that you have to get into leadership roles.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The roads are equally travelled; Frost says that at the beginning of the poem. Life is a process of narrowing possibilities, and looking back at a particular decision doesn't have a lot of meaning. But everyone get it wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10071717
I guess we all have our own takeaways. What in your view is meant by the last lines? > I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
There's a contingent of people who believe that Robert Frost was lamenting the fact that he took the road less traveled by, and had a worse experience. There's a good reason why certain roads are more traveled, and by not going the common path, his life was much harder.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#64Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly what ddorian43 said. My particular friends (and me of old) are located in Slovenia, clients are in San Francisco. You can have a decent life in Slovenia for $20k/year. You can easily get a gig in San Francisco for $60k/year. Probably even easier for $100k/year because of the whole signaling thing. I wasn't able to save as much as my friends are because of lifestyle inflation, but I sure had a lot of fun. My m…
$48k/y gig for US client converts in less than 2000 eur/month net with some creative book-keeping. Rent and utilities in Ljubljana cost us about 800 eur. What is left is maybe enough for one person, who will never own any property. $20k/y is close to a welfare level in Slovenia, except maybe in countryside.
> less than 2000 eur/month
Sure, you'll always be renting, but this is still significantly better than working for most local companies.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#66Ouch, that was a sad post. "Yes, and actually we have two ladders of advancement here - you can deepen your technical expertise and go up the technical ladder if that is your thing", an enthusiastic recruiter tells you. But when you reach the bifurcation point, the management path seems fairly clear - just try and get more people under you and you will be ok, but the technical path is murky as hell. I'd argue that this third path (becoming a genuine world-class expert as opposed to staying "just" a programmer or going into management) is the hardest. Not in the least part because at most places real technical challenges are scarce (and management challenges are in abundance). I would love to hear some thoughts on how to pull it off.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#67He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…
At the risk of being "that guy", this actually misses the point of the poem.
Quoting:
"Though as for that the passing there/Had worn them really about the same/And both that morning equally lay"
The poem states that the two roads are basically the same.
Further points of interest...
"I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference."
The author knows his own folly: that he'll look back and say it was an important choice, that he picked the path that was more special. When of course in fact he did no such thing. It's a poem about how people self-aggrandise and think their choices more important and better than they are.
Of course, no-one ever actually reads anything other than the last two lines, so the point of the poem ends up being missed. Which is ironic, given the actual message.
Fun fact: the poem was written with Edward Thomas, a good friend of Frost's, in mind. Frost said of Thomas:
"No matter which road you take, you'll always sigh, and wish you'd taken another."
Thomas was invariably lamenting how he should have taken the other option in any case where there were two things to choose. Which sheds a little light on the humour in the poem.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#68My biggest regret is not shipping more.
Sometimes the cause of that is management, and I long to be on that side defining the missing specs, building out the absent project plans, speaking to customers, allocating resource, championing it all and pushing it forward. At those times I despise being a programmer because being a programmer isn't enough to get product shipped.
Other times (but it feels less frequently) the cause is the programmer. And we all know well enough how frustrating it can be to watch someone not do what you think is easy, and how quickly we want to stop managing, stop designing, stop everything and just code our way out of whatever mess a project is in. A sole programmer is not usually enough though, and I stray back into wanting to manage so that we can ship.
Either way, just having that desire to ship, to make a difference, I feel has kept me in a limbo where I straddle both and am frustrated and hampered by both, and never quite shining at either.
Still I regret not shipping more, and rush into the areas that I hope will help product be shipped.
My greatest career joy was running my own company. I know I failed at the sales and marketing, but we did ship. We shipped a lot, and made a lot of people happy. A massive achievement in a short amount of time, and a good mix of both management and programming. A joyful time even though it was hard work for little pay.
It's a shame positions that really blend these skills seem quite thin on the ground or that they don't really value those who can move from one to the other.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#69He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…
I'm still coding after almost 20 years in the job, and have no intention of stopping. I tried some other options - teacher, artist, entrepreneur. None of them give me the thrill that I get from programming. I still get locked into a flow where time shifts, and before I know it hours have passed. The only other activity that does that is Civ, and no-one is going to pay me to play that ;) If 10x assets is what drives y…
Same here, but it is a big fight to convince the others why you want to stay that way. Right now I get the feeling that long term, going consulting might be the only option left as regular companies tend to only keep juniors coding.
> You might be dead tomorrow; you might as well enjoy today.
Just for this remark I wish I could have upvoted you more than once.
This is something that those that live for the job, without paying attention to family and friends seem to forget.
Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
#70He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…
While that's entirely possible I don't think one can conclude it with certainty from his post. You say he'd be missing the programming side if he went the other direction but the only reason he listed for choosing programming was because he considered it easier. Looking at what he has achieved in his life and career as a programmer doesn't do much if those achievements aren't aligned with his values.
Picking the wrong career path is entirely possible. Some people absolutely love technical problem solving, he doesn't mention it at all. For all we know it's worthless to him and just something he has to do to earn a cheque.
I do think you might be on to something with
>Maybe he would have been terrible at that kind of work.
though. He makes it sound like in 1994 he signed a document stating that assassins should murder him if he ever tries to manage anyone. I find it hard to believe that if he was good at managing people and influencing decisions that he would have went the rest of his career unable to break back in to management. Convincing people to give him the job is part of the needed skill set!