14 ms·

I have no idea what I'm doing

145 points by InternetGiant 12y ago

slayed0 12y ago
Cached version as the page is beginning to load slowly: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IoQN9XYCjTYJ:codon.com/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IoQN9XY...
- sfeng 12y ago
  Yet another argument for building static websites https://eager.io/blog/build-static-websites/ https://eager.io/blog/build-static-websites/
  - tomstuart 12y ago
    It's already a static site, but being on the HN front page is really hammering my tiny VPS's network & IO; there are a lot of large images and videos in the post. Guess I should set up a CDN.
    - mod 12y ago
      Probably even just letting amazon or someone host the images would fix the problem.
engendered 12y ago
This sort of post seems to do well on HN, so to offer a bit of criticism I'd like to posit that often they seem to be a thin veneer over humble bragging. e.g. I don't know what I'm doing, but then neither does anyone else but I am stating it so therefore I'm actually better than them and I have impostor syndrome so that actually makes me better at what I do than you, and everyone who says they know what they're doing suffers from the Dunning–Kruger effect, etc. This has become a bit of a meme -- the whole "I'm better because I claim to be worse" bit.
- Lellagram 12y ago
  So does this mean that we need to come full circle and become worse and being better due to claiming to feel worse? I get where you are coming from, but I think the best point in this somewhat rambly essay is that it is fine to come out and talk about how to deal with these odd mental effects, especially when they are keeping us from getting work done.
  - visakanv 12y ago
    > So does this mean that we need to come full circle and become worse and being better due to claiming to feel worse? Usually when people begin kicking up a dust, the solution is to stop kicking– in this case I think that means to avoid making claims, and focus instead on doing great work!
  - engendered 12y ago
    "it is fine to come out and talk about how to deal with these odd mental effects" When they are sincere, sure. But increasingly they are becoming like the thin girl forever talking about how she feels fat (or, I suppose, the not thin girl declaring that anyone thinner is anorexic). The Dunning–Kruger thing is referenced so frequently on here and other technology sites that it is like the attempt at a great equalizer: People aren't better than me, and the only way they can think they are is the Dunning–Kruger effect. It is some sort of race to the bottom / lowest common denominator equalization thing. I'm not saying that the feeling of inadequacy at times isn't real, but it is becoming a badge and measure of superiority.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - engendered 12y ago
    Or maybe your value/worth as a developer is measured by what you achieve/what you do, and not by constantly trying to jockey relative to everyone else? The constant procession of "PR for why I'm actually better than everyone else" thing is transparent, yet HN falls for it day after day.
treehau5 12y ago
Hey Tom, I just want to say, I have your book, and I find it wonderful.
- jarcane 12y ago
  Was really sad to hear this: "You don’t really make any money by writing a book, but O’Reilly did send me a nice hat" How poorly does O'Reilly pay their authors? A book the size of most of their tomes, and at the prices they charge, should be a 5-figure advance in any other part of the industry.
  - eric_bullington 12y ago
    This is true, but it's important to bear in mind that a relatively high-prestige publisher like O'Reilly can make or break someone's reputation as a high-price consultant. O'Reilly realizes this, and pays their authors relatively poorly. If you want to make significant money as a tech book author, I'm guessing you have to do what Brennan Dunn does, and self-publish your book and market it yourself. I'm guessing that after you've published an O'Reilly book, you could make a pretty nice sum if you do this on your next book.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    Curious about this too. I wonder if he means that you don't really make any money compared to the opportunity cost of all the hours you spend on it, or if you really don't make any money in an absolute sense. Unfortunately, I suspect it's actually the latter due to the relatively tiny size of the target market for such books.
    - lazyant 12y ago
      From other tech book authors it seems it's the former; they work many hours for a year and then they make 20k or that kind of minimum wage money
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
j2kun 12y ago
He remarks in the talk about Lamarck having an incorrect theory of "inheritance of acquired characteristics." From what I understand, recent experiments have actually given some evidence to his theory. I can't remember the particular studies though.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Epigenetics gives credence to the environment having impact across generations. It doesn't really vindicate Lamarck, there are just some quiet echos of his ideas there.
wyager 12y ago
This guy seems to confuse "I sometimes have to think about things" with "I have no idea what I'm doing". Those seem quite different to me.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  Indeed. Working on something for a long time but claiming you have no idea what you're doing is an easy way of not appearing egomaniacal or vain. Especially in our field, when people can be such pompous dickheads.
senthil_rajasek 12y ago
