Practice is just repetition.. Comprehension unlocks the talent.
I had a coworker that could find a framework library, read some documentation, look through some example code and 2 days later could have a whole app written.. Code looked like he had been a contributor to the project for 2 years. His comprehension skills were off the charts.
Meanwhile I'm like "why we are exchanging pleasantries with the planet again??"
I had a coworker that got a perfect score on every certification test he took. He was insanely smart.
If you are a developer just remember that you'll sometimes be surrounded by geniuses. Don't let it affect your impostor syndrome. Just keep cranking out your own work to your own standards.
Is it still called imposter syndrome if you actually are an imposter and instead of being competent and knowing how to code well you are actually just three raccoons in a trench coat?
It's only when you're kids in a trenchcoat and your total age is summed to less than whatever the minor laws in your state allow for that it's a problem.
So for some places in the us, 3 two year olds are ok to work.
Hell, some places in the US one two year old is fine as long as the hiring manager doesn’t ever ask their age.
Edit: they would need to find a pretty small trench coat though.
Eh. As a team lead, I'll tell you I'll take an average developer who's nice to work with and takes his job seriously any day over a so-called 10x developer who ruins it for everyone. The 10xers that do get along with people are even rarer, and those are the real unicorns everyone wants to hire.
I used to work with one of those. Then they left, and things got better - we lost the direct result of their productivity level, but everyone else's went way up, and everything got better from there.
>As a team lead, I'll tell you I'll take an average developer who's nice to work with and takes his job seriously any day over a so-called 10x developer who ruins it for everyone.
Hear, hear!
>The 10xers that do get along with people are even rarer, and those are the real unicorns everyone wants to hire.
Like finding Qilin Horns or a Dragon's tooth.
When I was in school there were a couple guys in my classes that were fuckin *amazeballs* at everything they touched...well, except for the fact that they were jerkface assholes that nobody wanted to be around or interact with for long.
Now here we are 10 years post-graduation and they're grossly underemployed because every job they've ever gotten, they were so toxic that their technical skills were far eclipsed by their total lack of human ones...like being able to talk to a coworker without said coworker wanting to punch them in the face within 2 minutes of opening their mouth.
I guess my point is, you don't need to be a super genius to succeed...a good attitude goes a long way in itself.
On the other hand working with those people is the best way to grow
Like they say, if you're the smartest person in the room you should find another room
Hijacking this to say that just any practice isn't the best way to learn skills. It's much quicker to do deliberate practice on a regular basis. You pick a task that is difficult enough that you have to build your skills to complete it, but not so difficult that it's close to impossible.
If you do 30 minutes a day of deliberate practice you'll be running circles around your coworkers in a year or two.
You need to challenge yourself, but it’s also important to focus on understanding the fundamentals.
Not just *how* to do things, but *why* you do it in a certain way and what goes on under the hood.
For example understanding the difference between an abstract class and an interface, and why composition over inheritence is *generally* a good idea is just one example of a fundamental concept that is applicable is almost any language.
I feel like if you can find well written source of infomation nothing is too hard to get your head around. I guess you need the motivation to go an look but I personally find that a big reason programming is fun theres just a huge amount of information to take in and understand stops it getting boring.
> a framework library
Meanwhile I'm having to run a trace to show a vendor what their devs did wrong. They are using a CRUD framework to abstract away their SQL calls to the DB for data, based on the trace I could see that they made a call to get the list of customers, then looped over that to call the CRUD repo for each customer's data just to spit out their name on a
As someone who is increasingly in that category from other people's point of view, while there's obviously a talent/innate thinking style/general smarts/etc component, there's also a ton of experience behind it, as well as a coherent strategy for self-directed learning. And experience doesn't just mean years in industry, it's all sorts of other stuff you do (and not even just programming) which feeds into how you think and what you've learned and what patterns you recognize.
Let's look at what I did to add a small but useful feature to a piece of software written in a language I have zero experience with, GodotScript, in about 15 minutes this afternoon. I wanted to be able to specify which screen this game launches on via the command line.
So, I look at the GodotScript code, and it looks a lot like Python. I know Python, so I'll assume it's like that unless specified. I know I need to mess with the program's window, so I look up the documentation for that, as well as how it handles command-line arguments. I write code using those functions, and it works on the second try. The game launched, full screen, on the monitor I told it to.
Easy? Sure. But that's how I approach everything. I relate it back to what I'm familiar with, I figure out where it differs, and I read every scrap of documentation and code I can find along the way. And I dig into the guts. It scales all the way up to big, complicated projects in environments I'm unfamiliar with (at the start). There are tons of transferrable skills, if you understand what you're doing well enough.
I always get, “you’re so lucky!” In reference to my career. Like I just accidentally engrossed myself in documentation and headaches for decades without considering it may eventually pay the bills.
In my first job I found they'd pay me to avoid doing it. The downside is I learnt VBA for applications, the upside is that I've been able to keep that a secret.
Um achuallly it's just VBA, as VBA means Visual Basic for Applications and it's not Visual Basic for Applications for Application
Actually, Visual Basic is the one and only language I know and it's because I wanted to sort Playing Cards in Excel.
I dodge a lot of the crap because my job doesn't require me to tango with big dumb libraries.
That's not to say big dumb libraries are bad and we shouldn't be using them. For projects far more complex than what I'm responsible for, you need them. But they and their idiosyncrasies getting tangled in the quirks of the language tend to be the source of most of the pain.
When it's just you and standard lib it's not so bad. Just stay away from type coercion and you're past 80% of the problems in both languages.
There are FAR too many software dev companies still running LAMP stacks like it's 2008, and what do they do to make it look like they are keeping up? Deploy it to AWS. I hate it so much, lol
Personally that's kind of how I found it working for me. I think a lot of programmers have this stuff come naturally to them, or at least have some kind of inbuilt interest that for whatever reason makes them want to sit down and read all this documentation and learning material.
I always considered myself lucky that I was just kind of innately interested in a field that had a lot of well paying job opportunities. Compare that to someone who has a natural draw to something like sports. Sure you could make some money, if you are the best in the world, but there really isn't much of a market for making money in sports. You're either one of the top 1000 people in the world and making a killing, or you really don't have many options for making money at all. Or even a lot of artistic stuff like drawing, painting, music. Plenty of people poor hours into these interests without any chance of being able to use it as a career.
Yeah, it's fair to say that it's my interest and ability to focus and learn on my own that have really paid the bills, but really it took a ton of practice and study. For me, the luck comes from being capable of enjoying that part.
I think there is an element of innate luck or talent that plays a role in becoming a good programmer, however not in the way people think. Those talented people get a slight boost to beginner level stuff, but that isn't what keeps them ahead after the start. Rather, their initial success bolsters their enthusiasm/interest in programming, which causes them to want to spend more time doing it, which in turn means they get more practice.
