I'm incredibly bad at finding jobs.

The point is giving myself impossible deadlines to see if you can do it. It really isn't any big deal if I don't make it. I just want to see if I can do a decent estimation.

I fully disagree with this. There is much to be said about functional composition. This is the main reason I don't like using lambdas in Python and didn't understand the desire for multi-line lambdas upthread.

I'll defer to others on this one.

Eh. The HTML is just fine. Just would need someone to fiddle with the CSS and stuff. I've thought about it more than once, but I don't really have the money for this. If I had traction, I would certainly go for it.

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This goes back to the main issue. I am terrible at finding jobs, so I would only slit my own throat if I did this.

I'm considering other options though.

One of the points of YAGNI is trying to put aside much of the manual work. The way the project is designed is so that it "builds" the site after a bit of .csv -> database push. I just stripped on idea out that will save me many hours of work and make it so that one .csv file and database table is no longer needed.

I think that with this project, the coding is the smallest component. Getting information up and usable is a greater concern.

I hear a lot of people say this, and it's simply not true imo. In most cases, the kinds of changes that are likely to come are predictable. You can't predict all of them, but you can put the likely changes "on a range," as it were. To hand wave over that and say, "Well, you never know, so thinking about reasonably likely changes and designing for them is a waste of time," and then dignifying that under the banner of YAGNI or avoiding premature optimization is just lazy and irresponsible. If you're just trying to get something out the door, that's fine, but don't delude yourself into thinking that good design and architecture don't really exist and aren't important.

I don't just purposely ignore all forms of design patterns and start coding without an idea of what I want to do. I still plan things out to some extent but I spend my time thinking about the domain objects and how they relate to each other, not how the code is going to be written.

It reminds me of that old dhh vs some other dude's gist a while back when it came to making services. I heavily lean on dhh's side.

Here's the gist in question:
https://gist.github.com/justinko/2838490

You can see dhh's response if you CTRL+F for "dhh commented". He even mentions YAGNI later on in the comments.

Edit:

Btw I don't even associate this thought process into needing to ship code faster. I do think it's faster to get the code into good shape by writing the code for today's problems and fixing inefficiencies/pain points as the come rather than try to theory craft what they will be before I even use the code I'm writing.

DHH is 100% wrong. Note @avdi's comment at the top.

I've noticed once or twice before that DHH tends to dismiss anyone who suggests that standard rails facilities for structuring an app are not sufficient. I am of the camp that believe the default Rails way of designing apps actually leads to pretty awful designs.

EDIT: just noticed that @garybernhardt also disagrees with DHH here. Ok now I am completely secure in my position....

I just go by what makes sense to me. I would rather spend my time not worrying about things I can't predict and write the best possible code right now -- which to me means not making it more complex and convoluted than it needs to be. It's been working really well for me lately.

It's fine to agree to disagree.

I don't know enough Ruby or RoR to comment specifically, but I like agraves's solution:

I totally respect DHH, what he done and RoR itself, but he sometimes comes across as a my way or no way kind of guy.

http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2...s-omakase.html

It's cool though. Keep it sacred.

Are you still doing most of your work by yourself? I think this attitude is fine and great if you're on a one person small-medium sized project.

If you're on a bigger project with sections of code you won't touch for reasonably long periods of time or if you are working with other people I think you need to make sure your code is easy to understand and maintain.

Dave,

I avoid getting burnt out by rarely programming outside of my job. Occasionally I'll do a small project of something I'm really interested in or I'll write something that makes my life easier in some ways but other than that I don't really program for myself. TBH, I don't really consider programming a hobby of mine.

I guess if I could retire I'd probably program more for fun.

Edit: Part of the way I make this work is I make sure I'm doing a job I like and where I'm learning lots of things. As long as I'm gaining new skills through work I don't really think I need to do a ton outside of that.

of course. it's fine to have spirited discussions too

i would obv argue that it's not more complex. i think the difficulty is teasing out what is actually complex from what is complex to you given your own experience and familiarity. rich hickey talks about that in his famous simple talk -- simple as "near at hand" vs simple as "only a single strand" (or something like that)

derada4, I understand why this is difficult. The C#/.NET experience your getting is great if you want to do more C#/.NET. Apparently you don't want to make a career out of it though and that is fine. You can definitely be "stereotyped" by staying in a position too long. It probably would be ok to stay for a year. I wouldn't stay longer than that though if the status quo persists. What kind of development do you want to do?

Either way this seems like a pretty trivial thing to lose a contract over.

Pace yourself as others have more or less stated.

yeah whatever you think of the refactoring, losing a contract over that speaks poorly of the "senior dev" who made the call.

dave,
That post is on a different topic all together. Most people complain that a lot of frameworks are super bloated and have tons of useless things because they haven't worked on anything big enough to warrant having those features.

When they work on a project in the future and realize they basically introduced those features on their own they look back and appreciate the framework.

