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I don't want to be a Real Programmer

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

#71

Post by erroneousfunk »

rdudek wrote: post #53
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…

One of the most revealing lessons to me, as a young programmer, was when my uncle (worked on the Java project when it was Oak, published his own network architecture, distributed systems professor, etc. etc.) asked me which content management system he should use for an important project, and I was able to help him out with that. You'll always know something that the "Greats" don't.

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

#72

Post by erikb »

If you are really a programmer for just 3 years, then being lean was hot long before you even thought about starting to program. Currently hot means big data.

To get on topic: Don't give up just yet! Yes you can not be awesome at everything that you read here on HN. But if you, e.g., care about squeezing out great pixels out of your CSS, you can certainly become awesome at that. Maybe it's more awesome in your eyes to churn out a new iPhone game every week, then you certainly can be good at that. You just can't be good at most things you do. Either you are mediocre at everything, or quite good at one thing and quite bad on the rest. If you think a programmer is so much better at everything, learn to know these people better. You'll see that they might be awesome Node developers, but they might not know even part of what you know about bash and vim. Or English might be their mothertounge, while it is actually your second fluent language, etc. Most of the awesomeness you see in people on stage is biased observation.

And certainly you don't get to be awesome if you slave away at 80+h/week. Better stay in the 30-50h/week range and spend the rest of the time to prioritize tasks, stay healthy, networking, etc. With the first approach you will be nothing more than a machine after just 2-3 weeks. With the second approach you can learn and get better every week of the year.

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

#74

Post by pdubs »

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.

Never more relevant... http://xkcd.com/435/

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

#78

Post by badman_ting »

goldenkey wrote: post #46

The viewpoint in this article is disillusioned at best. A real programmer is not someone who loves programming and attends hackathons to build iOS apps that map the sewer rats in NYC for fun. That stuff might be fun to the hipster who just learned iOS, sure. But I doubt someone who's been programming for 15+ years wants to build an app for bullshit. Every line counts more, because the capability is higher. Wasting ti…

It's really a shame we probably don't live in the same place because holy crap would I like to hang out with you.

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

#80

Post by atmosx »

pdubs wrote: post #74
CmonDev wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never more relevant... http://xkcd.com/435/

That's genius, I have a huge respect for 'xkcd' really. Some presentations are beyond amazing. That said I think it's spot on, Mathematics is the language of the Universe.
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