"If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just blindly do it." I can understand the author's use of the Beaver analogy but it may not be the right analogy. Beavers build these dams to keep the water level at a certain height. This not only offers protection from predators but also makes it easy to access food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams They may have poor eyesight but they have a keen sense of hearing. May be he meant that the Beaver does not know why its teeth grow continuously but it uses it to cut down trees and make dams.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Go further - the beaver doesn't know that its building a dam. It just builds because it feels compelled to. Then when the dam is done (the beaver triggers on the sound of water falling and stops when the sound is gone) the beaver reaps some benefit. Over millions of years, beavers that behaved like this prospered. The beaver doesn't know why or even think about it. No more than you think about your particular cell enzyme reactions.
  - jarcane 12y ago
    They'll also abandon perfectly good dams just to move up stream and build another. They're some of the most environmentally destructive critters on earth; like most creatures if allowed to thrive they'll just keep devouring every tree and damming every river until they starve and die off, only beavers can wind up taking whole ecosystems with them.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Depends on your point of view. North America used to be a festering swamp of mosquito-ridden beaver ponds. Built over millions of years. That WAS the ecology. The landscape we see today is unnatural and temporary. We reformed this continent to suit ourselves. Most attempts to protect some bit of land and trees in the name of preservation is ... shortsighted at the least.
javajosh 12y ago
>Nobody knows what they’re doing; ignorance fuels creativity; complex systems are built iteratively. Those are the ideas I want you to remember. Really liked this piece and wanted to add something to it that I hope resonates with HN. I have myself run across all of this, particularly the complexity part, and have heard anecdotal evidence from others that I know, that when one finishes a function or a library of moderate complexity, and you step back from it for a while, and you come back to it, it looks really impressive. It's now no longer something that can be grokked at a glance. It looks complicated, with all kinds of persnickety details. You remember the "why" of certain unintuitive parts - evidence of problems you ran into and had to solve. The code is the product of many hours of iteration - and the code expanded, contracted, and settled into the shape it's currently in - a shape which, if presented to your earlier self, you would say "I created that? Gosh, it looks like something a professional programmer might have made." (or it might look like a horrendous hacky mess, of course.)
- jarcane 12y ago
  This is a thing that I have learned as well. I have done projects that seemed small, and then by the end they were enormous, but I knew them intimately. But when I start a project with the idea of it being that big in my head from the start, I'll get stressed and psych myself out, sometimes from doing it at all. There's something to be said for ignoring the forest for planting the tree, to turn a proverb on it's head.
peterwwillis 12y ago
Recently I found this note on my desk at home. It says “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING”. I don’t remember writing it, but it was in my house on my desk in my handwriting, so I obviously did. He might want to seek some psychiatric help if this persists. So what did it mean? Was it a cry for help? A product idea? A topic for a blog post? Or could it be an idea for a conference talk? The card was a cry for help. This talk is a cry for attention. I’ll begin by showing you some compelling evidence that I have no idea what I’m doing. Well, he definitely proved it with all the completely asinine comparisons in the rest of his talk, but this one is the best: If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just blindly do it. Really. "One of the primary reasons beavers build dams is to surround their lodge with water for protection from predators." [...] "On land, the beaver's short legs and wide body made them slow and vulnerable to their enemies. However, unlike most of their historic predators, beavers are excellent swimmers. As a result beavers evolved to have a strong preference to remain in or very close to the safety of the water. The need for safety is the primary reason beavers build dams to create ponds." -- http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp Sounds like they have a pretty good idea why they build dams. But enough about me. As you’ve seen, I frequently find myself in situations where I don’t know what I’m doing, and I usually hit a brick wall and feel disappointed. But it’s not just me! You have no idea what you’re doing either. Don't go projecting on us, buddy. Most people, when faced with a challenge they're not immediately sure how to solve, will go read a book, or take a class, or ask someone who does know what they're doing. Lying about being able to write a book when you have no idea how in order to make money is not "impostor syndrome", it's merely being an impostor. Dunning-Kruger does not explain or justify a total lack of forethought. All of these animals look remarkably like something in their environment, but none of them has any meaningful understanding of why they look that way. They don’t know what they’re imitating. The stick insect doesn’t know anything about eucalyptus; that’s just what it looks like. Says who? You, the expert? I'm pretty sure an animal who lives on a goddamn plant and looks just like it probably realizes that it's a plant, and that it looks similar, and that if it wants to eat, it should use that plant in order to hunt, so it can live. An interviewer asked Richard Feynman to explain how magnetism works. He explained that it was a force that interacted with certain things. The interviewer asked, but why? Richard's answer was a long way of saying "just because, you moron." You don't need to understand every layer of the onion. Every layer has another layer, and once you understand every single of them, and grok quantum physics and multiple dimensions and relativity and whatever else affects that onion's properties, that won't change that you need to cook that onion until it's soft before you add in meat to get the flavor out of it. If you know how to cook it, you know what you're doing. It's not that the author has no idea what he's doing. He's just an idiot.
