Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

These kinds of negative thoughts are never helpful. We're all learning constantly and had to be the newbie at one time. Push them out of your mind.

I will let you in on one superpower that I was lucky to learn early... read the manuals, yes the manuals to your most important tools and practice. All of them, front to back. Very few people are willing to do this for whatever reason. Result being even if you don't know how to do something exactly you'll be able to look it up in seconds and knock it out in minutes.

Using this strategy, at one job I went from nobody to "god-like" (haha) guru-in-demand simply from reading the manual front-to-back for the Unix Shell we used... in the span of about two months. The resulting scripts I wrote automated about 50% of our team's work to single commands, which was greatly appreciated.




This! Reading in general manifests to others as if you have superpowers at times. Whitepapers, RFCs, manuals, API docs, regulations, devour them all and the doors will open so fast it will make your head spin. General advice to all, don't get bogged down thinking you need to memorize every algorithm and data structure to be a great programmer. It's more about understanding the domain you work in and knowing how to "stand on the shoulders of giants" within that domain.


Another thing about reading "everything" ... You can a) have solutions ready before other people know they have a problem; and b) in part from that, get a reputation for knowing "everything".


Never say never.

Thoughts like that are like pain. They are wonderful signals that something is wrong. Something needs to change. That doesn't mean we should seek out pain, just that it's a signal we should pay attention to.

And ignoring pain or "negative thoughts" is likely quite harmful behavior. You'll train yourself not to notice valuable signals when they happen.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: