5 ms·

From Novice to Master, and Back Again

351 points by walrus 12y ago

segmondy 12y ago
Use it or lose it, it happens to the best of us. There is only so much I can remember at one time, I don't even worry about it, so long as I can find a way to look it up. I wish I had a photographic memory. Knowing that I don't, I don't obsess about remembering the details only the high level over view of things.
- noisy_boy 12y ago
  Typically for short command line options, I've noticed that if I stick with the first character of the word that immediately comes to my mind while contemplating, I'm able to recall it much easier and even after a longer time. Maybe something to do with how my brain is wired so sticking to the natural instinct results in repeatable results. If the option takes the last <n> lines from the file, "tail" immediately resonates so "-t" makes more sense and sticks to memory longer. Of course, with increasing no. of options, this strategy becomes less reliable.
akbar501 12y ago
This article is a good reminder of why writing documentation (and commenting code) is important. Often the reader of your docs is you.
onedognight 12y ago
Given that he is listed as an author for ls, cp, mv, ln, rmdir and yes, yes as well, I can see how he might forget that he wrote su.
petercooper 12y ago
This is the hardcore version of the more common "Google for help on something and get your own blog post/Stack Overflow answer coming up"! :-)
- antjanus 12y ago
  That actually happens to me from time to time and I've learned to look through my own blog posts for answers before venturing out. However, the worst situation is when I google for answer, find that ONLY my own blog post has something relevant and it doesn't answer exactly what I need -.- at that point, I'm like, "Google, I wrote this, I already read it, why don't you have something better to show me?"
- ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
  Yes, and it's comforting to know that even these people need to look up UNIX flags from time to time! Not really surprising, but a bit reassuring nonetheless.
- kyberias 12y ago
  Exactly my thought. This has happened to me once. It was hilarious.
- Hansi 12y ago
  This happens to be about once a year. I always find it equally funny each time though.
xaneem 12y ago
Perks of helping out the open source community :) BTW, the post is from 2013.
bobowzki 12y ago
I did not expect that ending.
- guessbest 12y ago
  I was amazed by this paragraph, "Shortly thereafter, someone came running into the room and ... was worried about an attempted breakin." Just think of a Network Administrator doing this every time there was a root login attempt that failed. They'd get a lot of exercise these days, that's for sure.
  - MatthewWilkes 12y ago
    I saw it happen in 2004. The University of Bristol has some strange options on their machines, such as home directories being globally readable unless you change it yourself (failure to do so isn't a defence if someone plaigarises your work), but the strangest one I saw was the total lack of ulimits on shared machines. Every time someone tried to su the IT staff would show up and ask them what exactly they thought they were up to. That went a long way to instilling the idea that you shouldn't mess about doing things you shouldn't on communal hardware.
    - jackweirdy 12y ago
      > such as home directories being globally readable unless you change it yourself Also the case at University of Birmingham. Must be a default somewhere
      - cja 12y ago
        At Durham University in 2000, "net send hello" at a Windows command prompt caused a message box to appear on every Windows computer on the uni network. I gave myself up to the bewildered IT department immediately.
        noisy_boy 12y ago
        Reminds me off my early days of discovering Unix commands. Except this was on my first job in a Bank running SCO Unix; a decidedly less forgiving environment than a University. I was the unofficial assistant sysadmin (long story) and running banner "hello"|wall in the middle of a busy day at the branch caused a fair bit of confusion. Thankfully we were a young bunch and sysadmin let me off with a somewhat stern warning.
beat 12y ago
"Geez, what idiot wrote this code? Oh yeah, me." I hate that feeling.
- redler 12y ago
  I try to engineer that specific feeling. Working on a very small team, or even alone, I'll intentionally rotate among projects on a timescale of days. When I eventually swing my attention back to a recent project, the additional set of eyes that makes bugs shallower is my own. I'm slightly different in the Ship-of-Theseus sense. If I don't have a sufficiently large team in the space dimension, my best option is to increase its size in the time dimension.
  - beat 12y ago
    Bold approach. That's really good thinking!
- Dewie 12y ago
  I've had the same experience, only with prose (an old forum post of mine).
- kazagistar 12y ago
  This is the oppositie: "What wonderful sexy developer wrote this documentation that was so helpful? Oh, hey, it was me!"
- JOnAgain 12y ago
  I think I hate that feeling because it usually comes up in the context of a bug. Something that's lived in the system for years. It's existed through a half dozen code reviews when related code is refactored. Then some college grad comes in and starts asking all these stupid questions like, "why does this function loop n^2 times and not just return the number 42 every time?" You answer, "Well you see this part here, Billy, this is the important part it ... it calculates ... give me 2 seconds ... ... ... ... fuck."
  - adamtj 12y ago

