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by smoyer
3957 days ago
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I never said you had to deeply understand your tool-chain ... the use of Photoshop isn't at all relevant (though understanding the produced image format might be). PostgreSQL on the other hand becomes a lot more powerful the more you learn about how it works "beneath the covers". Of course there are limits ... I knew the timing of my microcontroller's signals but ignored details of the physics behind the microcontroller's implementation. The first computer I built was a COSMAC Elf (based on an RCA 1802 microprocessor) - I didn't have billions of cycles so there was a limit to the work I could do. Now I do have billions of cycles and do my best to make sure there's a linear increase in the amount of work I can do. <old-guy-voice>In the old days, we spent large amounts of time reading data-sheets, specifications and application notes - probably more than we spent writing software. What you're implying is that you're too impatient to do engineering but you're willing to be a programmer (or hacker).</old-guy-voice> So I agree with the premise that we should be producing smaller, faster and less buggy software than we are. I don't think we need everything related to our systems - I certainly used ICE when available to avoid the code/burn/test cycle required using EPROMs. There is (of course) a finite limit to what we can learn, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't want to know everything. One important skill is being able to discern what you need to know, what you need to understand and what you can safely ignore - this is hard. Knowing is also a choice. I can learn more than most because I don't watch TV or spend inordinate amounts of time wasting elsewhere (I have a few vices like HN). |
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To cut a long story short: when you say "What you're implying is that you're too impatient to do engineering but you're willing to be a programmer (or hacker)" - this is correct. The only way for many people to get projects off the ground is not to engineer them, but just to throw them up.
By the by, I actually in a couple of spare hours toyed with the idea of formalizing this into a project, where we would teach some valuable skill in 15 seconds. (I applied to a YC fellowship with it but wasn't selected.)
Here's my prototype - (it autoplays 15 seconds of sound, you've been warned.) http://iknowkungfu.meteor.com
I didn't write the tutorials up there now, and many of them are too long. But the idea is there: in a few seconds, you can often learn and incorporate something into your stack that you know next to nothing about.
Do this a few times and you have a complete web app serving dynamic, database-backed content - and you've still been able to focus on what you know rather than engineering.
There are 3 billion people out there who deserve to use some of the tools that are available. You, too, deserve to use some of the modern frameworks that are available. Without investing hours, days, weeks of your time into it. I know lots of technologies whose basic usage could be uploaded to someone's brain in 15 seconds of video. Git, to name one.
No, you won't understand how it works or why - but you can commit and roll back (reset), which is all anyone cares about until they start caring more. The advantage to using the git that you can learn in 15 seconds, over copying files and continuously renaming them - is - simply put, astronomical.
Many parts of the toolchain, and many layers of the stack, are quite similar. Who knows what cycles MongoDB is running? Who cares?