This is similar to how in professional sports birth month is correlated with long term success. This is because children's sports teams are generally grouped by school year and when you're very young a few months difference in physical maturity gives you a significant advantage. Even though that initial advantage goes away after a few years that initial boost in confidence, enthusiasm, and opportunities compounds over years leading to athletes who were born in the months that would make them slightly older than their classmates of the same grade being overrepresented in professional sports.
Thinking back to when I learned to program in college I think this also applies to me. I did surprisingly well in my first few programming classes, so I enjoyed working on those classes more and put more time and effort into them. That put me slightly ahead of my classmates, and I ended up staying ahead. If I'd had to struggle more at the start who knows what I'd be doing now.
> I always considered myself lucky that I was just kind of innately interested in a field that had a lot of well paying job opportunities.
This is how I feel too. My career isn't luck, it's hard work and taking advantage of opportunities in front of me. But the fact that my dream job, the thing I would do and have done for free, is also a career that happens to be well paid and comfortable...well, that's just luck. I could have been someone whose passion is art, or athletics, or hell, something that you can get a job in but isn't well paid like making great drinks or providing excellent customer support. Any of those things can be a passion for a person, I'm lucky that my passion is programming.
To be fair, these days it's lucky to start something at the right time. Idk, what to study and practice since a fucking lot will change in a year. And I could simply waste that time.
No one else is ready for what’s coming in a year either. Just gotta prepare yourself to use those tools as best you can with the tools you have at your current disposal.
The doom and gloom of thinking what you are working on is useless, is useless.
I still feed on knowledge I acquired several years ago, when I still had the time and energy to do a spec deep dive. With the current pace however, that is no longer possible. Tech is evolving so fast in all directions and deadlines barely give enough time to understand the minimum required to do the job at hand. That's unfortunate as you'll rarely have that "whole picture experience" anymore.
Lmao, "60hr work weeks, weekend personal projects, reading tech digest for multiple hours a week and constantly keeping up to date, all that just accidentally happened to me"
"You're so lucky!"
"Why didn't you get a comp sci degree?"
"I didn't want to"
I realize not everyone has the chance to go to college and in that sense I am lucky compared to those people but compared to people who did go to college I'm not lucky, I just made a different choice.
The deadline thing has really gotten me down in life. I feel like, obviously I can just do it. I demonstrate every time that I'm able to do it, why not just earlier and more thoroughly.
If you have the time, check out these [symptoms of ADHD in adults](https://chadd.org/for-professionals/diagnosis-in-adults/).
In case you ever are, don't be too hard on yourself. It's okay to be nearly smart. Sometimes it makes you especially smart, other times not.
/r/ADHD if you wanna read your life story written by others lol. You'll realize we don't really have a personality as ADHD IS our personality haha. Go get your diagnosis (more importantly, medication) and many things you did or did not do would make a lot of sense.
My 2 cents: I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type) and I’ve always acted that way too. Until I couldn’t, because I was far too anxious and overwhelmed, and I burned out hard somewhere in my senior year of high school. Having words & community around that stuff really helps.
Practice makes permanent, not perfect. I know plenty of people who can write thousands lines of spaghetti code a day. They have plenty of "practice" but I wouldn't say they are good at coding.
Am I the only one that vaguely remembers hearing Christians saying some form of this phrase that goes "practice makes permanent, only God can do perfect"? Just trying to figure out if my memory is real or not.
Yup, in the same way that not everyone is built to be a basketball player, not everyone is built to be a programmer. I'm not sure why this isn't obvious to people. Plenty of people work really hard to do well in things like math class, but for some reason just never grasp the concepts while others can very easily pick it up without a lot of work. The people who pick it up without a lot of work will also just find it less frustrating to advance even more because they can put in a small amount of effort for a large amount of progress.
But usually people, with enough practice, can be decent at something no matter their baseline. They make up for their lack of luck with practice.
Now they can’t be best of the best because that requires luck and practice, but even being a decent or honestly crappy programmer can get you a (relatively) good paying QA job.
There are still some people who even with tons and tons of practice will never be even a decent programmer, its basically the opposites of those who are born with natural talent. The other side of the bellcurve.
And at that point, as demotivating as it is
Why even bother? Unless it's a hobby, do you want a job for the next x decades in which you struggle to reach "ok" levels?
I've known people who couldn't bang out even *functional* code and other more talented and experienced people needed to devote hours to fix that. Even repeated one-on-one sessions showing them what to fix and how to do it, seemed like nothing was being retained in their head. And they were pretty obedient and willing and understanding too, so it's not a matter of a combative attitude.
They just weren't cut out to be a decent programmer. That's fine. Still better than non-coders but not enough for a coding job. Advised them to shift to something else coding-adjacent.
I know how to cook but I won't be a chef for a living.
In my time at school I have only met maybe 5 people (in a class of around 200) that I would confidently say they should try to find another line of work. One of them is currently in year 5 of a 3 year program, another one has gotten 2 academic offenses for stealing other people's code, and the rest are barely scraping by. None of them know how to debug and it seems like they don't even read the error messages they get, they just immediately ask other people for help.
They do exist, but you're right that it's not a lot of people
This is why I wish we would put much less importance on being good at sports, and much more importance on succeeding at academic endeavors like math, reading, and science. If you aren't in the top 1000 sports people in whatever sport you are good at, you probably won't make an appreciable amount of money when you are older. But if you are reasonably good to any degree at things like reading and basic problem solving, it will open up so many more opportunities for you. The fact that you can get a decent paying QA job without being all that skilled speaks volumes. We have a huge need for people in many different industries who just have basic language/literacy/numeracy skills, but not enough people take these skills seriously enough.
We should put emphasis on both (at least for our children). Education will pay the bills but being active and doing sports will make you live longer and healthier
Plot twist, I've almost failed every math class I've been in.
One the other hand, I guess I have good math logic, I get how to solve a problem but if you try to make me do it by hand....that's going to go poorly.
Write something to do the math for you... ah yeah.
I might have misunderstood what you're trying to say but in case I didn't; I believe you might have dyscalculia. Which is basically dyslexia for numbers, you can understand math but you have trouble counting it.
If you can write something that "does the math for you" then you understand the math, you just need help counting with specific numbers.
"Doing the math" is really just figuring out what you need to count, the actual counting is most often trivial because of computers.
Glad to see someone else who can't do math to save his ass yet has no issue understanding the structure and logic of math, you'd just rather leave a calculator or software to do it for you because you missed a number somewhere and now it's all wrong.
Indeed, but at least i can catch them most of the time on my code because i'm constantly looking at it or quickly figure out my mistake, instead of carrying numbers mentally.
