they tried stoning me

it did not work

Yeah, good post. I think my point is that programmers, especially career ones who do things like attain senior roles or lecture in the subject, tend to be the sort of people who like to figure out how systems work and that as a result, the bias in the field tends to be assuring people that it's essential to know the inner workings of things when it isn't.

This, though I'd slightly rephrase it - the most important thing is knowing *when* these details become important and being able to dig in when they do. That's what makes and breaks careers.

But that bias is a good thing to have! If I feel that someone I'm interviewing doesn't like to dig in to figure out how things work, I'm not going to want to hire that person.

The bias also runs the other way around - we're all human beings who tend to think that things we don't know are unimportant relative to things we know. This is how we get all these terrible interview questions and how we all think interview questions we can't answer are terrible.

As for the fundamentals of computer science and low-level details of whatever platform/framework/library you're using, it's true that none of that stuff is strictly necessary for most things, but pragmatically, knowing the basics will make you a better coder in the everyday sense and allow you to architect larger systems and see design issues before it's too late. A large percentage of the technical problems I've seen in large codebases have to do with programmers not knowing the fundamentals, making bad assumptions or being too lazy or otherwise unable to dig deeper.

On another pragmatic note, especially at a technology firm, knowing the fundamentals serves as a signaling device to your peers that you're trustworthy and know what you're doing, not to mention that you may not be able to pass many technical interviews without it. If some junior member of the staff questions your technical decision in a meeting and says, but what about this and that, and you have no idea what he's talking about while everyone else gets the joke, even if what he brought up ends up being irrelevant, your credibility is going to take a hit and your decisions will be scrutinized. We are all constantly judging others, after all. This has considerable career implications - opinions of other programmers may or may not matter at your company but they usually do in companies where programmers can get paid a lot.

Also,

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articl...tractions.html

I think the point is that I'm suspect of people who are not thirsty for knowledge in the field they work in and want to dig as deep as they can. If that's the case it's just a job which is obviously fine. Granted you don't have time for everything but stuff I don't know due to a lack of time really bothers me (and imo should bother others as well)

I had a conversation with my boss once and I pointed out that I thought my biggest weakness as a developer is that I don't have a passion for CS/Programming greater than everything else.

I very much feel like there's so much interesting stuff in the world that I don't want to devote all (or even the majority) of my time to learning about tech stuff. I wish I did, or like you say, I wish I had more time.

If I ever make enough money to maintain my current lifestyle, I'll probably snap semi-retire. I like what I do, but there's just so much other fun stuff out there.

No one "loves" their job even if they like it.

with the low level discussion - this is my 4th semester and 2nd year programming, and I have to say, I've found the low level stuff in C++ enormously helpful, particularly in my understanding and appreciation for how java works. Like, I knew that java had garbage collection. I learned that very early. But I didn't really understand the significance of that until i had to manually manage memory in C++ and the really obscure, weird, frustrating bugs that arise when you're ****ing around in memory accidentally, and the sheer amount of code that "appears" to work but is actually ****ed, even on simple problems.

All in all it has made me really appreciate Java and other higher level languages, and I'm glad I began programming when I did and didn't have to deal with BASIC or C or any of that. I don't think I would have had the patience.

Totally disagree. I "loved" one of my high school jobs and I know/have worked with a number of people who love their jobs. These are the people that would literally work for free if the circumstances demanded it (and frequently did by working crazy overtime just because they loved what they were doing).

Yea, and i guarantee you that highschool job you loved would have eventually sucked ass if you had to do it for a living. Everything is worse when you are forced to do it. I'd say the only people who genuinely love their jobs are able to set their own schedules and have reasonable flexibility. 99% of jobs are not like that.

I did it for six years. Maybe it would have sucked? Not sure. It was at a Summer Camp though and those aren't the kinds of jobs you can keep doing as an adult (or at least, the fun parts aren't).

There are lots of people that aren't forced to do their job though. That's especially true with good Software Engineers right now. If they ever stop loving their job they'll just get a new one.

Anyway, seems a silly argument - but I think its excessively cynical to think that nobody loves their job.

I love the part of my job where I sit there watching movies for 80% of the time. I hate the 20% of my job where I have to do my job though.

What sort of keyboards do y'all use, or do you really care?

I prefer ergonomic ones, but I have a bad lighting situation at my desk. Was considering something like this, but the reviews ain't that great, and I do like my alt and control keys.

You need to have some better jobs before you make this blanket statement.