gitaarik 12y ago
Summary: If you look closely enough, nobody really knows exactly what they're doing. When you realize this, you're no longer blinded by the thought that you or other people know everything about something. Then you also realize that all the stuff that is created by people isn't necessarily how it should be, it's just the outcome of the circumstances that the people were in. With this realization you allow yourself to think more creatively (outside the box) about things. However, the author and me don't have any idea what we're doing so I wouldn't take his or my story too seriously.
- collyw 12y ago
  This sounds a lot like mindfulness or other meditations when you describe it this way.
calcsam 12y ago
In one sense the author is right. In another sense, saying "I have no idea what I'm doing" is a status play. Those a bit down on the totem pole don't have the luxury of publicly questioning their own competence.
- pekk 12y ago
  Hmm. I don't agree. Is it better to publicly represent that you are the smartest guy in the room and make the people lower on the totem pole feel bad? Maybe it would be nice if the normal way of things changed so that you didn't have to pretend in this way (never admitting vulnerability) just because you felt your position was insecure.
- joncameron 12y ago
  That's sometimes true, but it's nice to hear someone with status admit they're not an infallible paragon. There's value in that, especially for those lower on the pole who stew in their own minds with assumptions about how everyone else is x amount smarter and more competent, however true that may be.
hawleyal 12y ago
I know TDD has been discussed to death. However, I disagree completely with TDD encouraging creativity and material exploration. In my opinion, small, iterative increments are much more useful. Creating a test puts a tight box around how you assume (without any experimentation) an interface should work. As opposed to a tiny iteration to learn about how it could work. Then writing a test after for that tiny bit. Finally, moving on and refactoring with the test in hand.
- hammerdr 12y ago
  Writing the test is the experiment, in your example. You're playing with how it is going to be used and interacted without worrying about the details/implementation. You'll take care of that later.
  - hawleyal 12y ago
    I don't see how you can experiment with functionality by writing tests at all. Tests are basically just pseudocode. It's writing the requirement/interface before figuring out what is possible. For example. I was recently trying to figure out how to make an autocomplete list faster, as the database was too slow. I already had a functional test taking in search parameters and returning results. But there would be no way to write a test for the actual implementation of the indexed/faster search classes until I figured out a real approach. In the beginning, I had no idea if this would require a separate daemon process to do indexing, or if it could index realtime, or caching, or memoization, or where it might need to keep an index once created. These are just a couple of the unknowns. Once I figured out a workable concept, I wrote tests for those classes and functions. Then I refactored multiple times, altering the tests accordingly.
    - hammerdr 12y ago
      Your functional test was a test that allowed you to experiment. You designed the parameters and then altered the variables involved under the conditions of those tests. You probably even "called your shot" and make guesses about what would be successful before you even approached the problem. Then you wrote a test and saw whether your guess was right or not. If not, then you misunderstood something and you dug deeper. Software, in some ways, in simulated science.
agentultra 12y ago
This was an interesting talk. I admit I was easily hooked due to my own circumstances and experiences. I often feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Shoshin was a great lesson for me. When I was training in martial arts I was told that shoshin was akin to fashioning one's self after an empty vessel. If the vessel is full then it cannot receive any more water. I took it to mean that one must periodically empty their minds of preconceived notions and ideas and be receptive to new ones when seeking new knowledge. It has also taught me that I have a hard time appreciating what I am capable of and what I do know. I may fight feelings of inadequacy but I must remind myself that my bar is much higher today than it was when I started out. It is good to not feel like you know what you are doing all of the time. It's an opportunity to learn and fill yourself with new knowledge. As long as I know what I don't know I feel that I can find it out and fill the gaps. I think what makes it difficult is the amount of competition there is these days and how high we have raised the bar. Capital and growth demand experience and knowledge but we need to take time for development too. You may want to hire the best but maybe you need to take some time to help people develop into the best they can be? But we should all take time to be thankful for what we have done and are able to do. It's easy to forget how painful it all once was. A talk worth watching, in my opinion, if you've ever been concerned about feeling like you don't know what you'd doing.
tr352 12y ago
I am suspicious of the imposter syndrome self-diagnosis. It permits you to explain away your problems and possible deficiencies without being confronted with the often not so nice reality. As the author rightly says, it is not a solution. To anyone diagnosing himself with the imposter syndrome, I would say: great, so now that you know, you don't have it anymore.
rbrogan 12y ago
Everyone knew everything about everything they do then AI would be easy.

