"The project begins in the programmer’s mind with the beauty of a crystal. I remember the feel of a system at the early stages of programming, when the knowledge I am to represent in code seems lovely in its structuredness. For a time, the world is a calm, mathematical place. Human and machine seem attuned to a cut-diamond-like state of grace.
…
Then something happens. As the months of coding go on, the irregularities of human thinking start to emerge. You write some code, and suddenly there are dark, unspecified areas. All the pages of careful documents, and still, between the sentences, something is missing.
Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or background. It cannot simultaneously do something and withhold for later something that remains unknown[1]. In the painstaking working out of the specification, line by code line, the programmer confronts all the hidden workings of human thinking.
Now begins a process of frustration.
[1] clarifies how multitasking typically works, which was usually just really fast switching at the time of the book.
To be fair, I had this happen to me once with Nvidia’s open drivers and I switched back to the default… but just once, and either way if you do it properly and you won’t have to worry about this stuff. It was an easy fix to switch back that took all of five minutes away from me—and that’s if you count the boot time. You shouldn’t.
To be fair it took me couple of days to learn the basics of react. But I had years of programming experience, including other frontend frameworks like angular, angularjs, knockoutjs etc.
This is a good point imo. They just don’t know the breadth of it yet. Being experienced also means getting a grasp of the amount of stuff you don’t yet know.
A textbook example of the original meaning of Dunning-Kruger, wherein an inexperienced person is unaware of what they have yet to learn and thus overestimate their existing skills.
To be fair, I know enough first aid and background information to understand some basic medical books, and I can 1000% guarantee that you never want me to treat you for any medical problems.
I don’t have to be a soldier on anyone’s ethical recursion war, so since the default position is set to kill 1 person, that gets done by the problem itself and the whole thing is solved without me having to do anything.
As a further bonus, now the lever people on the next branches are free to get out of the levels and go release the other prisoners.
When I last had to job hunt (2016) - I just jinxed it didn’t I? - I was complimented by interviewers for separately listing “Classroom experience” and “Professional experience”
I think you get a lot of points for a resume that says “I may or may not be the best fit for you, and that’s ok. Here’s accurate information, so you can make that determination for yourself. I trust you.”
programmer_humor
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.