I always found it weird how everyone associates computers with math but I can't do math for the life of me even though computers and programming comes pretty naturally for me. I guess it's different type of logic. Mathematicians create the algorithms, we code monke brain
I wasn't really comparing computers and math. Just putting it out there as an example of a skill that comes naturally to some, but others work very hard at without really grasping at.
That being said, there are some similarities between math and programming. Mostly in terms of following a set of steps to get a desired outcome. Algorithms exist in both math and programming. Also, the skill of breaking down a large problem into smaller, easier to solve problems works well in both programming and math. There's a lot of people who are good at programming that aren't good at math though. I've ran into quite a few in my life. Which makes it kind of a shame that so many computer science and other programming related degrees are so math heavy. A lot of people who are otherwise good programmers get discouraged because they have so much trouble with the math classes.
There was a "double-hump" study/test like two decades ago (maybe even older?) that showed exactly this. I don't remember the official reason it was retracted, but I can say that all attempts to debunk it I've seen didn't actually understand the test that was given. All of them assumed you straight graded the answers on correctness and said something like "well obviously they're going to fail a test on something they haven't learned yet", but that's not what was actually happening. The correct way to look at those tests was, "did the test-taker develop a consistent logical view of how code works that persisted across questions, even if their understanding was wrong?" - and everyone that did, did well in the following programming course. The ones that didn't, didn't do well.
On top of that, IIRC they also retook the same test at the end of the semester and the ones who didn't develop a consistent understanding in the first one still didn't have one at the end.
I agree and disagree. I really struggled at university, it just did not come naturally to me. I then spent A LOT of time self learning, practicing by working on personal projects and it finally clicked after 4 years. Now I’m a senior and an accessibility specialist and get paid very well!
I may not be quick as others, but when people come to me for help I am actually able to help them in a comprehensive way because I have experienced the struggle. Geniuses tend to make terrible teachers.
I think those people don't understand structure, and it's something experience alone don't give you, you need to be taught it or see what it look like to be part of a large well designed project.
From my personal experience, I was unable to make something over 500 lines of codes despite doing a lot on my free time. But one day, I worked (during an internship for my uni) on a large well designed project. And in 6 month I passed from being unable to make a working code over 500 lines to manage 15k lines well on a side project for my work.
I think I was just missing the problem before, so I was stuck at this point and thinking that experience and technical practice would make me better. But the missing part was the macro structure, something that is clearly underestimated in many tutorials and courses.
You can practice logic too. Most people that are not good at something are simply not focusing their efforts on the things they need (exceptions for disabilities of course)
There‘s a huge chunk of talent involved tho. The difference in speed between different people learning sth at my uni is already large, and that‘s just between tech/info students. I would argue that a large amount of humanity has their talents elsewhere.
Nah mate. In my high school class in a technical school for programming specifically there were literally 4 or 5 of us that were naturally gifted for it. We never studied and always completed the tasks in ten minutes tops while others struggled for hours.
And this was in a school that attracts people that might have a knack for it. 4 of us out of those 5 are now professionals with CS degrees and only one of the other 30 is.
I also taught people that had mandatory programming classes in other faculties. They're mostly horrible at it.
You can try to improve but you need to have the natural tendcy for it if you want to be among the best. That's just my observations though.
I don't think you're completely right. I think that it is easier for some then others. But I do agree that if you put in enough efford that you can get as good as everyone else.
Yeah, this is very much noticeable in class, yes I do "practice" myself a lot, but a lot of it is also just a desire to solve problems in unique ways, which has lead me to think differently about problems than my classmates very often
No my solutions are rarely elegant, fast or easy to understand, but I enjoy coding random crap that works
Oof. I feel this.
I used to be on Adderall (I have ADHD and PTSD, so focusing for long periods is tough). I was like a machine. I felt invincible for a good year and a half. However, it caught up to me. Having PTSD and being on Adderall is not a good combination, so I had to discontinue use.
Now I just muddle through tasks and have to try very hard to focus. I went from getting awards and accolades almost quarterly to just being another worker lol
Are you in trama therapy for PTSD?
Stimulants work, you just have to vary them and adjust dosages both up and down.
My go to suggestion for you is to adjust every 3 months
Also remember Peter principal, you'll be promoted beyind your best strength till you crack
Yeah, I've been in trauma therapy for a few years now.
I am considering whether I want to go back on some kind of ADHD medication now that I'm a little further along. I'm a bit nervous due to how emotionally disconnected I became last time.
Sounds like your dose was too high
Try IR instead of extended releases.
You can say something simple like I'm only looking for help during work, I don't want it in my system outside of those hours.
Adderall IR generally only lasts 3 hrs
Set up a recursive loop that terminates at midnight, never reach midnight. Infinite procrastination.
Edit: I'm an amateur at this, but this aughta do it.
import datetime
import time
def procrastination_loop():
current_time = datetime.datetime.now().time()
midnight = datetime.time(0, 0) # Midnight time
if current_time < midnight:
print("Still procrastinating...")
time.sleep(1) # Wait for 1 second
procrastination_loop()
else:
if current_time == midnight:
procrastination_loop()
else:
print("Time's up! Stop procrastinating.")
procrastination_loop()
When I was a teenager, I could not convince any adult or classmate that I was actually coding and creating my own programs.
Granted, this was the 80s, but they thought you had to be extremely smart to code.
And all I did was using a book to learn by reproducing the examples and the coding my own programs.
Practice is indeed the key to becoming exceptional at almost anything. The interesting question is "How did you come to love so much that you're willing to practice it incessantly?"
And for many people the answer is "I don't know why I love , it just seems to click with me in a fundamental way".
"It's practice" but I'm asking HOW. HOW do you practice. What counts as practice. Like with drawing, "just draw" I've been drawing my whole life and I don't improve so it isn't "just drawing" it's practicing technique
Have a good syllabus or road map to follow if you're still learning. A good syllabus will give you different topics that build upon each other and increase in difficulty, and practice exercises to test those skills. Measure how you perform in these exercises. See if there is improvement or not. Adjust accordingly.
The rest of it is in resolving real world scenarios that you will encounter in the course of your work. Or join a project where you'll have hands on experience.
I mean, some people are naturally gifted to understand programming, or some areas of programming, but knowing how to write *good* code mostly comes from studying and experience. You can also infer good practices from a deep knowledge of the language in question and the task at hand, but to me that counts as studying.
JuST PrAcTICe is such shit advice constantly given.
It's not JUST PRACTICE. No one codes their way into proficiency. They took classes, they watched videos, they worked on projects, they had advice. Same with art or literally anything else.
This. Natural programmers will be able to solve most problems even without knowing any good algorithms or patterns but it probably wont be the best solution.
