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1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than your manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream, but 1
by dustingetz 6y ago
1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than your manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream, but 10 years behind the edge 4) React was made by an OCaml programmer 5) if you want to be that good, learn emerging languages (all of them) 5) don't optimize for money too soon, if you follow these instructions you will quadruple soon enough 6) Whatever your problem is that is holding you back – drinking, eating, whatever – fix it today 7) Learn Clojure
- eyelidlessness 6y agoI like your list, but I’d suggest: 8) learn a statically typed language with a good type system Even if you end up preferring mainstream language X, learning a language that makes you think in expressions rather than operations, and a language that makes you think in contracts rather than knowing the runtime state in your head, is invaluable for learning how to design, structure and maintain a codebase
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- millstone 6y agoAgreed. If you grok a best-of-breed dynamic language (Clojure included), and also a best-of-breed statically typed language, you're in rarefied company. And I would add "Learn C or assembly" to grok mechanical sympathy.
- collyw 6y agoWhat you say sounds interesting but could you give an example of "think in contracts" compared to and example of "knowing the runtime state in your head". Personally I have never really seen the advantage of staticaly typed languages over say Python, but I do rely on the strict typing supplied by a database instead.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoWhat I mean is that static typing makes interface boundaries (modules, function parameters and return types, data structures) explicit, and those boundaries are enforced automatically. Those boundaries become a contract, where a provided interface and its call sites must agree on in order to be run. This is like a million little unit tests you get almost for free (obviously you have to write the types, but they're usually declarative and very expressive). But it also serves as documentation of how any part of your program's state is structured at any point. To the degree a type system is sound, and to the degree your types are appropriately detailed, you can be assured the documentation is correct and up to date as long as the program compiles. This allows you to eliminate the question of "what does this data look like?" when you're reading code, and focus more on things like whether the logic is implemented correctly. Since you mention it, I'll add that Python does have (optional, gradual) static typing, and a lot of work has gone into the type system in recent versions. It's worth spending a little time adding some static types in a project and seeing some of these benefits. When I last worked in Python, you had to run `mypy` to actually fail on static type errors, I don't know if this is still the case. But you could also use an IDE (like PyCharm, surely there are others) which will at least surface static type errors while you work.
- collyw 6y agoI have been using Python type hinting recently, but I don't find it such a big game changer. Maybe I am just used to writing code without it and it will become clearer if I use it more. Like I say I don't like having an untyped database, and the benefits there aren't things that are obvious straight away.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoWhen I last worked in Python, I also didn't get much benefit, but I wasn't using either mypy or an IDE that warns on type errors. While obviously a different language, it wasn't until I worked with TypeScript in VSCode that I really came to appreciate static typing. And after a few years, I don't think I could go back to working without it.
- schrute 6y agoWhat is your reasoning behind the recommendation to learn Clojure? I am generally unfamiliar with it but saw it was a general purpose language. What makes it so valuable to be included in your list?
- hejja 6y agoI'd think anything in the LISP family would qualify
- schrute 6y agoYou must understand the point I am missing. Why learn a language in the LISP family as a young developer? Does it somehow improve you overall?
- NateEag 6y agoOnce you have grokked Lisp, everything else feels weak by comparison, as I understand it. Mostly the appeal is how easy it is to extend the syntax (because there is barely any syntax at all). Disclaimer: I have written a good hunk of Emacs Lisp and also written Scheme professionally, but I have yet to grok macros.
- collyw 6y agoNever used Lisp, but this sounds like a case of offering you loads of cool stuff when writing new code, which in turn will make debugging the code an absolute nightmare. This is based on my experience with mixed metaphor languages like Python. You can do some clever stuff like generating functions dynamically and passing them around, but when you need to debug these bits of code they can be a nightmare. Does Lisp improve on this in any way?
- NateEag 6y agoI believe that macros can increase the complexity of debugging. However, I believe they're much more debuggable than dynamically-generated functions in most languages. There's another layer of translation from your baseline code, but due to the nature of macros, you can usually just step right into them and see the expanded, generated macro code, if my rusty memories of debugging elisp are correct. Here's one person reading about Common Lisp's debugging infrastructure, FWIW.
- hejja 6y agowhat / where is "the edge", in your mind?
- dustingetz 6y agoit’s a git repo sitting unused on some 20-something’s laptop, because anybody rich enough to market it doesn’t know enough to recognize it
- realtalk_sp 6y agoCan you point to some worthy examples of this as proofs of existence? And I mean something truly novel, and not simply a different way to do something we already can do.
- RNCTX 6y agohttps://github.com/steve-chavez?tab=overview&from=2016-10-01&to=2016-12-31 https://github.com/steve-chavez?tab=overview&from=2016-10-01... https://github.com/begriffs?tab=overview&from=2016-10-01&to=2016-12-31 https://github.com/begriffs?tab=overview&from=2016-10-01&to=... How many projects are there to automatically API-ify a database with auth boilerplate today? At least a few well funded ones, one recently funded by YC even. They came up with it in 2015? 2016? and still have a thriving project going with it. Looks like less than 10 people have more than 10 commits in its history: https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest/graphs/contributors https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest/graphs/contributors
- jkachmar 6y agoHaving followed the PostgREST project for years, it’s been wild to see the recent explosion of similar sorts of projects (as you describe); I’d very much believed this was a “solved problem”.
- imtringued 6y agoCouchDB is a database from 2005 that can _only_ be accessed via a REST api.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xrendan 6y agoCan you expand on 5? Why shouldn't you optimize for money as soon as possible?
- XCSme 6y agoProbably because it's easier to quickly grow a free product/platform and then add monetization on top, than have users pay for access or endure a worse ad-cramped experience.
- pathseeker 6y ago>3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream, but 10 years behind the edge I think you're using a weird definition of 'edge' here to mean "things that nobody else knows about" rather than the cutting edge of the industry/academia. Academic publications occasionally float across the front page here that have only been public for a few days. That's pretty much the 'edge' of industry-wide knowledge. If you want to include things that aren't public, that's super vague and sort of pointless.
- zbentley 6y ago> Whatever your problem is that is holding you back – drinking, eating, whatever – fix it today D'oh! Why didn't I think of that?