145 points by InternetGiant 12y ago

Cached version as the page is beginning to load slowly: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IoQN9XYCjTYJ:codon.com/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IoQN9XY...

sfeng 12y ago
Yet another argument for building static websites https://eager.io/blog/build-static-websites/ https://eager.io/blog/build-static-websites/
- tomstuart 12y ago
  It's already a static site, but being on the HN front page is really hammering my tiny VPS's network & IO; there are a lot of large images and videos in the post. Guess I should set up a CDN.
  - mod 12y ago
    Probably even just letting amazon or someone host the images would fix the problem.

engendered 12y ago

This sort of post seems to do well on HN, so to offer a bit of criticism I'd like to posit that often they seem to be a thin veneer over humble bragging. e.g. I don't know what I'm doing, but then neither does anyone else but I am stating it so therefore I'm actually better than them and I have impostor syndrome so that actually makes me better at what I do than you, and everyone who says they know what they're doing suffers from the Dunning–Kruger effect, etc. This has become a bit of a meme -- the whole "I'm better because I claim to be worse" bit.

Lellagram 12y ago
So does this mean that we need to come full circle and become worse and being better due to claiming to feel worse? I get where you are coming from, but I think the best point in this somewhat rambly essay is that it is fine to come out and talk about how to deal with these odd mental effects, especially when they are keeping us from getting work done.
- visakanv 12y ago
  > So does this mean that we need to come full circle and become worse and being better due to claiming to feel worse? Usually when people begin kicking up a dust, the solution is to stop kicking– in this case I think that means to avoid making claims, and focus instead on doing great work!
- engendered 12y ago
  "it is fine to come out and talk about how to deal with these odd mental effects" When they are sincere, sure. But increasingly they are becoming like the thin girl forever talking about how she feels fat (or, I suppose, the not thin girl declaring that anyone thinner is anorexic). The Dunning–Kruger thing is referenced so frequently on here and other technology sites that it is like the attempt at a great equalizer: People aren't better than me, and the only way they can think they are is the Dunning–Kruger effect. It is some sort of race to the bottom / lowest common denominator equalization thing. I'm not saying that the feeling of inadequacy at times isn't real, but it is becoming a badge and measure of superiority.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- engendered 12y ago
  Or maybe your value/worth as a developer is measured by what you achieve/what you do, and not by constantly trying to jockey relative to everyone else? The constant procession of "PR for why I'm actually better than everyone else" thing is transparent, yet HN falls for it day after day.