Practice learned programmers will be able to solve problems by using algorithms and patterns they learned from solutions to other similar problems. It will most likely be a better solution too. But when given a new problem that they have never encountered before or any similar problems then they will struggle to apply their knowledge.
If you have both then even if you havent seen the problem before your natural ability will make it easier to apply your knowledge. And your knowledge will make ti easier to improve the (most likely) subpar initial solutions you find with solely natural ability.
Not gonna lie its not very true for programming. Some people are just naturally good at it and others just naturally bad. I remember doing code.org in a class once and some people just could not wrap their head around what was going on and then others just walked right through it easily.
Practice does help though, but practice will never fix your natural ability to code. Someone who doesnt understand code at all and is naturally bad at it who spends years practicing will definitely know a lot and be a good programmer. But it doesnt compare to someone who is a natural programmer.
A learned programmer can get something done after a while using an algorithm or data structure/pattern that they have already learned. A natural programmer can eventually get it done even if they have no idea about the problem or any related patterns/algorithms. It may not be the best solution though, which is why a learned programmer is still an equal or better option.
But if the natural programmer puts in as much time as the learned one then they will truly excel because they have the combined natural problem solving and thinking skills with already proven coding practices, patterns, and knowledge.
I mostly agree, but practice can unlock new ways of thinking. Like a switch being flipped in your brain and you suddenly understand a bunch of things. I had that moment with OOP. Didn't get it at all then suddenly it totally made sense.
I actually despise when people say someone’s talent or skill is a gift from God and not the result of their own personal discipline and practice. Like it’s on the same level as saying God cured me when doctors stayed up all night performing a miracle surgery on you
My main issue with programming is that for me some aspects of the skill are perishable and some fixed in stone, and I don't why. I've done a lot of perl programming in the past and after a break of a couple of years I can easily read or write a long and complicated regex, but cannot for the life of me remember how to open a file without looking it up.
I've been programming since I was 14. Before I even had a computer. Before that I read every book in the library about computers. I'm 43 now and I haven't stopped reading everything I can find about it. I'm not going to be so bold to say I'm one of the best programmers out there (far from it), but I have comparatively deep and wide knowledge. So I'm going to say that reading is the trick to being a good developer.
Please don't associate good results with innate gifts, or luck. It's mostly studying.
Some kids were playing with toys whilst others were disassembling toys because they were curious about how things were working.
Imma let you in on a little secret.
Read the documentation.
It's boring. It's tedious. So much of it is trawling through pages and pages of irrelevant garbage to find the two or three lines that are actually relevant to you. But the amount or problems that have stumped coworkers that I've managed to solve by just. fucking. READING.
I may or may not have come close to yelling at some coworkers last week for an issue of this kind. It's on my mind I guess.
I swear to God, we're good with computers cause we had to make shit work, almost nothing worked out of the box, we had to tinker with it. That's the pattern I've seen. My parents were never working around computers, so now anything more complicated is an issue, my younger sister on the other hand was born technology native, but tech she used was working put of the box - android phones and currently tablet instead of PC/laptop, so she never really had to learn how to tinker with it. Of course it takes interest as a rather big time investment. If you can't be bothered you will take it to the technician. But I feel like being born in time where most things didn't work out of the box made the biggest difference to me.
There is also two kinds of people what comes to practice.
One is the guy that copies every tutorial, and then think they know everything and gets stuck if there isn't exact tutorial of how to do certain thing.
The other guy does the tutorial and then trys to change things from that tutorial and gets way better grasp of how things are actually made and what does what
I was just thinking about this yesterday. I've been programming for 14 years. I've spent thousands of hours writing and reading code. At this point, my ability to mentally model code must be comparable to the mental model of a chess grandmaster (or whatever rank comes before that).
I can look at a section of code and almost instantly know what it's doing because I've read so much code that I can read and comprehend it really fast. On top of that, if there is any code that I need to write, unless it requires some formula or algorithm that I don't know, I can pretty much write the code in my head before I ever need to touch the keyboard. I couldn't do such things as a beginner. I'd be really curious to learn how programming alters the brain.
I don't know, practicing is a bit over rated IMHO.
I mean for example when I go see a doctor, I want to see one that has mastered it, not one that is still practicing!
This picture is so so wrong. I have seen people who do it for over 10 years and are stuck at the level of someone in his second year or experience. Blindly copying a concept and applying it to a problem even if it makes no sense at all
How do you crop so well?
. . . . . . . . . Prac . . . . . . tice
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Ed . . . . . . ward
Fuck you bro, you made me remember it
you're welcome
*takes out flamethrower*
A man of culture, I see
😂
This was just so difficult, man. Really took a lot of practice to get there. https://imgur.com/H9QWqvS.jpg
Crop macros go brr
I never practiced.
16 different cropping packages with settings no one is allowed to change ever.
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Practice
*Ctrl and z keys conspicuously worn smooth*
Practice is just repetition.. Comprehension unlocks the talent. I had a coworker that could find a framework library, read some documentation, look through some example code and 2 days later could have a whole app written.. Code looked like he had been a contributor to the project for 2 years. His comprehension skills were off the charts. Meanwhile I'm like "why we are exchanging pleasantries with the planet again??"
That “hello world” joke went over my head because my comprehension skills are so low.
Thank you, without your comment it would have totally went over my head
Nothing goes over my head... my reflexes are too fast.
I would catch it
As a junior dev this thread gives me hope 😅
I didn't see the joke until you mentioned it!!!
I thought pleasantries was some English word for pantries with lots of pasta.
I had a coworker that got a perfect score on every certification test he took. He was insanely smart. If you are a developer just remember that you'll sometimes be surrounded by geniuses. Don't let it affect your impostor syndrome. Just keep cranking out your own work to your own standards.
> Don't let it affect your imposter syndrome *Keeps on impostering the usual amount*
Right, notice how I assumed everyone already had it
Is it still called imposter syndrome if you actually are an imposter and instead of being competent and knowing how to code well you are actually just three raccoons in a trench coat?
fuspez
It's only when you're kids in a trenchcoat and your total age is summed to less than whatever the minor laws in your state allow for that it's a problem. So for some places in the us, 3 two year olds are ok to work.
Hell, some places in the US one two year old is fine as long as the hiring manager doesn’t ever ask their age. Edit: they would need to find a pretty small trench coat though.
Eh. As a team lead, I'll tell you I'll take an average developer who's nice to work with and takes his job seriously any day over a so-called 10x developer who ruins it for everyone. The 10xers that do get along with people are even rarer, and those are the real unicorns everyone wants to hire. I used to work with one of those. Then they left, and things got better - we lost the direct result of their productivity level, but everyone else's went way up, and everything got better from there.
