Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

simplethread.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 745 posts

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#721

Post by pydry »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #690
pydry wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying that retail, much like being a novelist or a receptionist or a software programmer or indeed any job is, as the OP puts it, a "social service". That being one of the defining charactetistics of a job.

You're saying you're agreeing with OP, but your statements contradict. OP calls out 3 categories of jobs. Mainly natural/technical, mainly social, and those which sit in the middle and require both. Finally OP says engineering sits in the middle and requires both. You said it's not just engineering (that requires both), but all jobs. Both I and OP disagree with that statement.

So, which jobs are not providing a "social service"?

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#722

Post by CRConrad »

pydry wrote: post #721
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying you're agreeing with OP, but your statements contradict. OP calls out 3 categories of jobs. Mainly natural/technical, mainly social, and those which sit in the middle and require both. Finally OP says engineering sits in the middle and requires both. You said it's not just engineering (that requires both), but all jobs. Both I and OP disagree with that statement.

So, which jobs are not providing a "social service"?

Car mechanics? Sure, in the end it's "social" in that another human being benefits from it, but the actual "social" aspects of the actual work are handled by someone other than the mechanic.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#723

Post by CRConrad »

lazide wrote: post #178
pjmlp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approching the same experience level and fully agree. A piece of coding art that doesn't fulfill customer needs, or requires understading of language standard minutia for fellow devs to do maintainance updates is worthless.

Yes, or in some cases even worse than useless - an active problem that requires expensive specialization to not make things an even bigger mess

https://www.informatica.com/

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#724

Post by pksebben »

jhrmnn wrote: post #640
pksebben wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are differences between any two people anywhere ever, though. Is there some reason that being over 20 means you're done developing?

You can learn a new foreign language when you’re 20. But it’s way easier when you’re 10 or 5. Same goes for learning to play chess, to code, and more broadly, for learning to learn.

I'm 35. I started learning to code 5 years ago. I have a job in the industry, and I advance my understanding of the space daily - I'm sorry, but that just doesn't gel with the actual, firsthand experience I have with this stuff.

You're never past expanding your understanding of the world.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#725

Post by pksebben »

diob wrote: post #641
pksebben wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to these? I'm interested in what they found out, if a little skeptical about how thinking can be precisely measured.

I went back and dug to find the exact source I was thinking of (I heard it in a freakonomics podcast long ago, took awhile to find). https://freakonomics.com/podcast/reasons-to-be-cheerful/ https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/Nature_vs_Nurture__Do... The big thing is this is purely about IQ. Think of it like folks being born at a certain IQ, and you can really only maintain it (exercise, love, healthy eating, slee…

So, there are a ton of resources out there on how unreliable IQ is, and whether it's a valid indicator of general cognitive ability. Instead of linking them, I'll just link to the place that has the most good links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil...

My understanding is that save for general statistical measures of a large aggregate, IQ is a poor measure for an individual (as it has been shown to change quite a bit for individuals over the course of a lifetime).

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#726

Post by CRConrad »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #507
faizshah wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re missing the point or I was unclear. The point is not that masters at a skill don't exist. The point is that attributing their skill mostly to something innate rather than practice, study, etc is not supported by the body of research they review in the book (the book is written for a general audience, their academic research supports the arguments in the book).

There is a mountain of evidence to the contrary. No matter how much you or I would practice, study, etc. we would never become as good as tourist. Most people reach their plateau in competitive coding within 1 year. For example, here's my Codeforces profile: https://codeforces.com/profile/baobab Started in 2015, plateau'd in 2016 and no measurable improvement from subsequent 3 years of practice and study.

> we would never become as good as tourist.

Huh, "tourist"? Typo for "Turing"?

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#727

Post by CRConrad »

908B64B197 wrote: post #440
madsbuch wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "10x programmer" as a term is confusing. In one analogy it could be the 10x bricklayer. One who does a well defined job 10 times faster than the others. I think this is the notion people oppose. Another analogy is the 10x classical composer. A person who produces music that is 10 times better music. But this is much more about creative/artistic capacity than about producing. Nobody oppose this. I that you…

> In one analogy it could be the 10x bricklayer. One who does a well defined job 10 times faster than the others. Software as brick-laying gets a laugh out of me. If someone uses that analogy, that's a red-flag: they don't really understand software (and tech). It's like offshored bodyshops that just keep throwing more warm bodies at a codebase. Truth is, a 10x isn't someone who lays bricks 10 times faster. A 10x is…

>> In one analogy it could be the 10x bricklayer. One who does a well defined job 10 times faster than the others.

> Software as brick-laying gets a laugh out of me.

I think that may have been precisely GP's point: The quantitatively-exact-sounding "10x" could possibly be used about an easily-measured well-defined task like brick-laying (which usage could be confirmed by the occurrence of variants like "I'm actually a 12x [or only a 9x] bricklayer"), but not about less well-defined / measurable crafts like programming.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#728

Post by boffinAudio »

Waterluvian wrote: post #90
boffinAudio wrote: post #7

40+ years of experience here, and I'll tell you the #1 thing I've learned: * Software is a social service. Its for other humans. Incredibly, it doesn't matter how educated the developer, they still seem to have to learn this lesson themselves, over and over, until it sinks in...

What do I do with this, though? I think I get what it means but how do I act on it?

Always keep the human in mind, whatever software you are righting. Its turtles all the way up to the human.

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#729

Post by jasode »

jasode wrote: post #531
BeetleB wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This thread's extensive non-quantitative usage from many people is evidence of that. Even putting aside comments like mine complaining about the actual number, this thread's extensive use of 10x to mean as many different things is a good reason to avoid the term altogether. The whole thread is just "10x programmers don't exist because X" and "10x programmers exist because Y", where X and Y are unrelated. > "10x man…

>10x to mean as many different things is a good reason to avoid the term altogether. The whole thread is just "10x programmers don't exist because X" and "10x programmers exist because Y", where X and Y are unrelated. Yes, I understand your complaint here too but the various X-Y meanings isn't really the fault of "10x"... it's caused by any label . Previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=287…

Fyi ... a correction as I've since listened to the book author's background since this thread. (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sean+platt+inte...)

>> "10x author"

>Written by a tech guy.

The author of that book, Sean M. Platt, is not a tech guy nor a programmer. He's a high-school dropout that started writing articles and stories. Now, he's mostly a publisher.

The interesting thing is that somehow, the "10x programmer" meme made its way to a non-programmer and he adopted it as "10x author".

Re: Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

#730

Post by CRConrad »

pjc50 wrote: post #220
NineStarPoint wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, I’ve always found it a weird sentiment more because issues caused by software developers are not of the “this person is 1/10 as productive as this other person” type. A bad developer isn’t a low positive effect on a project, but an active negative effect. As such, you can put literally any Y for a (Y)X programmer, since the scale of how inefficient a programmer can be goes up to infinite. I think the p…

More people should be aware of Comrade Stakhanov, the "10x miner": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Stakhanov > In 1988, the Soviet newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that the widely cited achievements of Stakhanov were puffery. The paper insisted that Stakhanov had used a number of helpers on support works, while the throughout was tallied for him alone. Still, according to the newspaper, Stakhanov's approac…

TAN: I fearst heard of "Stachanovism" over forty years ago, in my teens. Some time before that I had read an anthology of American folk tales, so to me Comrade Alexei Grigorijevitj was always kind of a Soviet version of John Henry. Made it easier, when I later found out, to accept that Stachanov was also at least in part a myth...
Post reply on HN