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Experts have it easy (2024)

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Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#71

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

lisper wrote: post #63
beyarkay wrote: post #50

(author here) Okay I know this is how the internet works, but I posted my essay here a month ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43664345 ) and it died a silent death. Excited to read the comments! But damn the internet is unintelligible sometimes.

A new submission on HN typically has 20-30 minutes on the New page before it drops off the bottom. It is pretty much luck of the draw whether or not anyone notices it during that time window.

Also depends on what's happening, that day. I had an article spend several hours at #1, but it was "second-chanced," and also St. Patrick's Day, so I guess most of the downvoters and competition were off doin' the Pukin' O' th' Green.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#72

Post by pphysch »

smitelli wrote: post #61
rightbyte wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd probably need to put the HD in the other machine. What is the "scrappy" way to do it?

I have been nerd-sniped into conjuring up a less-traveled-path technique: Portable Python on the Windows computer. `python -m http.server`. On the Linux computer, something like `wget -mkp` followed by `find … -delete` to get rid of the index files. (Lots of disks are soldered in nowadays, or the procedure might require multiple M2 slots that the destination mobo might not have. Is your company IT department happy to…

I've done this exact approach and it worked well, it was on LAN so plenty of throughput. I would definitely try this before tearing apart the hardware.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#73

Post by mouse_ »

smitelli wrote: post #61
rightbyte wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd probably need to put the HD in the other machine. What is the "scrappy" way to do it?

I have been nerd-sniped into conjuring up a less-traveled-path technique: Portable Python on the Windows computer. `python -m http.server`. On the Linux computer, something like `wget -mkp` followed by `find … -delete` to get rid of the index files. (Lots of disks are soldered in nowadays, or the procedure might require multiple M2 slots that the destination mobo might not have. Is your company IT department happy to…

I was gonna say nginx, lol. It's smaller and more portable than python afaik

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#74

Post by beyarkay »

9dev wrote: post #2

> Having someone who’s happy to spend time “just talking”, without any specific goal to solve, will go a long way. This is actually something I love doing with our junior developers: Often they have a question every once in a while, or they don't have any questions for too long so I ask them what they're doing currently. Both often leads to me taking a look, and discovering that they're like five miles deep into a de…

(author here) bless you for helping out the juniors. There's not nearly a strong enough culture of educating juniors IMO

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#75

Post by bluedino »

thinkingemote wrote: post #34
flysand7 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, debugging is an absolute joy, especially with niche systems-level kinda of bugs that simply can not be debugged with simple printf's. I had a friend once asking me to help debug a weird issue over discord. We went through some obvious things like are there any other threads running or is there something obviously wrong with the code. We didn't find anything so we went on to the best part -- trying to figure out…

Also love debugging, it's puzzle, pattern matching, evidence gathering, poking around, experimenting, it's using tools, diving into documentation, learning more than whats required to write it and learning about humans and machines and why and how we make mistakes and forgiving these mistakes and fixing the errors. That feeling when spending lots of time to write just one line of code to close that one pesky bug. Are…

> Are all developers like this?

No, there are different types of developers. Some are like this (and so are some sysadmins) but others have strengths in different areas.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#76

Post by beyarkay »

joenot443 wrote: post #47

This is a really good article. There's a quality in strong developers which is difficult to select for in an interview but wildly valuable once they're up and running; maybe the best word is "scrappiness". When I interview juniors or interns, one of the questions I like to ask is something like this- "You've got two computer, one Linux one Windows. There's 50gb of files on the Windows machine which need to be moved t…

(author here) Thanks! I appreciate your kind words. That scrapiness you talk of is interesting, totally agree that there's something there, and it's interesting to think of how to evaluate if someone has it without spending months working with them.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#78

Post by zamadatix »

sdenton4 wrote: post #62
smitelli wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been nerd-sniped into conjuring up a less-traveled-path technique: Portable Python on the Windows computer. `python -m http.server`. On the Linux computer, something like `wget -mkp` followed by `find … -delete` to get rid of the index files. (Lots of disks are soldered in nowadays, or the procedure might require multiple M2 slots that the destination mobo might not have. Is your company IT department happy to…

Or set up SFTP on the Linux machine, and find whatever Windows crapware that's able to connect to it... Filezilla, maybe?

Windows has had OpenSSH's ssh/sftp/scp client binaries built in by default for ~7 years now. You can also do this in reverse by enabling OpenSSH Server on Windows (included feature but not installed or enabled on boot by default) and having the sftp client be the Linux box, which can be easier depending which you have more control of.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#79

Post by beyarkay »

coderintherye wrote: post #6

>Don’t study the “common” things, but go all-in on the niche pockets. The common things are common enough that you’ll learn them through osmosis regardless of what your main activity is. But the niche things require active study, and ignoring the niches is how you remain a novice. I'd add, work on the niche things that no one else wants to work on but need to be done. That's how I quickly advanced in my career, becom…

(author here) I've always found this advice a bit of a double edged sword. I absolutely agree that it'll develop your career, but I don't really want my day job to become 100% drudgery because I'm the only one who bothers to do it properly.

If the untouched system is just fiendishly complex this can be fun to figure out, but if the untouched system is pure pain to deal with, I think I'd rather risk unemployment.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#80

Post by beyarkay »

pixl97 wrote: post #4

Taking mechanical stuff apart and fixing it is one of these areas. One of the more recent ones I watched is taking apart large wenches on a bulldozer. There is a metal plate with two bolts on it you have to take off. If you don't know what you're doing you take both bolts out and it flies apart losing stuff because there is a spring behind the mechanism. If you know what you're doing you take out one bolt then put in…

(author here) Ooooohhh this is a great example, I love it. Software can be so abstract with the footguns sometimes, but physical mechanisms are so much more intuitive
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