Programming thread

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prollyanotherlurker said:
I feel like he's generally a good guy. He has a family,
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The way that he talks about this often comes across to me as a Rekieta-flavoured red flag. Given that he seems decent, I just have to hope that he's learned from his past struggles with addiction and the worries don't amount to anything.
 
Penne Dreadful said:
The way that he talks about this often comes across to me as a Rekieta-flavoured red flag. Given that he seems decent, I just have to hope that he's learned from his past struggles with addiction and the worries don't amount to anything.
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The difference is Rekieta was an alcoholic coke addict in denial, that thought his family was holding him back from the rock star life he fantasized about. And didn't want to listen when people told him he was an alcoholic that needs to stop drinking, and being a degenerate. Everybody knew he was an alcoholic, sex wierdo before it was proven when he got arrested.

The Primagen used drugs years ago before he ended up going into a career, and having a family.
 
Goddamnit, dealing with the jeets at work is terrible.

They're mumbly and incoherent.

Non-tech people really don't understand how linguistic professional programming work is. Like sure, some of it is genuinely intense technical, lambda calculus, math type work. Algorithms and math SAT brainy work.

But another chunk of it is just as intense, but from the linguistic side of things. Probably the more impactful aspect of the job involves developing an elaborate shared language of metaphors for abstract concepts. Shared between you, your coworkers and your clients. That development involves lots of spergy arguments in zoom calls. Conversations that'll remind you of "depends on what the meaning of is is" .

And that gets incredibly frustrating when all your coworkers have shit English and even the more fluent ones still have thick accents.

I was trying to explain to my jeet coworker that if he wanted the filename to be generated to look a certain way, to fit a certain pattern, I would need to get some guidance on what kind of rules we'd apply to generate the filename. He was just like "uhh, just make it look like a semver" (he didn't say semver but that's what he meant). "ok, sure, but how do we want to increment it automatically?"

Dude's a programmer. He should know that incrementing semvers is a manual process. We can totally decide on a scheme to do it mechanically, but I need to know what he's expecting. Is he expecting me to just shit out foobar-v0.0.2503.tgz?

I'm realizing that success at this job will involve a lot of begging forgiveness instead of asking permission. Just do it and let them correct me later. Also not taking their complaints personally because they're dipshits. Or if they're smart in Jeetnese, it sure as shit doesn't translate to English.
 
Marvin said:
Dude's a programmer. He should know that incrementing semvers is a manual process. We can totally decide on a scheme to do it mechanically, but I need to know what he's expecting. Is he expecting me to just shit out foobar-v0.0.2503.tgz?
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well you can increment the semvar "automatically" if you use CI and git tags but that setup is honestly kinda painful.
 
General Zoider said:
well you can increment the semvar "automatically" if you use CI and git tags but that setup is honestly kinda painful.
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Oh, we're not even using it for code. It's just a visual thing for versioned customer data. It just looks like semver. Which is fine. But I just wanted him to explain how I'm supposed to generate it.

Like if the client's users upload a new version of some file, we're supposed to label it with a new version string. It really doesn't matter what it looks like but my coworker wanted it to look like a software version string. Ok, fine. How do I fill in that field?

It's really stupid and I'm just annoyed that my coworker didn't understand what I was asking him.
 
Marvin said:
Goddamnit, dealing with the jeets at work is terrible.

They're mumbly and incoherent.

Non-tech people really don't understand how linguistic professional programming work is. Like sure, some of it is genuinely intense technical, lambda calculus, math type work. Algorithms and math SAT brainy work.

But another chunk of it is just as intense, but from the linguistic side of things. Probably the more impactful aspect of the job involves developing an elaborate shared language of metaphors for abstract concepts. Shared between you, your coworkers and your clients. That development involves lots of spergy arguments in zoom calls. Conversations that'll remind you of "depends on what the meaning of is is" .

And that gets incredibly frustrating when all your coworkers have shit English and even the more fluent ones still have thick accents.

I was trying to explain to my jeet coworker that if he wanted the filename to be generated to look a certain way, to fit a certain pattern, I would need to get some guidance on what kind of rules we'd apply to generate the filename. He was just like "uhh, just make it look like a semver" (he didn't say semver but that's what he meant). "ok, sure, but how do we want to increment it automatically?"

Dude's a programmer. He should know that incrementing semvers is a manual process. We can totally decide on a scheme to do it mechanically, but I need to know what he's expecting. Is he expecting me to just shit out foobar-v0.0.2503.tgz?

I'm realizing that success at this job will involve a lot of begging forgiveness instead of asking permission. Just do it and let them correct me later. Also not taking their complaints personally because they're dipshits. Or if they're smart in Jeetnese, it sure as shit doesn't translate to English.
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bnf_semvar.png
:smug:
 
Marvin said:
Oh, we're not even using it for code. It's just a visual thing for versioned customer data. It just looks like semver. Which is fine. But I just wanted him to explain how I'm supposed to generate it.

Like if the client's users upload a new version of some file, we're supposed to label it with a new version string. It really doesn't matter what it looks like but my coworker wanted it to look like a software version string. Ok, fine. How do I fill in that field?

It's really stupid and I'm just annoyed that my coworker didn't understand what I was asking him.
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if you mean generating a "semver" using customer data the only way i can think to pull that off is some kind of diff setup where if a certain percentage of the document is changed then you increment the var using some kind of threshold.

Ego something like this:

1-20-30 percent = 0.0.001
50 percent 0.1.000
70 percent 1.0.000
 
You should make each new version "Copy of <Last version name>" and have it stack up copy of like some demented windows folder
 
Something I'm curious about, folks - it feels like on average, I have maybe 4-6 hours of actual, good, well-considered productive work in me on a given day. You know, the kind that I consider well-designed, as well implemented as I can imagine based on my current understanding, and considered from enough angles that I don't expect it to explode into technical debt down the road.

However, perhaps due to the specific cultural context I've absorbed over the years, there's sort of an ephemeral idea of some kind of autistic supercoder who can jam it out from sunup to sundown, fueled by nothing more than sheer love of the game. I get the feeling it's likely an unrealistic exaggeration, and even those who consider themselves to be like that are probably unfairly evaluating the quality and consistency of their own work, but what do you guys tend to see in your own work habits and longevity? Do you experience that kind of dropoff, do you have the wind in your sails to hurl yourself at it consistently and not need to push yourself to do so?

I also get the sense it's probably something that gets easier the more patterns you internalize and make intuitive, since having solved a given problem before probably saves a lot of the mental fatigue of doing so.

Anyways, no particular reason I ask, I don't mean to yardstick or self-flagellate about it, I'm just curious what it looks like in everyone else's head, you know?
 
I don't really consciously self-evaluate like that, but from trying to think back... On some days, honestly, I can't even get started properly, I have too many other thoughts, or my brain is just feeling lazy and I end up doing chores the whole day or something. On other days I will get stuck into a problem and keep working on it until morning or even into the afternoon of the next day, if I don't fall asleep before that. But on most days about 4-6 hours seems right. I also find that I work far more consistently in a dedicated office, as opposed to just in my living room.
 
clever handle said:
Something I'm curious about, folks - it feels like on average, I have maybe 4-6 hours of actual, good, well-considered productive work in me on a given day. You know, the kind that I consider well-designed, as well implemented as I can imagine based on my current understanding, and considered from enough angles that I don't expect it to explode into technical debt down the road.
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I can go consistently at 8-10 hours on my own projects if I like what I'm working on but I can also go longer sometimes but it's rarer but I'm also what I feel like is way past the point of burnout spending most of my spare time trying to work on things for probably around a year and over that year I had a lot of improvement and a lot of realizations.

Motivation can have a big impact on what you're working on, I want to die if I'm working on webshit but doing lower level stuff is very fun. You're also probably never going to be 100% productive, is there a point where you're probably less productive if you were to keep working? Yes, but that doesn't mean you're not productive at all and any progress is still progress. This one probably depends on what you're working on but starting on entirely new problems can be hard to even start but the skill of learning things entirely unknown is something that can be developed which to me just feels more like a process that results in figuring out where to start. Habits are also something that can impact you, if you have a habit of stopping after 4-6 hours when you could go more then maybe that's why you feel that way, I have a habit of starting to wind down when working on things when the sun starts to go down (I also hate winter) but I've gotten better about breaking that habit. Another one that might be only specific to myself is health issues, while relatively minor in terms of severity they can fuck up my focus/motivation if things get bad but I've figured out the issue and have had a lot of improvements and make a lot more progress recently than times before that, it feels very significant.

Those are things I've realized that may or may not be applicable, I also program in such a way where I cut down on mental overhead (procedural programming, avoiding a lot of language features, no LSP, all along the lines of no distractions or no thinking about things happening implicitly) which also cuts down on a lot of tedium which also keeps my mind focused on the problem. Interpreted languages are pure cancer to me, the fact that you cannot definitively ensure things in the same way you can with a staticly typed language is just exhausting because it gives you so much more to think about. I also honestly believe working with minimal language features and avoiding libraries where possible to keep things simple makes things so much more easier to manage mentally, programming is all an act of making a complex system in your mind real and also maintaining an idea of how that system works, the less going on the easier it is to reason about but at this point I'm going deep into sperging.