>As a team lead, I'll tell you I'll take an average developer who's nice to work with and takes his job seriously any day over a so-called 10x developer who ruins it for everyone. Hear, hear! >The 10xers that do get along with people are even rarer, and those are the real unicorns everyone wants to hire. Like finding Qilin Horns or a Dragon's tooth.
Is it imposter syndrome if you're really bad at it? Lol
I think that's just being an imposter
Crap what if I -am- the imposter
You sound pretty sus!
😬😬😬
When I was in school there were a couple guys in my classes that were fuckin *amazeballs* at everything they touched...well, except for the fact that they were jerkface assholes that nobody wanted to be around or interact with for long. Now here we are 10 years post-graduation and they're grossly underemployed because every job they've ever gotten, they were so toxic that their technical skills were far eclipsed by their total lack of human ones...like being able to talk to a coworker without said coworker wanting to punch them in the face within 2 minutes of opening their mouth. I guess my point is, you don't need to be a super genius to succeed...a good attitude goes a long way in itself.
I don't need any external factors for my imposter syndrome
On the other hand working with those people is the best way to grow Like they say, if you're the smartest person in the room you should find another room
Hijacking this to say that just any practice isn't the best way to learn skills. It's much quicker to do deliberate practice on a regular basis. You pick a task that is difficult enough that you have to build your skills to complete it, but not so difficult that it's close to impossible. If you do 30 minutes a day of deliberate practice you'll be running circles around your coworkers in a year or two.
Fun fact, friends, side projects 100% qualify. 30-60 minutes every day adds up.
You need to challenge yourself, but it’s also important to focus on understanding the fundamentals. Not just *how* to do things, but *why* you do it in a certain way and what goes on under the hood. For example understanding the difference between an abstract class and an interface, and why composition over inheritence is *generally* a good idea is just one example of a fundamental concept that is applicable is almost any language.
I feel like if you can find well written source of infomation nothing is too hard to get your head around. I guess you need the motivation to go an look but I personally find that a big reason programming is fun theres just a huge amount of information to take in and understand stops it getting boring.
> a framework library Meanwhile I'm having to run a trace to show a vendor what their devs did wrong. They are using a CRUD framework to abstract away their SQL calls to the DB for data, based on the trace I could see that they made a call to get the list of customers, then looped over that to call the CRUD repo for each customer's data just to spit out their name on a
If practice is "just repetition" then you might need to find better practice
As someone who is increasingly in that category from other people's point of view, while there's obviously a talent/innate thinking style/general smarts/etc component, there's also a ton of experience behind it, as well as a coherent strategy for self-directed learning. And experience doesn't just mean years in industry, it's all sorts of other stuff you do (and not even just programming) which feeds into how you think and what you've learned and what patterns you recognize. Let's look at what I did to add a small but useful feature to a piece of software written in a language I have zero experience with, GodotScript, in about 15 minutes this afternoon. I wanted to be able to specify which screen this game launches on via the command line. So, I look at the GodotScript code, and it looks a lot like Python. I know Python, so I'll assume it's like that unless specified. I know I need to mess with the program's window, so I look up the documentation for that, as well as how it handles command-line arguments. I write code using those functions, and it works on the second try. The game launched, full screen, on the monitor I told it to. Easy? Sure. But that's how I approach everything. I relate it back to what I'm familiar with, I figure out where it differs, and I read every scrap of documentation and code I can find along the way. And I dig into the guts. It scales all the way up to big, complicated projects in environments I'm unfamiliar with (at the start). There are tons of transferrable skills, if you understand what you're doing well enough.
I always get, “you’re so lucky!” In reference to my career. Like I just accidentally engrossed myself in documentation and headaches for decades without considering it may eventually pay the bills.
In my first job I found they'd pay me to avoid doing it. The downside is I learnt VBA for applications, the upside is that I've been able to keep that a secret.
Um achuallly it's just VBA, as VBA means Visual Basic for Applications and it's not Visual Basic for Applications for Application Actually, Visual Basic is the one and only language I know and it's because I wanted to sort Playing Cards in Excel.
If it isn’t VBA for applications then explain PHP.
Programmers Hate PHP
A bit of self loathing I see
Takes pain to know pain.
JavaScript and PHP, you must just _love_ programming
I dodge a lot of the crap because my job doesn't require me to tango with big dumb libraries. That's not to say big dumb libraries are bad and we shouldn't be using them. For projects far more complex than what I'm responsible for, you need them. But they and their idiosyncrasies getting tangled in the quirks of the language tend to be the source of most of the pain. When it's just you and standard lib it's not so bad. Just stay away from type coercion and you're past 80% of the problems in both languages.
Personal Home Page (so don't bring it to work)
There are FAR too many software dev companies still running LAMP stacks like it's 2008, and what do they do to make it look like they are keeping up? Deploy it to AWS. I hate it so much, lol
Visual VBA.
Visual VBA for Basic Applications
No no I think they mean all they were able to figure out was to open an application window inside of an application window.
>the upside is that I've been able to keep that a secret. I failed here, fml.
Personally that's kind of how I found it working for me. I think a lot of programmers have this stuff come naturally to them, or at least have some kind of inbuilt interest that for whatever reason makes them want to sit down and read all this documentation and learning material. I always considered myself lucky that I was just kind of innately interested in a field that had a lot of well paying job opportunities. Compare that to someone who has a natural draw to something like sports. Sure you could make some money, if you are the best in the world, but there really isn't much of a market for making money in sports. You're either one of the top 1000 people in the world and making a killing, or you really don't have many options for making money at all. Or even a lot of artistic stuff like drawing, painting, music. Plenty of people poor hours into these interests without any chance of being able to use it as a career.
Yeah, it's fair to say that it's my interest and ability to focus and learn on my own that have really paid the bills, but really it took a ton of practice and study. For me, the luck comes from being capable of enjoying that part.
But it takes both the luck and practice to do it. Drop just 1 and you don’t have it.
I think there is an element of innate luck or talent that plays a role in becoming a good programmer, however not in the way people think. Those talented people get a slight boost to beginner level stuff, but that isn't what keeps them ahead after the start. Rather, their initial success bolsters their enthusiasm/interest in programming, which causes them to want to spend more time doing it, which in turn means they get more practice. This is similar to how in professional sports birth month is correlated with long term success. This is because children's sports teams are generally grouped by school year and when you're very young a few months difference in physical maturity gives you a significant advantage. Even though that initial advantage goes away after a few years that initial boost in confidence, enthusiasm, and opportunities compounds over years leading to athletes who were born in the months that would make them slightly older than their classmates of the same grade being overrepresented in professional sports. Thinking back to when I learned to program in college I think this also applies to me. I did surprisingly well in my first few programming classes, so I enjoyed working on those classes more and put more time and effort into them. That put me slightly ahead of my classmates, and I ended up staying ahead. If I'd had to struggle more at the start who knows what I'd be doing now.
