4 ms·

You don't need to kill a chasing bear to survive, you just need to run faster than your friend.

ak_111 4y ago
With those new interpreted language that are easy to pick and have a low-barrier of entry you are constantly having to run faster than an influx of fresh energetic high school dropouts and boot camp graduates. With less fashionable language that require significant expertise and experience in picking them up like C (understanding the hardware level) and Java (understanding the JVM and OOP concepts) the barriers of entry are much higher and this will mean you have to outrun fewer people in the long run to survive.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "Java (understanding the JVM and OOP concepts)" I am pretty sure that you can programm java without knowing details about the JVM and I would think, that most java programmers do exactly this. I think only in high performance scenarios knowing more is beneficial? But I have not touched java in a long time .. as I have indeed choosen the web as plattform. But I don't feel threatened by the high school kids coming from boot camps. Edit: I know what a pointer is, so I can work closely with wasm libaries. I know algorithms and how to structure data and why I am structuring data this way in this case, so I can adopt in another case. I know how to achieve performant simple code. I know how to debug layers of code with sideeffects over sideeffects. Raceconditions, memory leaks, etc. (All a thing in js, too). Using and understanding the profiler etc. Someone coming from a coding bootcamp, does not know this. He or she might learn it after years of practice, which is allright by me - but they are no direct threat to me, despite that I don't even really know react for example.
  - seniorivn 4y ago
    not feeling threatened doesn't mean you're not under threat. It's entirely possible that between your skill level and those boot campers is a few(dozen) percents of workforce. But at the same time it's entirely possible that if you are not as quickly progressing as the growth of the industry, you could become a part of the same percentile as bootcampers in no time.
    - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
      Just like it's entirely possible you could be hit by a meteorite. Focus on what you can control and let go of that which you cannot.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    A lot of the Java programmers I know professionally know fuck all about JVM internals, etc. Its largely unnecessary unless you have to chase down some extremely subtle bug most of the time. A lot of them are senior or principal product engineers at companies you will have heard of. Whereas with C, its extremely necessary to get into the weeds - otherwise your code just crashes or suffers some memory corruption issue, race condition, etc etc.
  - levesque 4y ago
    It's not only about performance, it's also about maintainability. Codebases written by inexperienced programmers are extremely convoluted, nothing is decoupled and functions are extremely long and do multiple things. Extremely hard code to maintain or add features to.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    > I am pretty sure that you can programm java without knowing details about the JVM yeah that was the whole point of object oriented programming and Java to begin with. You don't need to know the details of the underlying implementation, focus on the problem you're trying to solve.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Which pretty much sums up today's work culture. I was just talking about this same exact thing, yesterday. That's absolutely heartbreaking. In the old days, we would have a team, that would compete, as a team, against other corporations. Our team would stick together, work together, and, quite often, function as a unit; leveraging each others' strengths, and compensating for each others' weaknesses. Nowadays, we look at our team members as "the competition." In fact, we may actually be making plans to move to the other team. But I have written programs in C, that were still in use, 25 years later. I have written programs in PHP, that were still (are still) in use, 15 years later. There'll always be room for the classics. That said, I'm quite looking forward to seeing what I can do with the new AI stuff.
- pc86 4y ago
  The idea that nobody saw their coworkers as competition for a promotion, or bonus, or face-time with the boss in the past, and that there are no teams that stick together and work together today, is fanciful at best.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    These are "Because I can find an exception, your position is invalid." arguments. Not sure I can recall the exact fallacy title, but it's a fairly typical debating tactic.
    - digging 4y ago
      I disagree that there's a fallacy at play here. The GP (GGP) should support their bold claim that "times have changed" and "people/teams aren't the same as they used to be." If anything, that's an extremely common fallacy and is not to be believed without sufficient evidence.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Actually, that's a fairly typical thing to say to someone that's older, and has lived through those times. And I am sorry. Things definitely used to be better than they are now, in some ways, and definitely used to be worse, in other ways (for example, it used to be a very white, very male demographic). It's not my fault that things went the way they did. Folks liked money, so folks built a culture that maximized profit, and eschewed humanity. I am quite sorry about that, but it doesn't change the fact that it was not always so. It's not in my personal interest to go about creating a slideshow on "how things used to be." I know what I know. I lived it. I ran teams, exactly like I described, and I was a proud member of very large, high-functioning teams that stuck together for decades without stabbing each other in the back. Let's just agree to disagree, then, eh?
swader999 4y ago
If your friend is faster, you just wack them in the knee before you start running from the bear.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
This zero sum rhetoric is ridiculous. You are not being chased by a bear.
BehindBlueEyes 4y ago
"You don't need to kill a chasing bear to survive, you just need to run faster than your friend." Problem with this approach is you run out of friends quick. People in bear country cary bear spray, have dogs to scare off bears and electric fences to keep them out. We have tools and culture to not have to deal with/rely on survival of the fittest if we don't let fear control us - whether at work or in nature.