I just use the macbook pro keyboard. Although for the first time in awhile I'm considering setting up an actual work space with a nicer keyboard/monitor.

jj, I thought you were already working on some extraordinary difficult problems dealing with scaling, MapReduce, etc. I didn't think a passionless person could reach that level.

When I think of passionless, I think of code-grinding, acting as a machine in a cog adding a function to a 500 million line Java codebase. Just doing it as a paycheck, like a line cook.

I don't mean to sound like I'm indifferent to my job. I really like it and I really like my coworkers. So I work hard and I'm pretty good at it.

But there are people that you meet who have true passion. These people stay up late into the night coding because they just love doing it so much. They write their one programming language because it's fun. Learn languages like LISP because they want to see new ways of doing things. And so on.

I'm just as happy reading the news, random Wikipedia articles, learning poker strategy, figuring out places I want to travel to, etc. so after coding for work I usually move on to something different.

Also, I've always looked at software as a means to an end. I don't care about processing 50 terabytes of data because the software that enables it is cool. I care because we learn really cool stuff about the world around us. So I don't spend time making sexy software because I'd get more enjoyment out of using my workable software to learn something new.

Yeah, I type on my keyboard like 12 hours a day. This is like asking a runner if he should care about the shoes he is wearing.

Don't buy those trashy keyboards. Go mech and don't settle for anything less. I've had mine for 1 1/2 years and I still love it. I used to get home from work and my fingers were burning, if I could feel them at all. Hitting keys that don't fire, mashing into hard felt bottoms, and the shaky keys found on crappy keyboards do major damage to your hands, in my experience. A mechanical keyboard fires every time, you only have to hit the keys about half-way, which takes the aggressive brick-hitting action out of the equation, and they are just a pleasure to use. Every time I use a non-mech I want to break it over my knee. The only exception is the keys on my laptop, which feels nice.

If I was half as passionate about my job as I am about my keyboard, I would truly love my job.

I think there is much more mythology to all of this than most people believe. I mean, how many people here think I'm spending my entire free-time learning and studying?

I just don't buy it. I think that a lot of people are playing catch-up more than anything. From meetups, I have a different interpretation of what people are actually doing when they are "programming" all night.

This isn't to say that there aren't people who are astonishingly passionate, but I don't think it is something we should all aspire to be, nor is it something that we should measure ourselves to.

There's a reason why many truly passionate are celebrities. Then you have to wonder how they have so much time to promote themselves. They take breaks, and lots of breaks. Look at that guy gaming_mouse likes to link to. He's writing 50,000 word blogs with tons of images. There's no way those take less than a month to write. That is passionate for certain, but he certainly isn't programming all the time. It is just when he isn't taking a break, the productivity is manic. The opposite is crushing depression. That's my experience anyways. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe that anyone can really keep up a break-neck pace all day every day. At some point, loneliness sets in and something like a girlfriend would be nice to have, you know?

I spend a great deal of time kicking my own ass into gear, and I haven't observed anyone else, even well-known programmers, who isn't similar.

I will say that I've worked with probably a half dozen truly passionate people and many more semi-passionate people.

They're amazing, and most are extremely happy with the way they are. But I agree it's not something people should try and emulate because without that true passion it's just a recipe for burn out.

Don't mistake amphetamine abuse for enthusiasm imo.

GC is a big concern if you're writing any high performance/high throughput long running server process. You def need to know what's happening under the covers. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL2D3qzHtqY

Noone forces me to do my job. If it sucks I quit and move on. There's some grinding every now and then but by and large I pick my jobs because it's stuff I'm genuinely interested in.

I'm grateful that I can do that and am not forced to mine coal or haul bricks around all day like my grandfathers but I see so many people wasting away at their jobs (a lot of times because of ZOMG more money) it makes me pretty sad.

I meant "force" in the way that if you're having a week where you just don't feel like going in, you'd be unable to just not go in. If i had that kind of freedom i'd love my job probably.

I'm finishing up my lower division to transfer, taking assembly and software engineering next sem, but the uni i'm transferring to just said their lower division is mostly python now so i need to learn that.

I've looked at the codecademy tutorial and it's painfully noobish. Is there anything more advanced out there online? I don't really want to take a python course because i'm sick of intro classes.

If you finish out the data structures and c++ series, Python 1, Java you won't have to complete the Python series at UCI if that's what you are thinking

I would check with the counselor. That's what she informed me.

Ugh i'm so tired of intro programming courses.