A lot of this depends on your situation and you have to realize what is important and what you want to try and do if you want to work more or work the same amount or whatever else but I would say in summary there are people who can work a lot which may not always be at their best but it's still significant work and progress towards what they're trying to do.
 
clever handle said:
there's sort of an ephemeral idea of some kind of autistic supercoder who can jam it out from sunup to sundown, fueled by nothing more than sheer love of the game
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At one point in my life, I was working an 8 hour coding job to come home and jam for most of the rest of my day in different languages. I was also supplementing with certain stimulants. This is not sustainable and I suffered all kinds of side-effects.

For me, it's "how much do I care", combined with "how much have I been working". If I'm deep into something, I can do a "code for all of my free time" without much impact at the time. But for me, energy is really ephemeral, possibly due to that stimulant abuse I mentioned previously, and if I want to consistently work on something, I have to ration the energy I'm pouring into it.

So I guess what I'm getting at is that for me, if I want to put the maximal amount of effort into something, I have to limit the amount I put in daily, because I'll burn out and break sustainability.
 
analrapist said:
stimulant abuse
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"Just" coffee or more?
I'm curious because I've spent most of my peak neuroplasticity addicted to coffee, dropped it around a year ago and I feel a lot better as a baseline. But usually I can do just work or just hobby coding, doing both without at least a cuppa inbetween still feels really daunting (I hope this can still change with time).
But if anyone is reading this, and is addicted to caffeine, I really recommend dropping it. It used to hurt me to think, have massive brainfog, and feel really weak, if I attempted any cognitive or physical activity without having a coffee beforehand (and keeping my levels high throughout the day...), but now the worst I feel is just tired. It is a hard, long, and painful process, but 100% worth it.
Pro tip: tea is delicious, can help you a little bit in the process, and does not cause such strong withdrawals.
 
Zeftax said:
"Just" coffee or more?
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Based on the domain, I wouldn't be surprised if it was prescription amphetamines or something. Small PL, but I'm embarrassed to admit I spent about 2 years addicted to the stuff myself due to exactly this sort of self-consciousness about focus and motivation, and the tragic irony of it is that the potential damage it may have caused ended up being a huge part of the reason I'm so neurotic about this stuff nowadays, too. Thankfully I got clean, but being stuck in withdrawal for a year and a half afterwards was absolutely fucking miserable. Days of just sitting around doing nothing at all because no stimulus is high enough to register as fun, so no motivational compulsions.

Sucks, but I'm definitely better nowadays and I guess it's better to learn the lesson late than not at all, Plus, it taught me enough that I'm more agent in taking responsibility for my own aspirations and motivation than I was before.

Either way, I really appreciate the responses, fellas - it's nice to see where people are at, because in the absence of those kinds of opinions, it's very easy to romanticize a hypothetical superperson that you can't ever hope to compare to.
 
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Zeftax said:
"Just" coffee or more?
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I plead the fifth. As a fucking leaf, I do not have a statute of limitations to fall back on for safety. That should be enough information for inference. And yeah, stimulants really force things backwards, big picture. My circumstances were both more and less dire than our friend @clever handle experienced. But I say here sometimes that I've written my own Linux distro three times over, and two of those times involved my lamentable predilection.

Enne said:
I also program in such a way where I cut down on mental overhead (procedural programming, avoiding a lot of language features, no LSP, all along the lines of no distractions or no thinking about things happening implicitly) which also cuts down on a lot of tedium which also keeps my mind focused on the problem.
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Agreed! Plain ol' vim improves my focus, because I'm focused on what I'm doing, not on expecting my tools to do things for me. I've worked with MS Visual languages since 3.0. A black screen with some text on it really helps me maintain focus and energy, probably because there's not a BAZILLION THINGS ON SCREEN OMG ADHD.
 
For managing focus I recommend getting bored. In the most possible painful way.
So just sit and close eyes/look at wall for 5 minutes, or even 1 minute at beginning.
Don't even think really, just like in meditation you want to let go of those thoughts, just acknowledge them but let them go.
Afterwards usually anything will be stimulating enough. But if not, or if I drift, I will just repeat doing nothing.

It's not bulletproof, and is kinda unpleasant, but works for me.

As for the main topic of discussion, I usually do something like 3-4 hours of honest work a day. Probably could do more, but I don't care that much, and I am often blocked anyway. Corporate life is slow,

However before having full time job, I would have weeks where I did study/program/do something else from waking up till going sleep for some times, and then I would have weeks where I would do nothing productive. I had zero control over this though.
It sucked both when I was addicted to doing things I wanted, cause I would neglect anything else, and sucked when I lost desire because I could not force myself to work on anything.

Edit: Also for managing ADHD, I recommend protein rich diet. And probably choline rich one too.
If I start day with like 5 eggs, I have considerably easier time managing my focus.
 
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