treehau5 12y ago

Hey Tom, I just want to say, I have your book, and I find it wonderful.

jarcane 12y ago
Was really sad to hear this: "You don’t really make any money by writing a book, but O’Reilly did send me a nice hat" How poorly does O'Reilly pay their authors? A book the size of most of their tomes, and at the prices they charge, should be a 5-figure advance in any other part of the industry.
- eric_bullington 12y ago
  This is true, but it's important to bear in mind that a relatively high-prestige publisher like O'Reilly can make or break someone's reputation as a high-price consultant. O'Reilly realizes this, and pays their authors relatively poorly. If you want to make significant money as a tech book author, I'm guessing you have to do what Brennan Dunn does, and self-publish your book and market it yourself. I'm guessing that after you've published an O'Reilly book, you could make a pretty nice sum if you do this on your next book.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Curious about this too. I wonder if he means that you don't really make any money compared to the opportunity cost of all the hours you spend on it, or if you really don't make any money in an absolute sense. Unfortunately, I suspect it's actually the latter due to the relatively tiny size of the target market for such books.
  - lazyant 12y ago
    From other tech book authors it seems it's the former; they work many hours for a year and then they make 20k or that kind of minimum wage money
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

j2kun 12y ago

He remarks in the talk about Lamarck having an incorrect theory of "inheritance of acquired characteristics." From what I understand, recent experiments have actually given some evidence to his theory. I can't remember the particular studies though.

maxerickson 12y ago
Epigenetics gives credence to the environment having impact across generations. It doesn't really vindicate Lamarck, there are just some quiet echos of his ideas there.

wyager 12y ago

This guy seems to confuse "I sometimes have to think about things" with "I have no idea what I'm doing". Those seem quite different to me.

serve_yay 12y ago
Indeed. Working on something for a long time but claiming you have no idea what you're doing is an easy way of not appearing egomaniacal or vain. Especially in our field, when people can be such pompous dickheads.

senthil_rajasek 12y ago

"If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just blindly do it." I can understand the author's use of the Beaver analogy but it may not be the right analogy. Beavers build these dams to keep the water level at a certain height. This not only offers protection from predators but also makes it easy to access food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams They may have poor eyesight but they have a keen sense of hearing. May be he meant that the Beaver does not know why its teeth grow continuously but it uses it to cut down trees and make dams.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Go further - the beaver doesn't know that its building a dam. It just builds because it feels compelled to. Then when the dam is done (the beaver triggers on the sound of water falling and stops when the sound is gone) the beaver reaps some benefit. Over millions of years, beavers that behaved like this prospered. The beaver doesn't know why or even think about it. No more than you think about your particular cell enzyme reactions.
- jarcane 12y ago
  They'll also abandon perfectly good dams just to move up stream and build another. They're some of the most environmentally destructive critters on earth; like most creatures if allowed to thrive they'll just keep devouring every tree and damming every river until they starve and die off, only beavers can wind up taking whole ecosystems with them.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Depends on your point of view. North America used to be a festering swamp of mosquito-ridden beaver ponds. Built over millions of years. That WAS the ecology. The landscape we see today is unnatural and temporary. We reformed this continent to suit ourselves. Most attempts to protect some bit of land and trees in the name of preservation is ... shortsighted at the least.