With those new interpreted language that are easy to pick and have a low-barrier of entry you are constantly having to run faster than an influx of fresh energetic high school dropouts and boot camp graduates. With less fashionable language that require significant expertise and experience in picking them up like C (understanding the hardware level) and Java (understanding the JVM and OOP concepts) the barriers of entry are much higher and this will mean you have to outrun fewer people in the long run to survive.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"Java (understanding the JVM and OOP concepts)" I am pretty sure that you can programm java without knowing details about the JVM and I would think, that most java programmers do exactly this. I think only in high performance scenarios knowing more is beneficial? But I have not touched java in a long time .. as I have indeed choosen the web as plattform. But I don't feel threatened by the high school kids coming from boot camps. Edit: I know what a pointer is, so I can work closely with wasm libaries. I know algorithms and how to structure data and why I am structuring data this way in this case, so I can adopt in another case. I know how to achieve performant simple code. I know how to debug layers of code with sideeffects over sideeffects. Raceconditions, memory leaks, etc. (All a thing in js, too). Using and understanding the profiler etc. Someone coming from a coding bootcamp, does not know this. He or she might learn it after years of practice, which is allright by me - but they are no direct threat to me, despite that I don't even really know react for example.
- seniorivn 4y ago
  not feeling threatened doesn't mean you're not under threat. It's entirely possible that between your skill level and those boot campers is a few(dozen) percents of workforce. But at the same time it's entirely possible that if you are not as quickly progressing as the growth of the industry, you could become a part of the same percentile as bootcampers in no time.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    Just like it's entirely possible you could be hit by a meteorite. Focus on what you can control and let go of that which you cannot.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  A lot of the Java programmers I know professionally know fuck all about JVM internals, etc. Its largely unnecessary unless you have to chase down some extremely subtle bug most of the time. A lot of them are senior or principal product engineers at companies you will have heard of. Whereas with C, its extremely necessary to get into the weeds - otherwise your code just crashes or suffers some memory corruption issue, race condition, etc etc.
- levesque 4y ago
  It's not only about performance, it's also about maintainability. Codebases written by inexperienced programmers are extremely convoluted, nothing is decoupled and functions are extremely long and do multiple things. Extremely hard code to maintain or add features to.
- chasd00 4y ago
  > I am pretty sure that you can programm java without knowing details about the JVM yeah that was the whole point of object oriented programming and Java to begin with. You don't need to know the details of the underlying implementation, focus on the problem you're trying to solve.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

Which pretty much sums up today's work culture. I was just talking about this same exact thing, yesterday. That's absolutely heartbreaking. In the old days, we would have a team, that would compete, as a team, against other corporations. Our team would stick together, work together, and, quite often, function as a unit; leveraging each others' strengths, and compensating for each others' weaknesses. Nowadays, we look at our team members as "the competition." In fact, we may actually be making plans to move to the other team. But I have written programs in C, that were still in use, 25 years later. I have written programs in PHP, that were still (are still) in use, 15 years later. There'll always be room for the classics. That said, I'm quite looking forward to seeing what I can do with the new AI stuff.

pc86 4y ago
The idea that nobody saw their coworkers as competition for a promotion, or bonus, or face-time with the boss in the past, and that there are no teams that stick together and work together today, is fanciful at best.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  These are "Because I can find an exception, your position is invalid." arguments. Not sure I can recall the exact fallacy title, but it's a fairly typical debating tactic.
  - digging 4y ago
    I disagree that there's a fallacy at play here. The GP (GGP) should support their bold claim that "times have changed" and "people/teams aren't the same as they used to be." If anything, that's an extremely common fallacy and is not to be believed without sufficient evidence.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      Actually, that's a fairly typical thing to say to someone that's older, and has lived through those times. And I am sorry. Things definitely used to be better than they are now, in some ways, and definitely used to be worse, in other ways (for example, it used to be a very white, very male demographic). It's not my fault that things went the way they did. Folks liked money, so folks built a culture that maximized profit, and eschewed humanity. I am quite sorry about that, but it doesn't change the fact that it was not always so. It's not in my personal interest to go about creating a slideshow on "how things used to be." I know what I know. I lived it. I ran teams, exactly like I described, and I was a proud member of very large, high-functioning teams that stuck together for decades without stabbing each other in the back. Let's just agree to disagree, then, eh?

swader999 4y ago

If your friend is faster, you just wack them in the knee before you start running from the bear.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

This zero sum rhetoric is ridiculous. You are not being chased by a bear.

BehindBlueEyes 4y ago

"You don't need to kill a chasing bear to survive, you just need to run faster than your friend." Problem with this approach is you run out of friends quick. People in bear country cary bear spray, have dogs to scare off bears and electric fences to keep them out. We have tools and culture to not have to deal with/rely on survival of the fittest if we don't let fear control us - whether at work or in nature.