351 points by walrus 12y ago

Use it or lose it, it happens to the best of us. There is only so much I can remember at one time, I don't even worry about it, so long as I can find a way to look it up. I wish I had a photographic memory. Knowing that I don't, I don't obsess about remembering the details only the high level over view of things.

noisy_boy 12y ago
Typically for short command line options, I've noticed that if I stick with the first character of the word that immediately comes to my mind while contemplating, I'm able to recall it much easier and even after a longer time. Maybe something to do with how my brain is wired so sticking to the natural instinct results in repeatable results. If the option takes the last <n> lines from the file, "tail" immediately resonates so "-t" makes more sense and sticks to memory longer. Of course, with increasing no. of options, this strategy becomes less reliable.

akbar501 12y ago

This article is a good reminder of why writing documentation (and commenting code) is important. Often the reader of your docs is you.

onedognight 12y ago

Given that he is listed as an author for ls, cp, mv, ln, rmdir and yes, yes as well, I can see how he might forget that he wrote su.

petercooper 12y ago

This is the hardcore version of the more common "Google for help on something and get your own blog post/Stack Overflow answer coming up"! :-)

antjanus 12y ago
That actually happens to me from time to time and I've learned to look through my own blog posts for answers before venturing out. However, the worst situation is when I google for answer, find that ONLY my own blog post has something relevant and it doesn't answer exactly what I need -.- at that point, I'm like, "Google, I wrote this, I already read it, why don't you have something better to show me?"
ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
Yes, and it's comforting to know that even these people need to look up UNIX flags from time to time! Not really surprising, but a bit reassuring nonetheless.
kyberias 12y ago
Exactly my thought. This has happened to me once. It was hilarious.
Hansi 12y ago
This happens to be about once a year. I always find it equally funny each time though.

xaneem 12y ago

Perks of helping out the open source community :) BTW, the post is from 2013.

bobowzki 12y ago

I did not expect that ending.

guessbest 12y ago
I was amazed by this paragraph, "Shortly thereafter, someone came running into the room and ... was worried about an attempted breakin." Just think of a Network Administrator doing this every time there was a root login attempt that failed. They'd get a lot of exercise these days, that's for sure.
- MatthewWilkes 12y ago
  I saw it happen in 2004. The University of Bristol has some strange options on their machines, such as home directories being globally readable unless you change it yourself (failure to do so isn't a defence if someone plaigarises your work), but the strangest one I saw was the total lack of ulimits on shared machines. Every time someone tried to su the IT staff would show up and ask them what exactly they thought they were up to. That went a long way to instilling the idea that you shouldn't mess about doing things you shouldn't on communal hardware.
  - jackweirdy 12y ago
    > such as home directories being globally readable unless you change it yourself Also the case at University of Birmingham. Must be a default somewhere
    - cja 12y ago
      At Durham University in 2000, "net send hello" at a Windows command prompt caused a message box to appear on every Windows computer on the uni network. I gave myself up to the bewildered IT department immediately.
      - noisy_boy 12y ago
        Reminds me off my early days of discovering Unix commands. Except this was on my first job in a Bank running SCO Unix; a decidedly less forgiving environment than a University. I was the unofficial assistant sysadmin (long story) and running banner "hello"|wall in the middle of a busy day at the branch caused a fair bit of confusion. Thankfully we were a young bunch and sysadmin let me off with a somewhat stern warning.

beat 12y ago

"Geez, what idiot wrote this code? Oh yeah, me." I hate that feeling.

redler 12y ago
I try to engineer that specific feeling. Working on a very small team, or even alone, I'll intentionally rotate among projects on a timescale of days. When I eventually swing my attention back to a recent project, the additional set of eyes that makes bugs shallower is my own. I'm slightly different in the Ship-of-Theseus sense. If I don't have a sufficiently large team in the space dimension, my best option is to increase its size in the time dimension.
- beat 12y ago
  Bold approach. That's really good thinking!
Dewie 12y ago
I've had the same experience, only with prose (an old forum post of mine).
kazagistar 12y ago
This is the oppositie: "What wonderful sexy developer wrote this documentation that was so helpful? Oh, hey, it was me!"
JOnAgain 12y ago
I think I hate that feeling because it usually comes up in the context of a bug. Something that's lived in the system for years. It's existed through a half dozen code reviews when related code is refactored. Then some college grad comes in and starts asking all these stupid questions like, "why does this function loop n^2 times and not just return the number 42 every time?" You answer, "Well you see this part here, Billy, this is the important part it ... it calculates ... give me 2 seconds ... ... ... ... fuck."
- adamtj 12y ago