[libraryofbabel]

Yeah. Honestly my advice to a junior dev right now would be:

1) Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news. Be on the lookout for decent blog posts but ignore social media and most of youtube.

2) BUT your best bet for actually leveling up is reading these ten books I'll give you (Designing Data-Intensive Applications, etc. etc.), plus doing side projects to get hands-on practice.

[sokoloff]

Hacker News is social media. It just lacks a pretty UI and is overall less vapid.

[GJim]

Not this again.

Social media is where one shares one's social life (it's in the name!).

Granted there is often crossover between technical discussion forums and social media (I'm thinking of a motorbike forum I frequent), but to suggest the likes of HN is social media is rather silly. Isn't it.

[sokoloff]

I've always thought of it (and seen it defined) as media where the content is generated, liked, and commented upon by users (i.e. socially) rather than the media being controlled by a small group serving in an editorial role (traditional media).

Usenet is (IMO) the original social media. Very few usenet groups had anything to do with sharing one's social life.

[Karrot_Kream]

> Social media is where one shares one's social life (it's in the name!).

So TikTok isn't social media because most people don't lost content and those that do rarely post about their social life?

Twitter isn't social media because most people don't post about their social life?

[GJim]

> So TikTok

Is a video sharing platform.

> rarely post about their social life

Note your correct use of the word rarely and consider my comment about crossover.

> Twitter

Xitter is a 'micro' blogging site.

> most people don't post about their social life

Again, note your observation of the most common uses of that platform and consider my comment about crossover.

[Karrot_Kream]

Based on my understanding of your comment, the crossover exceptions dominate the discriminative power of the categories, so the taxonomy feels useless.

[elzbardico]

It is, but it is way harder to self-promote yourself and derive other than intellectual satisfaction. It was not purposely built as a platform for advertising and branding like social networks.

You don't even have the dopamine hit of counting your content upvotes.

[thegrim33]

What do you mean? Every post and comment can receive upvotes, your account has total upvotes, the dopamine hit is there when you can simply look at the top of the screen next to your username and see the number go up after posting. There's even rewards if you make the number go high enough, such as being able to downvote and flag stuff once you reach a certain level.

[anthony_d]

I was under the impression that HN is at least as centered on self-promotion as any other social media site.

> You don't even have the dopamine hit of counting your content upvotes.

There’s a score displayed at the top right; I’m 100% that some percentage of visitors get a dopamine hit off that.

[dingnuts]

oh no it's just as vapid lol, basically equivalent to LinkedIn and if you think otherwise you're deluding yourself

[sokoloff]

If I’m deluded, so be it, but I see a massive gulf between the content on LinkedIn and HN.

[Dilettante_]

>these ten books I'll give you (Designing Data-Intensive Applications, etc. etc.)

Well don't leave me hanging boss!

[libraryofbabel]

I left it open-ended because it would somewhat depend on the junior developer's previous knowledge and their focus (do they have a CS degree? what topics do they want to go deep on in their career?)

But here are some titles:

* Kleppmann, Designing Data-Intensive Applications

* Nand2Tetris. Computers from first principles, often fills in a lot of gaps. Possibly preceded by Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software if they need even more grounding.

* SICP if I think they'd be ready for it

* Crafting Interpreters

* If they're working with Python I'd give them Fluent Python by Luciano Ramalho. For whatever other language(s) pick a book that allows them to go from intermediate to advanced in that language and really understand it inside out.

* Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

* Data and Reality

* The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly to demystify the upper IC track. Or The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier.

[andyjohnson0]

> BUT your best bet for actually leveling up is reading these ten books I'll give you

On the whole, junior dev-age people don't read books much. They read short-form stuff on screens.

[Brian_K_White]

The question was how to learn, the answer (one answer) was read a few specific known-good books.

"new devs don't read" is a non-sequitur imo.

If they want the info, they will, or not. The info is there. Take it, don't take it, what do we care either way?

[lurking_swe]

You’re not wrong. But this also sounds like a “not my problem”.

You can bring a horse to water, can’t make it drink…

[dingnuts]

> Keep up with the trends by reading hacker news

frankly terrible advice, especially now that this website is just AI News. If you want to be a better programmer, there are better places, but I'm not going to advertise them here because I do not want to infect them with the HN commentariat which is much too focused on trends.

Engineering fundamentals have not changed in decades. Screw trends, especially at the beginning.

Books written before 2022 are a good bet. Maybe the value of traditional education has also returned.

[bcrosby95]

This website has always somewhat been about trends. Before AI it was the metaverse. Crypto before that. NoSQL before that. Rails before that. Arguably there's always the undercurrent of the cult of personality of PG. ...

I'm sure I've missed some things, I've taken more than one hiatus.

Nuance usually cannot be well conveyed in a blog post. Someone is always selling something. When something exists long enough the bullshit behind it is eventually revealed. Reality is messy and there's always bullshit hiding somewhere.

It doesn't mean HN is useless. I use it as a bellweather to see what other people are putting their attention on. I don't pay attention to AI other than what's on here. I mostly follow my interests, which outside my dayjob, is currently concurrency. But I don't write about it.

Ultimately the place to become a better programmer is behind a keyboard learning what works, what doesn't, where it does, where it doesn't, and why or why not. It's difficult to convey all the nuance in every decision which means most people never actually do it. Any post is dripping with assumptions. In my mind nearly any decision could be justified and would be surprised to find a place that actually attempts to teach these.

Rather than consuming media you're probably better off putting it out there and letting people tell you all the ways you're "wrong" (because they love to do that). Somewhat paradoxically I don't really follow my own advice, but that's humans for you.

[libraryofbabel]

I mean, the whole point of my post was to say that books are more useful than anything else, and it would certainly better to have access to 10 good books and no hacker news at all than the reverse. But I do think there is value in keeping an eye on trends. They shape our industry; you may wish they didn’t, I wish they didn’t sometimes, but they do. Obviously good fundamentals are more important, but I think it’s doing a disservice to juniors if you tell them to ignore the “commentariat” completely.