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Hot take: I think the programming world created a lot of good and funny ways for knowledge transfer, BUT, it is very rare to find a book that truly push your le

Hot take: I think the programming world created a lot of good and funny ways for knowledge transfer, BUT, it is very rare to find a book that truly push your level to be a top programmer.

wildrhythms 4y ago
Define 'top programmer'. I usually find that such a title is bestowed to people who are probably average at programming, but learned to navigate meaningless internal corporate warfare to position themselves on the 'top', or got lucky and were in around the right people at the right time. No book can teach that.
- mrwnmonm 4y ago
  Knowledgeable enough to reach optimal solutions to low-level problems quickly. Does this definition work?
- Agingcoder 4y ago
  Well, while you can't formally teach the ins and outs of office politics, a lot of it can be explained in simple terms. This is exactly what a friend did for me, and there really are rules, they're just not official, and a lot of the data is local. I personally view it as basically a giant game of negotiation, where you need to know what people want/need, what's useful to the structure, how people will react, and what the constraints are ('x can complain all he wants that he's not getting this and that, he's essentially stuck here because the market is really bad and has no power', 'y wants z, I can help him with this, but it will conflict with t who wants z as well', etc) , all this long term and short term. I think it's especially difficult for engineers, since it's very not black and white, there's no man page, you must talk to people, and it takes a lot of time. I'm not good at it, but there's a huge difference between not having a clue, and having a basic understanding what's happening. I've had colleagues call me before a meeting with person y, since I knew y, and they wanted to know how to approach things, which usually translated into 'what's he/she like/wants?' Strangely enough, aside from the daily political explanation from my friend (to whom I 'll be forever grateful) the one thing which has helped me tremendously has been playing rpgs (games in general actually) with lots of choices, because it's none of them are ideal, and they're all about trade-offs. Edit : I understand that in an ideal world we wouldn't have to do that. But things are often grey. And people are people!

Hot take: I think the programming world created a lot of good and funny ways for knowledge transfer, BUT, it is very rare to find a book that truly push your level to be a top programmer.

wildrhythms 4y ago

Define 'top programmer'. I usually find that such a title is bestowed to people who are probably average at programming, but learned to navigate meaningless internal corporate warfare to position themselves on the 'top', or got lucky and were in around the right people at the right time. No book can teach that.

mrwnmonm 4y ago
Knowledgeable enough to reach optimal solutions to low-level problems quickly. Does this definition work?
Agingcoder 4y ago
Well, while you can't formally teach the ins and outs of office politics, a lot of it can be explained in simple terms. This is exactly what a friend did for me, and there really are rules, they're just not official, and a lot of the data is local. I personally view it as basically a giant game of negotiation, where you need to know what people want/need, what's useful to the structure, how people will react, and what the constraints are ('x can complain all he wants that he's not getting this and that, he's essentially stuck here because the market is really bad and has no power', 'y wants z, I can help him with this, but it will conflict with t who wants z as well', etc) , all this long term and short term. I think it's especially difficult for engineers, since it's very not black and white, there's no man page, you must talk to people, and it takes a lot of time. I'm not good at it, but there's a huge difference between not having a clue, and having a basic understanding what's happening. I've had colleagues call me before a meeting with person y, since I knew y, and they wanted to know how to approach things, which usually translated into 'what's he/she like/wants?' Strangely enough, aside from the daily political explanation from my friend (to whom I 'll be forever grateful) the one thing which has helped me tremendously has been playing rpgs (games in general actually) with lots of choices, because it's none of them are ideal, and they're all about trade-offs. Edit : I understand that in an ideal world we wouldn't have to do that. But things are often grey. And people are people!