4 ms·

Indeed. As I've had to remind many people over the years, "doing the same basic work you learned in your first year repeatedly for 10 years is not 10 years of

Indeed. As I've had to remind many people over the years, "doing the same basic work you learned in your first year repeatedly for 10 years is not 10 years of experience... it's 10 of the same one year."

benc666 7y ago
There's a term for that ..."expert beginner"
- turk73 7y ago
  Rings true--one of the contract developers I oversee fancies himself quite the programmer and leader but in reality is suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect. He's about the same age as me, but he definitely suffers from having done the same easy work over and over again and doesn't truly challenge himself. Worst of all, he constantly argues with me about things he doesn't completely understand, all the while emphasizing what an expert he is with his "20 years of programming experience." It's a fallacy to throw that down, quite honestly. Problem is, he fools the easily fooled people, which makes my job harder because then I have to go in and explain what is what and why for the the thousandth time, and still I end up with people who don't believe me because I was just undermined. I don't worry about it, if my record there doesn't speak for itself then it doesn't even matter. This guy's latest dick move was playing the race card when he got himself into some trouble. Not cool, buddy.
celticmusic 7y ago
yes, and tomorrow you'll be extolling the virtues of software development where every new project is unique and you learn something new from it, yet somehow this senior person you disagree with just had 30 years of the same experience. This sort of argument is silly and dismissive.
- fallous 7y ago
  Will I, especially since I'm actually the engineer with 30 years of experience? Jumping from new hotness to new hotness isn't a means to achieving real experience, it's often a quick way to 10 of the same one year since you never gain depth of understanding by flitting from one thing to the next. Nowhere did I claim that you must have new projects/tools/stacks/toys/whatever to gain real experience.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    THAT is a strawman.
erikpukinskis 7y ago
I disagree a little. 10 years after you start painting you’re still doing the same thing mechanically: putting paint on the brush on the canvas. But you are in a whole new game. Too many programmers measure themselves by whether they’re leveling up in the tools they’re using and the kinds of problems they’re solving. In some cases I think they’re deluding themselves. They’re on easy mode, creating a sensation of movement for themselves without ever getting into the hard stuff, which is not glamorous, it’s things like naming and restraint and kindness and caching patterns. I have kind of spent my whole career learning how to solve the same problems better. It’s still the same DIVs and HTTP requests I was manipulating 20 years ago. But the game I am playing within an organization and within a platform is fundamentally new. I can see how from the outside it might not look like I have “leveled up” but I think I have leveled up in my methodology.
- fallous 7y ago
  I'd agree with your criticism of tool/new hotness as a bad metric for measuring leveling up. It's too easy to get the dopamine hit from novelty or being busy rather than putting in the real work that provides value. We learn to solve the same problems better because we're exposed to the limitations of our initial naive understanding of those problems and the methods we choose, which may be sufficient in the first year, but over time that understanding becomes deeper and the methods become more elegant, reliable, and maintainable. The wisdom and methodology improvements are necessary components of achieving 10 years of experience, but the 10 years of the same year approach literally is staying at the same level of understanding no matter the number of projects.

benc666 7y ago

There's a term for that ..."expert beginner"

turk73 7y ago
Rings true--one of the contract developers I oversee fancies himself quite the programmer and leader but in reality is suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect. He's about the same age as me, but he definitely suffers from having done the same easy work over and over again and doesn't truly challenge himself. Worst of all, he constantly argues with me about things he doesn't completely understand, all the while emphasizing what an expert he is with his "20 years of programming experience." It's a fallacy to throw that down, quite honestly. Problem is, he fools the easily fooled people, which makes my job harder because then I have to go in and explain what is what and why for the the thousandth time, and still I end up with people who don't believe me because I was just undermined. I don't worry about it, if my record there doesn't speak for itself then it doesn't even matter. This guy's latest dick move was playing the race card when he got himself into some trouble. Not cool, buddy.

celticmusic 7y ago

yes, and tomorrow you'll be extolling the virtues of software development where every new project is unique and you learn something new from it, yet somehow this senior person you disagree with just had 30 years of the same experience. This sort of argument is silly and dismissive.

fallous 7y ago
Will I, especially since I'm actually the engineer with 30 years of experience? Jumping from new hotness to new hotness isn't a means to achieving real experience, it's often a quick way to 10 of the same one year since you never gain depth of understanding by flitting from one thing to the next. Nowhere did I claim that you must have new projects/tools/stacks/toys/whatever to gain real experience.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  THAT is a strawman.

erikpukinskis 7y ago

I disagree a little. 10 years after you start painting you’re still doing the same thing mechanically: putting paint on the brush on the canvas. But you are in a whole new game. Too many programmers measure themselves by whether they’re leveling up in the tools they’re using and the kinds of problems they’re solving. In some cases I think they’re deluding themselves. They’re on easy mode, creating a sensation of movement for themselves without ever getting into the hard stuff, which is not glamorous, it’s things like naming and restraint and kindness and caching patterns. I have kind of spent my whole career learning how to solve the same problems better. It’s still the same DIVs and HTTP requests I was manipulating 20 years ago. But the game I am playing within an organization and within a platform is fundamentally new. I can see how from the outside it might not look like I have “leveled up” but I think I have leveled up in my methodology.

fallous 7y ago
I'd agree with your criticism of tool/new hotness as a bad metric for measuring leveling up. It's too easy to get the dopamine hit from novelty or being busy rather than putting in the real work that provides value. We learn to solve the same problems better because we're exposed to the limitations of our initial naive understanding of those problems and the methods we choose, which may be sufficient in the first year, but over time that understanding becomes deeper and the methods become more elegant, reliable, and maintainable. The wisdom and methodology improvements are necessary components of achieving 10 years of experience, but the 10 years of the same year approach literally is staying at the same level of understanding no matter the number of projects.