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>> full teams can and have built huge java projects just by using the intellij project wizard and maybe a tiny bit of Gradle from stack overflow. > They are th

>> full teams can and have built huge java projects just by using the intellij project wizard and maybe a tiny bit of Gradle from stack overflow. > They are the kind of programmers who have a very narrow range of abilities, and whenever they see a problem outside those abilities, they get completely lost. How does one follow the other? How does not learninging unnecessary skills hinders ability to solve new problems? If skill is really needed later one person from the team can learn it and share most important bits of knowledge. If skill is not needed now why learn it? YAGNI can also be applied when learning things. I find that not understanding how compilers works or how to use them in low level tasks is minor problem when developing. I never met developer who had problem like that. Much bigger problem during developing is not listening to and understanding your users and IDE will not help you with that. This is much better skill to learn than compiler CLI.

kaba0 5y ago
A great rule of thumb I’ve read on HN is that a great developer is one who understands at least one layer of abstraction below where he/she works (but 2 is better). That doesn’t compiler intrinsics if you are programming in high level languages, but it does include in my opinion the general tooling of the language, its way of execution, etc.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  I call it n-1 rule and IMO it can be generalized to any creative/craft profession. A great driver understands how engines work. A great wood carpenter understands about different kinds of Timbers and their properties.
kelnos 5y ago
> YAGNI can also be applied when learning things. I don't think that's true. I think learning things that are related to your work will almost always make you better at your work, even if you don't use that specific knowledge directly. Human brains are big pattern matching machines, and the more data you can feed it, the better it will be at looking at problems and truly understanding them. > I find that not understanding how compilers works or how to use them in low level tasks is minor problem when developing. I'm not saying that you need to understand enough to build your own toy compiler (though that can also be very useful in understanding how to write better programs). But at least understanding it from a basic level, like "javac takes in my source code, turns it into some kind of machine-readable intermediate representation, does optimizations, and outputs bytecode" is something that I expect every Java programmer to know.
cute_boi 5y ago
"How does not learninging unnecessary skills hinders ability to solve new problems?" I disagree here. Life is not so easy that you can ignore many problems. If you don't know certain skills you don't know the best way to solve it and it can lead to various problem. Its like saying why learn chemistry, advance math, physics in high school when you might not even use them other than few simple formula and if you need them just learn it from team. I don't think this is how real world works.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > Its like saying why learn chemistry, advance math, physics in high school when you might not even use them other than few simple formula and if you need them just learn it from team. I don't think this is how real world works. the point of learning all that in high school is not to learn about these things specifically, just to teach you how to learn things fast so that you can easily learn what's useful when you work. No one cares about what you learned in chemistry class at 15 y.o, it's all approximations if not outright wrong stuff sometimes and it does not matter in the slightest.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Hard disagree. While indeed atomic models taught in school are way too simplistic, it’s a much better world view to vaguely remember than not knowing anything about molecules/atoms. The same for biology, and we should indeed push for somewhat stronger education in most countries (as is apparent from stupid antivaxxers), as having at least the correct mindset on scientific things is exceedingly important.
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      The correct mindset to "not be an antivaxxer" definitely does not correlate with raw knowledge. Proper philosophy and logical reasoning classes are infinitely more efficient for that, though a bit more background in statistics and probabilities would also likely help as it seems that a lot of people struggle with that.

kaba0 5y ago

A great rule of thumb I’ve read on HN is that a great developer is one who understands at least one layer of abstraction below where he/she works (but 2 is better). That doesn’t compiler intrinsics if you are programming in high level languages, but it does include in my opinion the general tooling of the language, its way of execution, etc.

vishnugupta 5y ago
I call it n-1 rule and IMO it can be generalized to any creative/craft profession. A great driver understands how engines work. A great wood carpenter understands about different kinds of Timbers and their properties.

kelnos 5y ago

> YAGNI can also be applied when learning things. I don't think that's true. I think learning things that are related to your work will almost always make you better at your work, even if you don't use that specific knowledge directly. Human brains are big pattern matching machines, and the more data you can feed it, the better it will be at looking at problems and truly understanding them. > I find that not understanding how compilers works or how to use them in low level tasks is minor problem when developing. I'm not saying that you need to understand enough to build your own toy compiler (though that can also be very useful in understanding how to write better programs). But at least understanding it from a basic level, like "javac takes in my source code, turns it into some kind of machine-readable intermediate representation, does optimizations, and outputs bytecode" is something that I expect every Java programmer to know.

cute_boi 5y ago

"How does not learninging unnecessary skills hinders ability to solve new problems?" I disagree here. Life is not so easy that you can ignore many problems. If you don't know certain skills you don't know the best way to solve it and it can lead to various problem. Its like saying why learn chemistry, advance math, physics in high school when you might not even use them other than few simple formula and if you need them just learn it from team. I don't think this is how real world works.

jcelerier 5y ago
> Its like saying why learn chemistry, advance math, physics in high school when you might not even use them other than few simple formula and if you need them just learn it from team. I don't think this is how real world works. the point of learning all that in high school is not to learn about these things specifically, just to teach you how to learn things fast so that you can easily learn what's useful when you work. No one cares about what you learned in chemistry class at 15 y.o, it's all approximations if not outright wrong stuff sometimes and it does not matter in the slightest.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Hard disagree. While indeed atomic models taught in school are way too simplistic, it’s a much better world view to vaguely remember than not knowing anything about molecules/atoms. The same for biology, and we should indeed push for somewhat stronger education in most countries (as is apparent from stupid antivaxxers), as having at least the correct mindset on scientific things is exceedingly important.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    The correct mindset to "not be an antivaxxer" definitely does not correlate with raw knowledge. Proper philosophy and logical reasoning classes are infinitely more efficient for that, though a bit more background in statistics and probabilities would also likely help as it seems that a lot of people struggle with that.