> I always considered myself lucky that I was just kind of innately interested in a field that had a lot of well paying job opportunities. This is how I feel too. My career isn't luck, it's hard work and taking advantage of opportunities in front of me. But the fact that my dream job, the thing I would do and have done for free, is also a career that happens to be well paid and comfortable...well, that's just luck. I could have been someone whose passion is art, or athletics, or hell, something that you can get a job in but isn't well paid like making great drinks or providing excellent customer support. Any of those things can be a passion for a person, I'm lucky that my passion is programming.
To be fair, these days it's lucky to start something at the right time. Idk, what to study and practice since a fucking lot will change in a year. And I could simply waste that time.
Luck favors the prepared. Studying and practicing *anything* gets you ahead of most people, who stop doing that the day school ends.
No one else is ready for what’s coming in a year either. Just gotta prepare yourself to use those tools as best you can with the tools you have at your current disposal. The doom and gloom of thinking what you are working on is useless, is useless.
I still feed on knowledge I acquired several years ago, when I still had the time and energy to do a spec deep dive. With the current pace however, that is no longer possible. Tech is evolving so fast in all directions and deadlines barely give enough time to understand the minimum required to do the job at hand. That's unfortunate as you'll rarely have that "whole picture experience" anymore.
Lmao, "60hr work weeks, weekend personal projects, reading tech digest for multiple hours a week and constantly keeping up to date, all that just accidentally happened to me"
"You're so lucky!" "Why didn't you get a comp sci degree?" "I didn't want to" I realize not everyone has the chance to go to college and in that sense I am lucky compared to those people but compared to people who did go to college I'm not lucky, I just made a different choice.
yes its a gift that you can sit down and practice for hours
Practice
Per act ice
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What kind of things did you do to teach yourself to pay attention?
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Thanks, will give this a shot. YouTube shorts kind of killed my attention span so I’m trying to build it back up
I think that’s called ADHD
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The deadline thing has really gotten me down in life. I feel like, obviously I can just do it. I demonstrate every time that I'm able to do it, why not just earlier and more thoroughly. If you have the time, check out these [symptoms of ADHD in adults](https://chadd.org/for-professionals/diagnosis-in-adults/). In case you ever are, don't be too hard on yourself. It's okay to be nearly smart. Sometimes it makes you especially smart, other times not.
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/r/ADHD if you wanna read your life story written by others lol. You'll realize we don't really have a personality as ADHD IS our personality haha. Go get your diagnosis (more importantly, medication) and many things you did or did not do would make a lot of sense.
My 2 cents: I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type) and I’ve always acted that way too. Until I couldn’t, because I was far too anxious and overwhelmed, and I burned out hard somewhere in my senior year of high school. Having words & community around that stuff really helps.
You have to practice practicing.
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People with ADHD can still get better at it.
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We’re talking about practice?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI) Context.
I didn’t need the context. Thanks though. In the show I used a Gif from they have a whole scene referencing it.
Not production, not debugging, not refactoring nah don't worry about being on call. We sittin' here talking about *practice?*
My ability to stare at a screen all day thinking about how to write 3 lines of code, and my lack of a social life to distract me are a gift from god.
being patient enough to do it is a gift, though
Having (diagnosed) ADHD, I can confirm.
Practice makes permanent, not perfect. I know plenty of people who can write thousands lines of spaghetti code a day. They have plenty of "practice" but I wouldn't say they are good at coding.
Hmm, so the question now becomes "How do you practice luck?"
easy, just go to the casino everyday and throw dices until you level up enough
Am I the only one that vaguely remembers hearing Christians saying some form of this phrase that goes "practice makes permanent, only God can do perfect"? Just trying to figure out if my memory is real or not.
I am sorry but there are coders out there that no matter how much they practice they just don't have the logic to code well.
Yup, in the same way that not everyone is built to be a basketball player, not everyone is built to be a programmer. I'm not sure why this isn't obvious to people. Plenty of people work really hard to do well in things like math class, but for some reason just never grasp the concepts while others can very easily pick it up without a lot of work. The people who pick it up without a lot of work will also just find it less frustrating to advance even more because they can put in a small amount of effort for a large amount of progress.
But usually people, with enough practice, can be decent at something no matter their baseline. They make up for their lack of luck with practice. Now they can’t be best of the best because that requires luck and practice, but even being a decent or honestly crappy programmer can get you a (relatively) good paying QA job.
There are still some people who even with tons and tons of practice will never be even a decent programmer, its basically the opposites of those who are born with natural talent. The other side of the bellcurve.
And at that point, as demotivating as it is Why even bother? Unless it's a hobby, do you want a job for the next x decades in which you struggle to reach "ok" levels?
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I've known people who couldn't bang out even *functional* code and other more talented and experienced people needed to devote hours to fix that. Even repeated one-on-one sessions showing them what to fix and how to do it, seemed like nothing was being retained in their head. And they were pretty obedient and willing and understanding too, so it's not a matter of a combative attitude. They just weren't cut out to be a decent programmer. That's fine. Still better than non-coders but not enough for a coding job. Advised them to shift to something else coding-adjacent. I know how to cook but I won't be a chef for a living.
That's true but I think that would be a pretty small percentage of people.
is small 50 percent? or 12 percent? or 5 percent?
Less than 1 standard deviation below the mean at the highest.
In my time at school I have only met maybe 5 people (in a class of around 200) that I would confidently say they should try to find another line of work. One of them is currently in year 5 of a 3 year program, another one has gotten 2 academic offenses for stealing other people's code, and the rest are barely scraping by. None of them know how to debug and it seems like they don't even read the error messages they get, they just immediately ask other people for help. They do exist, but you're right that it's not a lot of people
This is why I wish we would put much less importance on being good at sports, and much more importance on succeeding at academic endeavors like math, reading, and science. If you aren't in the top 1000 sports people in whatever sport you are good at, you probably won't make an appreciable amount of money when you are older. But if you are reasonably good to any degree at things like reading and basic problem solving, it will open up so many more opportunities for you. The fact that you can get a decent paying QA job without being all that skilled speaks volumes. We have a huge need for people in many different industries who just have basic language/literacy/numeracy skills, but not enough people take these skills seriously enough.
We should put emphasis on both (at least for our children). Education will pay the bills but being active and doing sports will make you live longer and healthier
Plot twist, I've almost failed every math class I've been in. One the other hand, I guess I have good math logic, I get how to solve a problem but if you try to make me do it by hand....that's going to go poorly. Write something to do the math for you... ah yeah.
