Comment by pavelludiq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavelludiq | Hacker News Reader

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I'll give you my point of view. I'm young(21), I'm in my third year as an informatics student, and I feel greatly intimidated by all these hard stuff. I can barely write a working web app, even with all the hand-holding modern frameworks give me. I don't consider myself smart(i'm bright enough to be a programmer, but nothing more).

Recently I sat down and thought about where I want to be in 5-10 years. I don't want to be writing django apps in 10 years, I don't want to write software that sort of works some of the time, and i don't want to be a replaceable commodity programmer working on outsourced software that the real programmers didn't feel like working on, so they send it to India, or Eastern Europe(which is where I’m from). Sure, I can make a comfortable living that way, but what I want to be in 10 years is a competent expert.

I want to work in diverse fields, with people much smarter than me, and the little knowledge and experience I can gain in my career I want to pass down to younger programmers. I want to wake up in the morning and be proud that I've build things that actually matter, and not just the latest social networking pop-culture crap that many of us are dealing with now. In short, i want to e a hacker!

To do this, I decided to dedicate myself to actually learn the hard stuff that most people shy away from, just because they can get by with only some python/ruby/php and jquery knowledge. Math, CS(algorithms, data structures, languages, compilers, architectures, networks, operating systems), science, philosophy, history, art, etc. All hard stuff that I'll never need to know in order to build a web store site for a small business that barely gets the web, get paid, and go wash the car on the weekend. Even if i can never learn all of it, even a fraction is better that writing the same simple web apps for 10 years.

Thank you for such a candid post! I know how you feel.

I'm only a little farther along in my journey than you; at 26, I finally feel confident in my abilities, but am still humbled by how much I don't know. Last month I spent hours poring over Linux network programming resources so I could implement a performant, scalable, thread-safe game server [1]. After weeks, I finally got it working--replete with tests, sane coding practices and other Good Things--and it felt so good.

Like you said: "All hard stuff that I'll never need to know in order to build a web store site..." I didn't need to reinvent the wheel--there are tons of pre-existing solutions and frameworks out there that I could pick up and use to hit the ground running. But, like most people on this site, you and I were bit by the same bug: the desire to understand how and why it works.

For me, the hard part isn't dedication to learning or writing dime-a-dozen web apps to pay the bills. The hard part is finding the right balance. I think that's probably something I'll keep learning more about until I finally kick the bucket.

If I can presumptuously offer advice, from barely a half-decade down the line: Don't give up, and learn to see the intimidation for what it is: thrill! Do as the sagacious Derek Sivers commands: whatever scares you or excites you, go do it [2]. If you come upon something that seems insurmountably complex; it could be anything: compilers, emulators, algorithms, low-level network programming... do it. You don't have to learn it in a day, a month, or even a decade, but never fool yourself into believing that it's too hard. It isn't. Take breaks to keep yourself sharp, but never give up.

[1] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6849239/how-should-i-arch...

[2] - http://sivers.org/scares-excites-do-it

I would say that you will feel this way once you see someone doing half the difficult job you do, but because of his productivity and problem solving skills takes huge strides because of the lack of good folks in the 'outsourcing quality' work that you describe.

The day you see such a guy, you suddenly get a feeling about the what the hell are you doing being average among the crowd of algorithm writers, while you could actually be a leader earning great money and with a big designation.

As we age we carry on a lot of financial responsibilities and money will play a huge role in the choices you make. You may give a great interview and go on to work with the brightest engineers at google and get lost in the brilliant crowd. At that time when you start reviewing your choices, you will get a feeling that you could have been unmatchable only if you had chosen a more easier career path.

In short,

There is no point being an average guy among a crowd of brilliant people.

I have to disagree. How did those people become brilliant? Hanging around smarter people probably had something to do with it. That's why I joined HN in the first place, 1207 days ago I was probably among the most inexperienced, and stupid people on this site, probably still am, even though I've grown so much since. I think there is no shame in choosing the simpler route, but i can't make this choice for my self. I care too much about doing good work, even if i suck at it at the moment.

I am all for hanging out with smart people. Learning and working on tough problems. But If your even half serious about doing something big. Those leanings have to happen quickly. You will have to then go on by yourself. Do something on your own, lead and manage something big.

My point was that there is no benefit in being the average among the best. But you can do wonders by being the best among the averages.

Of course you can disagree with this. But more often, all you will need is certain guiding principles in life 'which you need to learn from smart people' after that you will have to the grind work individually on your own. The sooner you learn those principles the better. There is never going to be a situation where you will be carbon copying from those smart people all over the time.

The other sort of learning, is incremental learning which happens all time, regardless of where or what work you do. Regarding specific life changing learnings, there are only going to very few of those in your whole life.

Such moments of clarity are rare and brief, but to a surprising extent they define our lives. I would bet on your success.

Back on topic: it's actually pretty easy to intuitively estimate the asymptotic time performance of most data structures if you sit down with a good algorithms book for a while and read through until you understand it. If you don't find everything simple the first time, go back to the beginning a few days later and read it again. This will give you big-O-estimation skills for things that aren't mentioned in the book, plus thorough understanding of the things that are mentioned.

I prefer Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms books, because the pictures are amazingly useful and abundant, but there are other good options. After a while it just starts to make sense.

This seems to be the path taken by Paul Graham and Robert Morris (just to name an obvious example most readers here will know). Because they knew a lot about Computer Science (and Lisp), they were able to take an approach to building their software and business that their competitors would have never considered. I'm guessing their knowledge of "science, philosophy, history, art, etc." played a big part in their approach, as well.

Which is to say, I think you're on the right track if you don't just want to follow the popular trends, but want a chance to do something new in a way that no one has even considered yet. Which certainly sounds a lot more fun, if nothing else.

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