4 ms·

Damn, all these happens in a mere FIVE days? Really shows how far I need to grow as a developer lol

by kajaktum 5y ago

otherme123 5y ago
And still you'll always find a guy that claims he would have found the bug in 5 minutes.
- rendall 5y ago
  Bingo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216076
  - Jensson 5y ago
    And that comment is very helpful and informative so I think it is great we have people like that posting! Not sure why anyone would call them out.
  - DougBTX 5y ago
    The difference is between working out something from scratch vs recognising something you’ve seen before. The second will be much faster, but it depends on experience, not talent.
  - CuriousCosmic 5y ago
    Like others have already mentioned, that's a developer who saw the blood on the walls. They've likely seen this issue before and know the signs to look out for. It doesn't make them any smarter but it does mean they are wiser/more experienced with this tech stack. As a personal example, my team sees me as the consult for all the arcane fuckery that you find as a result of unusual C++ behaviour or build system issues. This doesn't make me a good dev but it does mean that I've been through my paces there and bled my share. But at the same time I'm practically a blind, helpless child wrt most of the JVM or web tech stacks. IMHO my colleagues are wizards for being able to make heads or tails of issues in those spaces. Point being, this isn't a matter of "Oh I could solve that in seconds", it's a matter of "Oh god I remember dealing with this type of issue. Here's the cause and how to fix & avoid it".
    - vardump 5y ago
      "Like others have already mentioned, that's a developer who saw the blood on the walls. They've likely seen this issue before and know the signs to look out for. It doesn't make them any smarter but it does mean they are wiser/more experienced with this tech stack." This. Exactly right.
- praptak 5y ago
  And he's probably right. And it also doesn't mean anything. There are thousands of geeks reading an interesting debug report. It is not very surprising to find one who'd think of the right idea as the first thing.
  - otherme123 5y ago
    You are probably right. But also in this field I have found a lot, and I mean A LOT, of one-uppers. When the annoying bug appears, everybody is busy and everything other than the bug is top priority. Then you bite the bullet, fight the bug, and eventually get it fixed. Suddenly the one-uppers show up, ask you "what was it?", and whatever you answer they already suspected it as soon as they read the symptoms, and explain why your solution is suboptimal. I remember the time that I "solved" a slow database query that was annoying everybody for weeks just by creating an index. Everybody was avoiding the issue like the plague, probably out of fear that it was something serious, but after I created the index (something all of them could do in their sleep), one-uppers showed up to 1) claim that "it was obviously a bad index" and 2) that the index I created could be done better. My point is that claiming "I knew it" adds absolutely nothing. Claiming that it could be solved in 5 minutes or in a better way, adds even less, turning a moment of deserved proudness into fuel for your imposter syndrome. What really adds is fixing the bug and write a beautiful post explaining the process.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- m_mueller 5y ago
  maybe, but to get there it takes a lifetime. (paraphrasing Picasso here)

Damn, all these happens in a mere FIVE days? Really shows how far I need to grow as a developer lol

otherme123 5y ago

And still you'll always find a guy that claims he would have found the bug in 5 minutes.

rendall 5y ago
Bingo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29216076
- Jensson 5y ago
  And that comment is very helpful and informative so I think it is great we have people like that posting! Not sure why anyone would call them out.
- DougBTX 5y ago
  The difference is between working out something from scratch vs recognising something you’ve seen before. The second will be much faster, but it depends on experience, not talent.
- CuriousCosmic 5y ago
  Like others have already mentioned, that's a developer who saw the blood on the walls. They've likely seen this issue before and know the signs to look out for. It doesn't make them any smarter but it does mean they are wiser/more experienced with this tech stack. As a personal example, my team sees me as the consult for all the arcane fuckery that you find as a result of unusual C++ behaviour or build system issues. This doesn't make me a good dev but it does mean that I've been through my paces there and bled my share. But at the same time I'm practically a blind, helpless child wrt most of the JVM or web tech stacks. IMHO my colleagues are wizards for being able to make heads or tails of issues in those spaces. Point being, this isn't a matter of "Oh I could solve that in seconds", it's a matter of "Oh god I remember dealing with this type of issue. Here's the cause and how to fix & avoid it".
  - vardump 5y ago
    "Like others have already mentioned, that's a developer who saw the blood on the walls. They've likely seen this issue before and know the signs to look out for. It doesn't make them any smarter but it does mean they are wiser/more experienced with this tech stack." This. Exactly right.
praptak 5y ago
And he's probably right. And it also doesn't mean anything. There are thousands of geeks reading an interesting debug report. It is not very surprising to find one who'd think of the right idea as the first thing.
- otherme123 5y ago
  You are probably right. But also in this field I have found a lot, and I mean A LOT, of one-uppers. When the annoying bug appears, everybody is busy and everything other than the bug is top priority. Then you bite the bullet, fight the bug, and eventually get it fixed. Suddenly the one-uppers show up, ask you "what was it?", and whatever you answer they already suspected it as soon as they read the symptoms, and explain why your solution is suboptimal. I remember the time that I "solved" a slow database query that was annoying everybody for weeks just by creating an index. Everybody was avoiding the issue like the plague, probably out of fear that it was something serious, but after I created the index (something all of them could do in their sleep), one-uppers showed up to 1) claim that "it was obviously a bad index" and 2) that the index I created could be done better. My point is that claiming "I knew it" adds absolutely nothing. Claiming that it could be solved in 5 minutes or in a better way, adds even less, turning a moment of deserved proudness into fuel for your imposter syndrome. What really adds is fixing the bug and write a beautiful post explaining the process.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
m_mueller 5y ago
maybe, but to get there it takes a lifetime. (paraphrasing Picasso here)