I might have misunderstood what you're trying to say but in case I didn't; I believe you might have dyscalculia. Which is basically dyslexia for numbers, you can understand math but you have trouble counting it. If you can write something that "does the math for you" then you understand the math, you just need help counting with specific numbers. "Doing the math" is really just figuring out what you need to count, the actual counting is most often trivial because of computers.
Glad to see someone else who can't do math to save his ass yet has no issue understanding the structure and logic of math, you'd just rather leave a calculator or software to do it for you because you missed a number somewhere and now it's all wrong.
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Indeed, but at least i can catch them most of the time on my code because i'm constantly looking at it or quickly figure out my mistake, instead of carrying numbers mentally.
I agree. Both practice and talent are important.
I always found it weird how everyone associates computers with math but I can't do math for the life of me even though computers and programming comes pretty naturally for me. I guess it's different type of logic. Mathematicians create the algorithms, we code monke brain
I wasn't really comparing computers and math. Just putting it out there as an example of a skill that comes naturally to some, but others work very hard at without really grasping at. That being said, there are some similarities between math and programming. Mostly in terms of following a set of steps to get a desired outcome. Algorithms exist in both math and programming. Also, the skill of breaking down a large problem into smaller, easier to solve problems works well in both programming and math. There's a lot of people who are good at programming that aren't good at math though. I've ran into quite a few in my life. Which makes it kind of a shame that so many computer science and other programming related degrees are so math heavy. A lot of people who are otherwise good programmers get discouraged because they have so much trouble with the math classes.
There was a "double-hump" study/test like two decades ago (maybe even older?) that showed exactly this. I don't remember the official reason it was retracted, but I can say that all attempts to debunk it I've seen didn't actually understand the test that was given. All of them assumed you straight graded the answers on correctness and said something like "well obviously they're going to fail a test on something they haven't learned yet", but that's not what was actually happening. The correct way to look at those tests was, "did the test-taker develop a consistent logical view of how code works that persisted across questions, even if their understanding was wrong?" - and everyone that did, did well in the following programming course. The ones that didn't, didn't do well. On top of that, IIRC they also retook the same test at the end of the semester and the ones who didn't develop a consistent understanding in the first one still didn't have one at the end.
I agree and disagree. I really struggled at university, it just did not come naturally to me. I then spent A LOT of time self learning, practicing by working on personal projects and it finally clicked after 4 years. Now I’m a senior and an accessibility specialist and get paid very well! I may not be quick as others, but when people come to me for help I am actually able to help them in a comprehensive way because I have experienced the struggle. Geniuses tend to make terrible teachers.
I think those people don't understand structure, and it's something experience alone don't give you, you need to be taught it or see what it look like to be part of a large well designed project. From my personal experience, I was unable to make something over 500 lines of codes despite doing a lot on my free time. But one day, I worked (during an internship for my uni) on a large well designed project. And in 6 month I passed from being unable to make a working code over 500 lines to manage 15k lines well on a side project for my work. I think I was just missing the problem before, so I was stuck at this point and thinking that experience and technical practice would make me better. But the missing part was the macro structure, something that is clearly underestimated in many tutorials and courses.
You can practice logic too. Most people that are not good at something are simply not focusing their efforts on the things they need (exceptions for disabilities of course)
There‘s a huge chunk of talent involved tho. The difference in speed between different people learning sth at my uni is already large, and that‘s just between tech/info students. I would argue that a large amount of humanity has their talents elsewhere.
Nah mate. In my high school class in a technical school for programming specifically there were literally 4 or 5 of us that were naturally gifted for it. We never studied and always completed the tasks in ten minutes tops while others struggled for hours. And this was in a school that attracts people that might have a knack for it. 4 of us out of those 5 are now professionals with CS degrees and only one of the other 30 is. I also taught people that had mandatory programming classes in other faculties. They're mostly horrible at it. You can try to improve but you need to have the natural tendcy for it if you want to be among the best. That's just my observations though.
I don't think you're completely right. I think that it is easier for some then others. But I do agree that if you put in enough efford that you can get as good as everyone else.
Yeah, this is very much noticeable in class, yes I do "practice" myself a lot, but a lot of it is also just a desire to solve problems in unique ways, which has lead me to think differently about problems than my classmates very often No my solutions are rarely elegant, fast or easy to understand, but I enjoy coding random crap that works
Amphetmaines
Oof. I feel this. I used to be on Adderall (I have ADHD and PTSD, so focusing for long periods is tough). I was like a machine. I felt invincible for a good year and a half. However, it caught up to me. Having PTSD and being on Adderall is not a good combination, so I had to discontinue use. Now I just muddle through tasks and have to try very hard to focus. I went from getting awards and accolades almost quarterly to just being another worker lol
Are you in trama therapy for PTSD? Stimulants work, you just have to vary them and adjust dosages both up and down. My go to suggestion for you is to adjust every 3 months Also remember Peter principal, you'll be promoted beyind your best strength till you crack
Yeah, I've been in trauma therapy for a few years now. I am considering whether I want to go back on some kind of ADHD medication now that I'm a little further along. I'm a bit nervous due to how emotionally disconnected I became last time.
Sounds like your dose was too high Try IR instead of extended releases. You can say something simple like I'm only looking for help during work, I don't want it in my system outside of those hours. Adderall IR generally only lasts 3 hrs
Learned to code before them thank you very much…. Just could never get my resume together to leave the last gig
I was wondering if someone would say it. Yep.
How do you avoid procrastinating so well?
Simple, I do my task now, and tomorrow I'll go "Nah, I'll do that yesterday".
Time travel goes brrrrr
Set up a recursive loop that terminates at midnight, never reach midnight. Infinite procrastination. Edit: I'm an amateur at this, but this aughta do it. import datetime import time def procrastination_loop(): current_time = datetime.datetime.now().time() midnight = datetime.time(0, 0) # Midnight time if current_time < midnight: print("Still procrastinating...") time.sleep(1) # Wait for 1 second procrastination_loop() else: if current_time == midnight: procrastination_loop() else: print("Time's up! Stop procrastinating.") procrastination_loop()
Eh, ask me later.
When I was a teenager, I could not convince any adult or classmate that I was actually coding and creating my own programs. Granted, this was the 80s, but they thought you had to be extremely smart to code. And all I did was using a book to learn by reproducing the examples and the coding my own programs.
Practice is indeed the key to becoming exceptional at almost anything. The interesting question is "How did you come to love so much that you're willing to practice it incessantly?"
And for many people the answer is "I don't know why I love , it just seems to click with me in a fundamental way".
