Ask HN: What was your biggest regret about learning programming?

This probably isn't what you are looking for but I wish I never learned, or at least never decided it should be my career. A career writing software has a shelf life. Age discrimination is real, software engineer experience isn't valued like other professions. And yes, there are plenty of firms that will hire engineers over 40, the fact remains that there are vast numbers of employers that won't and once you hit the senior/principal engineer in 5-10 years, you plateau. The pay is ok, for now, but the downward pressure on salaries is palpable. Also, it's difficult to be told how well we are paid when a vast vast majority in the software mecca (SF) can't actually afford a single family home with a sane commute. Some people can afford those homes, but it's not the software engineers. The industry is filled with work that just isn't interesting and of the interesting work that exists it tends to go to those that are the most political. We like to think this profession is a meritocracy but it isn't. We are a managed people without a seat at the big boy table and this means we will never truly have the control over our "destiny" we think we have.

If I could do it over again, after graduating with a CS degree I would explore either going to Wall St to grind and retire after 5-10 years, go to a top 10 law school grind for 10 years and retire, go to medical school. Hell, I'd even just do a DO school in the carribean. Sure you get crapped on for your residency, but after that it only gets better and you don't have shelf life.

I wish I had learned about testing earlier.

The idea of testing code was never covered in any of the introductory books I read. I learned the basics of C, Fortran, and Pascal while doing a physics undergrad in the 90's, then I learned Java and Python in the 00's on my own from books and websites. None of the introductory books I read introduced the concept of testing. It wasn't until I started reading programming blogs on a regular basis that I started writing tests for my code. Once I did, the quality of my code immediately improved and I felt much more confident in the code I wrote.

When I wrote an introductory Python text recently I included a chapter on the most basic aspects of testing. Beginners don't need to write tests for everything they write, but they should definitely be aware of the concept.

No regrets, though I'm thinking maybe in a year or two I'll retire completely from programming and work on physical fitness instead. Perhaps find a job that doesn't involve programming. I will probably program as a hobby.

I know if I continue programming as my employment until I'm an old man without trying other pursuits, I will definitely regret it.

I'm 26, and I wrote my first line of code when I was 13 or 14 years old, and perhaps the only sub-fields of programming where I didn't dabble in substantially are assembly and prolog. These days I feel like, with programming, I've seen it all before. C, C++, Python, Objective-C, node.js, Lua, Lisp, Haskell, GPU computation, Django, REST API, React, Angular, Django, graphics programming, mobile apps, iOS, Android.

I've spent time with each of them, most of them in a hobby and commercial capacity and these days everything seems a bit too familiar. I know there's a lot of people who have way more expertise than I do, however, I think it would do me good to get some space. My body is giving me hints I can't continue in the same way I have for the past ten years - I feel my legs getting weaker by the day, random points of tingly pain in my finger tips that comes and goes. I find I really like looking at trees and feeling the wind in my face. I would love to do a lot less sitting and a lot more moving, as in quitting programming as employment completely, starting within 9 to 12 months.

I wish I hadn't had the attitude of, "I'm going to learn everything from scratch because I don't need help or dependencies." I was stubborn and thought that to be a "real" programmer I had to know how to implement libraries from scratch and build out every single feature myself and learn the ins and outs.

Upside: Now I know many of the "under the hood" implementation things

Downside: Took FOREVER to build anything useful, demoralizing to spend so much time on algorithms and learning every bit of C and JavaScript from the ground up and not be able to do anything useful quickly. Didn't know how to put what I knew to practical use in the modern web.

I got into a funk and one day started learning a framework and it changed my life. I could use what I learned to build on top of the framework and quickly get webapps running that people could actually use.

I regret that I was stubborn and wanted to "learn it the hard way." If I could do it over, I would go through a book on a particular programming language to learn the ins and outs, and then quickly apply that knowledge to a framework. Much better positive feedback loop being able to see the fruits of my learning come together into something practical and actually useful rather than little programs that lived on my local machine and didn't do too much.

It's much more fun and less tedious to built out my own apps on the structure of people who came before me. GOod recent example: Building an app and wanted people to be able to drag and drop to upload files into their browser. Old me would have spent a month learning how to implement this in JS from scratch, new me just uses the DropZone JS library to make this happen and then I can focus on what I really want the app to do.

Not sure if any of what I'm saying makes sense to anyone but me.

C is my primary language of coding. I work in networking industry. So, my suggestions could be specific to this field.

I should have learnt more of following (a) memory management, (b) process memory layout, (c) good coding practices (d) read up code from other projects. There are really brilliant programmers out there churning out awesome code and that itself is a great teacher. (e) Teaching whatever I learn. Teaching (especially writing it down on paper/webpage) brought clarity to me.

Not doing all of the above early in my career is a regret I have now.

Still my regret because I keep doing it: losing focus and switching context too much (languages, frameworks, etc). Getting better at it though.

My biggest regret about learning programming is that I tend to approach things in the real world from an engineering perspective, which isn't always best for a given situation.

I try to avoid it and over time I've done a better job of approaching things dynamically.

Failing to RTFM in it's entirety, immediately after becoming familiar with the basics of any particular language. You might think you're saving some time by skipping over the tedium, but it ends up costing you.

Probably wasting so much time trying to make languages work that weren't really necessary. I spent so much time messing with C++ and performance and it was pointless because CPU's went from 4.77 Mhz to 3 Ghz. Also I probably would have just headed straight for a top CS school instead of wasting time teaching myself out in the sticks or learning 20-30 year old tech at whatever local university is nearby. Literally a lot of schools are still in the cold war era when it comes to teaching.

Postponing to learn SQL.

This should be done sooner rather than later.

Getting excited and wanting to build something with my new found knowledge. Doing this after learning a few new things really slowed down my learning. I wish I waited to learn a lot more before starting a project, it would have been more efficient, I'd know how to work smarter, and I'd have been able to make coolet projects.

Being cocky because "I knew how to code", rather than having any idea about how much I didn't yet know.

I could have found a mentor. Hell I'd still like one, even now.

I should have explored outside of the ms / .net stack sooner. Its a comfortable world and a decent platform but limiting for the mind.

Wish I had taken better care of my eyes.

Doing too much of it and developing chronic RSI. Take breaks!