javajosh 12y ago

>Nobody knows what they’re doing; ignorance fuels creativity; complex systems are built iteratively. Those are the ideas I want you to remember. Really liked this piece and wanted to add something to it that I hope resonates with HN. I have myself run across all of this, particularly the complexity part, and have heard anecdotal evidence from others that I know, that when one finishes a function or a library of moderate complexity, and you step back from it for a while, and you come back to it, it looks really impressive. It's now no longer something that can be grokked at a glance. It looks complicated, with all kinds of persnickety details. You remember the "why" of certain unintuitive parts - evidence of problems you ran into and had to solve. The code is the product of many hours of iteration - and the code expanded, contracted, and settled into the shape it's currently in - a shape which, if presented to your earlier self, you would say "I created that? Gosh, it looks like something a professional programmer might have made." (or it might look like a horrendous hacky mess, of course.)

jarcane 12y ago
This is a thing that I have learned as well. I have done projects that seemed small, and then by the end they were enormous, but I knew them intimately. But when I start a project with the idea of it being that big in my head from the start, I'll get stressed and psych myself out, sometimes from doing it at all. There's something to be said for ignoring the forest for planting the tree, to turn a proverb on it's head.

peterwwillis 12y ago

Recently I found this note on my desk at home. It says “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING”. I don’t remember writing it, but it was in my house on my desk in my handwriting, so I obviously did. He might want to seek some psychiatric help if this persists. So what did it mean? Was it a cry for help? A product idea? A topic for a blog post? Or could it be an idea for a conference talk? The card was a cry for help. This talk is a cry for attention. I’ll begin by showing you some compelling evidence that I have no idea what I’m doing. Well, he definitely proved it with all the completely asinine comparisons in the rest of his talk, but this one is the best: If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just blindly do it. Really. "One of the primary reasons beavers build dams is to surround their lodge with water for protection from predators." [...] "On land, the beaver's short legs and wide body made them slow and vulnerable to their enemies. However, unlike most of their historic predators, beavers are excellent swimmers. As a result beavers evolved to have a strong preference to remain in or very close to the safety of the water. The need for safety is the primary reason beavers build dams to create ponds." -- http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp Sounds like they have a pretty good idea why they build dams. But enough about me. As you’ve seen, I frequently find myself in situations where I don’t know what I’m doing, and I usually hit a brick wall and feel disappointed. But it’s not just me! You have no idea what you’re doing either. Don't go projecting on us, buddy. Most people, when faced with a challenge they're not immediately sure how to solve, will go read a book, or take a class, or ask someone who does know what they're doing. Lying about being able to write a book when you have no idea how in order to make money is not "impostor syndrome", it's merely being an impostor. Dunning-Kruger does not explain or justify a total lack of forethought. All of these animals look remarkably like something in their environment, but none of them has any meaningful understanding of why they look that way. They don’t know what they’re imitating. The stick insect doesn’t know anything about eucalyptus; that’s just what it looks like. Says who? You, the expert? I'm pretty sure an animal who lives on a goddamn plant and looks just like it probably realizes that it's a plant, and that it looks similar, and that if it wants to eat, it should use that plant in order to hunt, so it can live. An interviewer asked Richard Feynman to explain how magnetism works. He explained that it was a force that interacted with certain things. The interviewer asked, but why? Richard's answer was a long way of saying "just because, you moron." You don't need to understand every layer of the onion. Every layer has another layer, and once you understand every single of them, and grok quantum physics and multiple dimensions and relativity and whatever else affects that onion's properties, that won't change that you need to cook that onion until it's soft before you add in meat to get the flavor out of it. If you know how to cook it, you know what you're doing. It's not that the author has no idea what he's doing. He's just an idiot.

gitaarik 12y ago

Summary: If you look closely enough, nobody really knows exactly what they're doing. When you realize this, you're no longer blinded by the thought that you or other people know everything about something. Then you also realize that all the stuff that is created by people isn't necessarily how it should be, it's just the outcome of the circumstances that the people were in. With this realization you allow yourself to think more creatively (outside the box) about things. However, the author and me don't have any idea what we're doing so I wouldn't take his or my story too seriously.

