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Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers
- terra_t 16y ago+100 This also applies to the 'entrepreneurs' who hang around, wanting to make it big but lacking any ideas about anything useful they could do.
- Swizec 16y agoThere is a surprising number of these. Although I would wager that the ones who hang around wanting to make it big and having lots of ideas as to how, just no useful ones are on the right track. They just have to improve their ideas so they can be useful. The real problem are those who don't even have useless ideas.
- terra_t 16y agoI'm coming at it from a technical background, but something that excites me from a business perspective is developing a business system that is able to efficiently execute plans in a certain space. However, just as I'm about to do that, I find there's one particular plan that's got the potential to make it bigger than all the others, and I make an "all in" bet...
- wccrawford 16y agoI think we've all had a shiny new tool that we are just dying to use, but don't really have a use for it. That's what these posts are. The advice is correct, but could be summed up better: Go work on something. It doesn't matter what, just pick something. Don't ask someone else to give you work to do. That -never- works out without external pressure, like a paycheck.
- SpoonMeiser 16y agoThis is excellent advice.
- nkassis 16y agoMy advice would have been to reinvent the wheel. Yeah it might not add to anything useful but there is an off chance it could. The reason why reinventing the wheel is good is that you have direction as to what you should implement. Trying to do something new all the time isn't possible. I used to build tic tac toe games It was never complete or useful but it helped me learn the tech I was using. Now days creating a blog engine is my new tic tac toe.
- kwellman 16y agoAgreed. I find that when you're actually building something, that's when the great ideas come. You start to think of improvements and new approaches that you just can't think of without first getting your hands dirty.
- billswift 16y agoI haven't done this myself (not enough experience) but I saw a similar idea discussed years ago - for an experienced programmer learning a new language, reimplement something you have already written in the new language. Supposedly, the fact that you had written the first application shows that you understand the problem domain, so you can concentrate on the new language.
- jacobolus 16y agoNot enough experience to make a tic-tac-toe game? No time like the present to try!
- nkassis 16y agoYup, just try it, make the board and how to check if someone won or if it's full, figure out how to get input from the user. Then if you like the language move to implementing a simple ai (start with randomly putting pieces ;p). By then you should know a good chunk (IO, loops, built in data structures ...)
- billswift 16y agoI have never done any graphics at all. All I know is bash and some awk and perl, mostly for text processing. I keep planning to learn more, which is why I read about it a bit, and browse HN, but I have too many other things I want to do too.
- orblivion 16y agoIt's funny because some of us have the opposite problem. Too many ideas, but not that much interest in learning new languages for their own sake. So when it comes down to implementing a new idea, we want it done quickly. We don't want to take the time to try to figure out how to make it in Haskell, and just revert back to Python.
- zephyrfalcon 16y agoI agree, that is the one the (relative) dangers when you are proficient in a language; it is so much easier and faster to write something in the language you already know, rather than having to learn everything from scratch. Of course, it also depends on how much difference there is between old and new languages; a Python expert could probably pick up Ruby in no time, and vice versa; but Python vs Haskell is a different story.
- orblivion 16y agoPython is particularly cozy, I think. It picks up things from other languages, so I don't think there's much it can't do reasonably well.
- orangecat 16y agoYeah, Python is my Blub. I know I should learn stuff like Haskell and Clojure, but I just haven't come across any cases where it's more than a minor inconvenience to make Python do what I need.
- Elite 16y agoI don't see the problem here.
- orblivion 16y agoPart of me is left nagging me for not learning Haskell.
- johnarleyburns 16y agoDrum accompaniment, what a great idea! But can we do it in Visual Object Cobol 98++?
- nihilocrat 16y agoOr you could just make video games. Just be sure to finish them. The mantra in indie/hobby video game development is "finish your games, and if you can't finish, try making something simpler". See also: http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game
- alanh 16y agoSummary: “You should be motivated in the same manner that I am.” Er, what’s wrong with someone looking to non-specifically contribute something to a movement (GNU/Linux) or to improve their skills in a particular language? Not anything, necessarily; they’re probably just young.
- wtracy 16y agoThe point is that with the given strategy, the developer won't be able to contribute anything meaningful to their pet movement. They might learn something, but they won't create something useful.
- stesch 16y ago> Stop and think about all of your personal interests and solve a simple problem related to one of them. That's why there are so many programmer tools and frameworks. :-)
- fady 16y agofresh, eager, programmers should jump into any project that interests them, regardless if its personal or public.
- wtracy 16y agoIndeed. I get the urge as much as anyone else to "build something new and cool" (spend enough time Googling me and you'll see I'm pretty guilty of this) but I think FOSS would be farther along if fewer people tried to start their own projects and instead contributed to existing projects.
- nostrademons 16y agoFor most of the people looking to program something in Haskell or Erlang, programming is their outside interest. Perhaps that's why we get so many compilers written in exotic languages...
- shadowfox 16y agoThough truth be said, some of these languages are very well suited for the sort of tree manipulation that a compiler requires.
- djhworld 16y agoI think I suffer from this problem, I like to compare it to writers block or something like that, my problem is that I want to develop something but I don't know what and get frustrated at having a lack of ideas. This frustration then gets interspersed with furious bouts of development on personal projects that can last 4-6 weeks, and then I go back to another 3 months of doing nothing and hitting my head against a brick wall. Help?
- awfulcoder14 16y ago(Warning: somewhat spam) I'm trying to make a website to solve this: http://somebodybuildthis.com http://somebodybuildthis.com
- daychilde 16y agoYou (and others) may be interested in this reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis
- jonhendry 16y agoThis might seem counter-intuitive, but get a new hobby. By which I mean, if your life as you're living it isn't providing itches that you need to scratch with software, a new hobby might provide some. Or, you might spot an unserved opportunity or market.
- jdoliner 16y agoWhile I think it's completely correct that the best software is produced when a programmer recognizes one of his own needs which isn't being met and decides there's a better way to do it. It's bad to take such a disdainful stance toward programmers in that stage between producing simple self contained projects and software that can be integrated into an OS or other applications. Charting your own course is tough and frustrating. The best advice for aimless but excited programmers in terms of what will help them and the community the most is to join another project. Opensource is an obvious choice since it has a low barrier to entry but an internship at a company could work well too.