I hope you fail!
Posted on 14.01.2010 12:29 am
I hope you have a personal project that you design wrong. I hope you get a runtime error that takes a long time to fix. I hope you get a nasty segfault that almost makes you lose all will.
I wish you numerous syntax errors and annoying memory leaks. I hope for tricky race conditions and terrible compatibility problems. I hope you need to rewrite a large portion of your code.
Why?
These are the building blocks of good programmers. We get the nasty errors and we learn from them. These errors get imprinted into our brain and we promise ourselves that we will never do them again, never to live through that horror.
After those errors, we can spot them a mile away, sometimes even before any code is written, and the more often we encounter these textual demons, the better programmers we become.
You can't learn programming by staying on the safe side of the fence, you need to jump over it, whip out your sword and start swinging. You don't know what to expect and you will get beaten down once in a while. But what separates a good programmer from a mediocre one, is that the good one stands up again, dusts off and remembers to duck next time.
So I wish you all the worst, and hopefully, you will live to tell the tale.
8 44 Like it or hate it? - Comment (8)
Lucas
2 7 / Posted on 14.01.2010 02:27 am
So your the reason I can't program to save my life? ;-)
Orkun Balkancı
1 2 / Posted on 14.01.2010 10:27 am
Very nice post!
gas
10 2 / Posted on 14.01.2010 02:32 pm
I think you said something unbelievably stupid.Technology should be as lightweight as possible.
Not a continuous nightmare.
But because life is difficult and you believe that learning is best through a good amount of pain, I have a few random hopes for you:
- to get an annoying illness or a stroke (so you will learn a healthy life style)
- to get beaten and shot (so you will learn a calm and polite way of living - no more bad temper for you)
- to crash with your car against a nice strong tree (you'll be a better driver)
- to have your country invaded, your family slaughtered, your house destroyed, your hope stolen (and that's the way to become a good pacifist)
I am sure you will love all of this.
Plus, you will have stories to tell, if you will be alive. Better stories than programmers. :)
Ólafur Waage
2 3 / Posted on 14.01.2010 02:41 pm
@gas I think you are taking things a little to serious, but I get your point. :)Of course technology should be lightweight and it should make a programmer more productive, but we will not get there by staying on the safe side, we need adventurous people that take risks and are not afraid of getting beaten down.
gas
2 0 / Posted on 14.01.2010 03:04 pm
that's the point: the hopes I wrote are useless and they are simply stupid.but they touch a lot of sensibilities, even between less tech people who don't feel the first technology hope as a nightmare.
I feel it like a nightmare.
I hope for the best for me and anyone who does technology, because Murphy's laws are ruling the computer world: something wrong will happen anyway.
:)
Now if you wish troubles, you will have no problems to find them. But I prefer to hope to avoid them.
Ólafur Waage
0 2 / Posted on 14.01.2010 03:09 pm
This is more about learning from the troubles than constantly getting them and crashing and burning.Hopefully in the end, the troubles will be few and far between, but those you get are also great, since when an experienced programmer has an issue, its a great learning experience.
Ethan Willis
0 1 / Posted on 15.01.2010 02:34 pm
No, I agree with the Poster. When you run into those ridiculous errors that warp your brain trying to figure out what you could have possibly done wrong, builds character. It begins with simple small errors when you first learn to program, syntax errors you just don't see. After hours of staring at a wall of code and realizing you left out a single symbol, it sticks out in your mind in the future. Though as you progress through your programming career the things you learn are much more useful, you learn how to design something properly, and avoid those designs that could lead to major pitfalls.
Lucas
0 3 / Posted on 15.01.2010 10:01 pm
@gas: Wow I never thought I would see a comment so violent, but you my friend have done it. In a single comment you wished that a man would be beaten, shot, have his family killed, and his country invaded.I'm not sure if you have heard of this but you might want to take a chill pill. Mellow out a little bit. Don't take everything so seriously. I don't think Ólafur really wanted you to fail as a programmer, he just wants you to get better and the best way to become better is through adversity.
Think of it this way: Which person would you respect more, a rich kid who inherited $50 million dollars or a poor man who built a company that earned $50 million dollars?
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