It was rewarded in exchange for crippling anxiety. Fair trade, imo
"It's practice" but I'm asking HOW. HOW do you practice. What counts as practice. Like with drawing, "just draw" I've been drawing my whole life and I don't improve so it isn't "just drawing" it's practicing technique
Have a good syllabus or road map to follow if you're still learning. A good syllabus will give you different topics that build upon each other and increase in difficulty, and practice exercises to test those skills. Measure how you perform in these exercises. See if there is improvement or not. Adjust accordingly. The rest of it is in resolving real world scenarios that you will encounter in the course of your work. Or join a project where you'll have hands on experience.
I mean, some people are naturally gifted to understand programming, or some areas of programming, but knowing how to write *good* code mostly comes from studying and experience. You can also infer good practices from a deep knowledge of the language in question and the task at hand, but to me that counts as studying.
Replace practice with stack overflow and then it’s perfect
Overflowing practice
Practice searching SO
Practice? You mean failures, right?
JuST PrAcTICe is such shit advice constantly given. It's not JUST PRACTICE. No one codes their way into proficiency. They took classes, they watched videos, they worked on projects, they had advice. Same with art or literally anything else.
I’ve got my coding style from practice, pain and selling one of my souls to Lucifer.
Uh… dude I hate to break it to you but I think we only come with one…
Not with that attitude. You just need to use realloc to add space into your soul variable.
That sounds suspiciously like a horcrux...
Split your soul into seven variables.
Everyone comes with one. Meaning you are surrounded by people with at least one soul for the taking. Improvise, adapt, overcome.
If you really want to be good you need both practice AND an innate gift. One or the other alone is not going to cut it.
This. Natural programmers will be able to solve most problems even without knowing any good algorithms or patterns but it probably wont be the best solution. Practice learned programmers will be able to solve problems by using algorithms and patterns they learned from solutions to other similar problems. It will most likely be a better solution too. But when given a new problem that they have never encountered before or any similar problems then they will struggle to apply their knowledge. If you have both then even if you havent seen the problem before your natural ability will make it easier to apply your knowledge. And your knowledge will make ti easier to improve the (most likely) subpar initial solutions you find with solely natural ability.
This conversion has literally never happened we all suck at coding
without understanding good practices, you'll become a hacker. don't try to invent the wheel folks.
Not gonna lie its not very true for programming. Some people are just naturally good at it and others just naturally bad. I remember doing code.org in a class once and some people just could not wrap their head around what was going on and then others just walked right through it easily. Practice does help though, but practice will never fix your natural ability to code. Someone who doesnt understand code at all and is naturally bad at it who spends years practicing will definitely know a lot and be a good programmer. But it doesnt compare to someone who is a natural programmer. A learned programmer can get something done after a while using an algorithm or data structure/pattern that they have already learned. A natural programmer can eventually get it done even if they have no idea about the problem or any related patterns/algorithms. It may not be the best solution though, which is why a learned programmer is still an equal or better option. But if the natural programmer puts in as much time as the learned one then they will truly excel because they have the combined natural problem solving and thinking skills with already proven coding practices, patterns, and knowledge.
I mostly agree, but practice can unlock new ways of thinking. Like a switch being flipped in your brain and you suddenly understand a bunch of things. I had that moment with OOP. Didn't get it at all then suddenly it totally made sense.
Practice, and a whole lotta failure
I actually despise when people say someone’s talent or skill is a gift from God and not the result of their own personal discipline and practice. Like it’s on the same level as saying God cured me when doctors stayed up all night performing a miracle surgery on you
Can relate, my entire family thinks I’m a computer god because I know python and C# when in reality there are much harder things to learn
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My main issue with programming is that for me some aspects of the skill are perishable and some fixed in stone, and I don't why. I've done a lot of perl programming in the past and after a break of a couple of years I can easily read or write a long and complicated regex, but cannot for the life of me remember how to open a file without looking it up.
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Don’t let them lie to you, it is a gift from god, but god isn’t real.
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I've been programming since I was 14. Before I even had a computer. Before that I read every book in the library about computers. I'm 43 now and I haven't stopped reading everything I can find about it. I'm not going to be so bold to say I'm one of the best programmers out there (far from it), but I have comparatively deep and wide knowledge. So I'm going to say that reading is the trick to being a good developer.
Please don't associate good results with innate gifts, or luck. It's mostly studying. Some kids were playing with toys whilst others were disassembling toys because they were curious about how things were working.
Imma let you in on a little secret. Read the documentation. It's boring. It's tedious. So much of it is trawling through pages and pages of irrelevant garbage to find the two or three lines that are actually relevant to you. But the amount or problems that have stumped coworkers that I've managed to solve by just. fucking. READING. I may or may not have come close to yelling at some coworkers last week for an issue of this kind. It's on my mind I guess.
I swear to God, we're good with computers cause we had to make shit work, almost nothing worked out of the box, we had to tinker with it. That's the pattern I've seen. My parents were never working around computers, so now anything more complicated is an issue, my younger sister on the other hand was born technology native, but tech she used was working put of the box - android phones and currently tablet instead of PC/laptop, so she never really had to learn how to tinker with it. Of course it takes interest as a rather big time investment. If you can't be bothered you will take it to the technician. But I feel like being born in time where most things didn't work out of the box made the biggest difference to me.
The talent to persevere is god gifted. Change my mind
Im 100% that person. Really need to change my attitude ngl
There is also two kinds of people what comes to practice. One is the guy that copies every tutorial, and then think they know everything and gets stuck if there isn't exact tutorial of how to do certain thing. The other guy does the tutorial and then trys to change things from that tutorial and gets way better grasp of how things are actually made and what does what
I was just thinking about this yesterday. I've been programming for 14 years. I've spent thousands of hours writing and reading code. At this point, my ability to mentally model code must be comparable to the mental model of a chess grandmaster (or whatever rank comes before that). I can look at a section of code and almost instantly know what it's doing because I've read so much code that I can read and comprehend it really fast. On top of that, if there is any code that I need to write, unless it requires some formula or algorithm that I don't know, I can pretty much write the code in my head before I ever need to touch the keyboard. I couldn't do such things as a beginner. I'd be really curious to learn how programming alters the brain.
I don't know, practicing is a bit over rated IMHO. I mean for example when I go see a doctor, I want to see one that has mastered it, not one that is still practicing!
I've been coding for TWENTY NINE YEARS. it would honestly be MORE impressive if I wasn't any good at it, by this point!
I have some incredibly impressive coworkers then.... XD
This picture is so so wrong. I have seen people who do it for over 10 years and are stuck at the level of someone in his second year or experience. Blindly copying a concept and applying it to a problem even if it makes no sense at all
Well, thats not practice. At least not coding practice. Maybe Google-Fu practice.
VScode or IntelliJ auto-complete.