This is kind of what happened to me almost exactly and in my case the project wasn't even that big. It just happened to touch on so many requirements that were solved by rails out of the box.

jjshabado,

I'm still solo yeah. It also works on large code bases with a ~10+ programmer team working on a project over 10 years old too. It's how the entire basecamp project is handled.

He carries over that philosophy to rails features too. Instead of trying to invent features up front based on unknown needs they just extract features from real needs. It's very similar to trying to shoe horn code into some existing design pattern up front before you even use the code.

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If anyone is interested:
http://rubyrogues.com/056-rr-david-heinemeier-hansson/

That podcast goes into full depth where he spends like 45min just talking about abstract vs real code and how he shapes code based on the code itself instead of trying to design it up front.

In general I'd really like to be in a more open source environment where I'm going to be exposed to a wider variety of technologies. There's a lot of really good .NET developers at my current place... But the one guy didn't even know what github was. Python is my strongest language after C#, and I have found some small ways to incorporate it into my present job, but nothing too significant.

I have a strong math background and really enjoy it as well, so I'd ideally like to get into a development job that is very data-heavy. My dream job would be doing algorithmic trading, which I know is a bit of a stretch considering I have a weak academic record, but just putting that out there to show the general direction I'm yearning for.

This all makes sense to me. You could take courses directly related to the direction you want to go in. You might even try reaching out to companies looking for developers for algorithmic trading. See what it would take to get in the door. I see posts on LinkedIn from recruiters for those disciplines all the time. The money they're bandying about is fantastic.

FWIW you can and probably will be categorized as a .NET developer the longer you stay. It is worth it to get "real world" experience but don't overdue it if that Is not what you want.

You are in a great situation actually. You have some "real world" experience, you have a desire to learn, you know the direction you want to go and your salary demands are going to be modest when compared to more experienced developers. Quite frankly companies will tend to view all of that quite favorably. A highly productive developer that fits your circumstances is gold to them.

Changing jobs is pretty much the only way developers can get significant pay increases. Just something you will realize when in the industry long enough. You should probably aim to be there about 2 years before moving on.

Yeah that's also on my list. Should have mentioned it. I kind of wanted to try C because I've never done the C/Prolog interfacing

Java stuff seemed to be pretty out of date though (iirc it required a pretty old version of pokersource)...might very well end up using this though because I know the Java interface quite well and would get insta platform independence without having to worry about all the C-ish stuff :P

Edit:
@dave...maybe a strange suggestion but you might want to read up on the concept of "flow" and try to make all your programming activities as flow related as possible. I sometimes feel like writing code is a grind but whenever I "flow up" time just seems to pass.

Alternatively, I think the one thing that really helps me get through even relatively boring code is setting small goals+rewards (finish this little piece of functionality...if done get up and walk around a bit) and trying to learn on even mundane things (i.e. boring 10ish lines of Java that uses some library classes/methods I'll write it and when I'm done look at the library and see how the stuff I used was implemented and learn from that)...basically I try to constantly find even the dumbest reasons/places to learn stuff

Maybe I just misunderstood what you meant by 'ugly' code.

Yes, this would be nice. My job doen't offer much to learn though. Honestly, I still would want to learn outside of work. I still like studying math, algorithms, and other things like that.

And for those who are still confused, I am not a developer. I do a lot, but the main gist of my work is listing things online. I have learned quite about Excel though.

Flow is nice. I get that once in a while, and oh man, it is just beautiful when it really hits. Every single function works as planned...

It's strange. I go to these meetups and I'm astounded by how a) smart everyone is and b) how engrossed people are in programming. I can't think of another profession where people will work all day then go out at night and continue to work. I really can't stand the "hack nights" to be honest. Everyone is sitting around and working hard and I'm sitting there wondering why I'm not laying in bed.

The job does take a lot out of me, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I used to be able to stay up until midnight or 2am just hacking away or learning, but I lost that desire lately. I know I'm making progress, but honestly, I don't know what the payoff is.

As for finding another job. I'm just awful at finding jobs.

Why? And do you want to get better? Are you working on getting better? It seems like you're massively overqualified, underpaid and underappreciated.

Why?

I was unemployed for all of my 20s. Just couldn't get a job no matter how many resumes I sent out. Interviewing, when I had them, were just disastrous. Not really because of anything I did, but interviewers generally couldn't get over the audacity of long-term unemployment. The stories I could tell about those interviews are quite interesting.

It was until I was 33 that I could get a job, and that was only through nepotism. Believe it or not, this job is a massive step up from that one. I get paid 30% more now days and work in better conditions (as hard as that is to believe) -- though still povery-ish. Point is that I wouldn't go anywhere else right now unless I could earn 50% more than I do now in order to offset the risks of leaving the current job and getting fired within a week of the new job. I don't know where to look for stuff like that.

2 years seems too long to me but ymmv. If he finds something he really wants and he gets paid more money why should he wait?

Did you play poker professionally? If not, what did you do with all that free time? Did you have any programming skills during this time or is that something you learned more recently?


How long have you been at this job? How long have you been working at all?