collyw 12y ago
This sounds a lot like mindfulness or other meditations when you describe it this way.

calcsam 12y ago

In one sense the author is right. In another sense, saying "I have no idea what I'm doing" is a status play. Those a bit down on the totem pole don't have the luxury of publicly questioning their own competence.

pekk 12y ago
Hmm. I don't agree. Is it better to publicly represent that you are the smartest guy in the room and make the people lower on the totem pole feel bad? Maybe it would be nice if the normal way of things changed so that you didn't have to pretend in this way (never admitting vulnerability) just because you felt your position was insecure.
joncameron 12y ago
That's sometimes true, but it's nice to hear someone with status admit they're not an infallible paragon. There's value in that, especially for those lower on the pole who stew in their own minds with assumptions about how everyone else is x amount smarter and more competent, however true that may be.

hawleyal 12y ago

I know TDD has been discussed to death. However, I disagree completely with TDD encouraging creativity and material exploration. In my opinion, small, iterative increments are much more useful. Creating a test puts a tight box around how you assume (without any experimentation) an interface should work. As opposed to a tiny iteration to learn about how it could work. Then writing a test after for that tiny bit. Finally, moving on and refactoring with the test in hand.

hammerdr 12y ago
Writing the test is the experiment, in your example. You're playing with how it is going to be used and interacted without worrying about the details/implementation. You'll take care of that later.
- hawleyal 12y ago
  I don't see how you can experiment with functionality by writing tests at all. Tests are basically just pseudocode. It's writing the requirement/interface before figuring out what is possible. For example. I was recently trying to figure out how to make an autocomplete list faster, as the database was too slow. I already had a functional test taking in search parameters and returning results. But there would be no way to write a test for the actual implementation of the indexed/faster search classes until I figured out a real approach. In the beginning, I had no idea if this would require a separate daemon process to do indexing, or if it could index realtime, or caching, or memoization, or where it might need to keep an index once created. These are just a couple of the unknowns. Once I figured out a workable concept, I wrote tests for those classes and functions. Then I refactored multiple times, altering the tests accordingly.
  - hammerdr 12y ago
    Your functional test was a test that allowed you to experiment. You designed the parameters and then altered the variables involved under the conditions of those tests. You probably even "called your shot" and make guesses about what would be successful before you even approached the problem. Then you wrote a test and saw whether your guess was right or not. If not, then you misunderstood something and you dug deeper. Software, in some ways, in simulated science.

agentultra 12y ago

This was an interesting talk. I admit I was easily hooked due to my own circumstances and experiences. I often feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Shoshin was a great lesson for me. When I was training in martial arts I was told that shoshin was akin to fashioning one's self after an empty vessel. If the vessel is full then it cannot receive any more water. I took it to mean that one must periodically empty their minds of preconceived notions and ideas and be receptive to new ones when seeking new knowledge. It has also taught me that I have a hard time appreciating what I am capable of and what I do know. I may fight feelings of inadequacy but I must remind myself that my bar is much higher today than it was when I started out. It is good to not feel like you know what you are doing all of the time. It's an opportunity to learn and fill yourself with new knowledge. As long as I know what I don't know I feel that I can find it out and fill the gaps. I think what makes it difficult is the amount of competition there is these days and how high we have raised the bar. Capital and growth demand experience and knowledge but we need to take time for development too. You may want to hire the best but maybe you need to take some time to help people develop into the best they can be? But we should all take time to be thankful for what we have done and are able to do. It's easy to forget how painful it all once was. A talk worth watching, in my opinion, if you've ever been concerned about feeling like you don't know what you'd doing.

tr352 12y ago

I am suspicious of the imposter syndrome self-diagnosis. It permits you to explain away your problems and possible deficiencies without being confronted with the often not so nice reality. As the author rightly says, it is not a solution. To anyone diagnosing himself with the imposter syndrome, I would say: great, so now that you know, you don't have it anymore.

rbrogan 12y ago

Everyone knew everything about everything they do then AI would be easy.