Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones
Posted by AutoModerator@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 10 comments
A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.
Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.
Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.
Complete-Oil-4106@reddit
5 YoE here. I work at a pretty big (but not super big) embedded software company. I want to pivot to SWE, but I want to make sure that my reasons and strategy make sense.
I studied SWE in college, but it's been years since I've used NodeJs, React, etc.
My reasons:
My strategy:
Does this make sense? Any advice is welcome.
LeminosGO@reddit
Hi devs, how do you improve your working memory? I have about 2 years of experience and I have noticed some senior devs have amazing reactiveness when dealing with adhoc issues or quries. It takes me some time to formulate some solution or create a plan to move forward, while it seems much easier for them. Same for scenerio imaginatin in code or system related.
Please provide me some advise to get better.
flowering_sun_star@reddit
I think a lot of it lies in what I choose to keep in mind when solving a problem. A lot of the details around a problem just don't matter.
Knowing what's important and what to ignore is a matter of experience. *
Something that's fairly important here are design patterns. In part, they are ways of structuring a problem so that you can ignore parts of it, or put them off until later. Again, knowing what patterns are available (or already in place) is a matter of experience.
And some problem solving is just a matter of realising the problem looks a lot like something else you've already solved (or seen solved). So you can just grab the solution from there. Again, experience.
* Sometimes you get this wrong. If you've been struggling with a problem for a while, or gone down a rabbit hole, it can be good to go right back to basics and evaluate things from the beginning again.
biofio@reddit
I keep a doc that I frequently look at and update that contains helpful code snippets or links that I need a lot. This helps me offload some of that mental load.
For things like being able to quickly code solutions or queries, what’s helped me the most is to consistently face those difficult problems rather than shying away from them. If it’s hard and you’re struggling, that’s actually a good sign, because it means you’re growing. Over time (lots of time, 2y is not very much) the hard stuff will become easy and the harder stuff that used to seem impossible will become hard.
drnullpointer@reddit
I don't think memory has anything to do with it.
It is just experience of solving a lot of problems, day after day, for decades.
I have tried explaining to other people why exactly I am being able to jump on a call where they discuss a problem they struggled to solve for the past week only to get an immediate and precise answer.
And the best explanation is this: Do you really think we work on some special project? Even in most outrageous projects, majority of the problems are something that people have already solved before? Whenever you present me with a problem, I can recall hitting similar problem in my past, usually multiple times. I not only already solved your problem multiple times, I already experienced it and experienced living with solution (potentially various versions of it) and have already did a bunch of thinking about it. That's called experience.
miluzhiyu@reddit
Do you also keep your own SOP or notes for those projects?
drnullpointer@reddit
Nope. I did a lot of note taking in the past until I realized that I usually just can't find the notes when I need them. So I stopped making todo lists, I stopped journaling everything I do and now I simply rely on the fact that if it is important then I will remember it and if I forget it it probably wasn't that important after all.
I do keep notes when I do things that require a lot of setup. So, for example, if I am setting up a new system (for example personal website, domain, application components, database, etc.) I will make notes of operations that I am performing, links to websites with solutions to problems I encounter, etc. These tend to help me a lot when I have to come back to it after some time and I don't remember what I did to make it work in the first place.
casualPlayerThink@reddit
When you face the issues several times, then you will remember the solution after years. Also, we make our own notes for things that we don't want to remember, but have to look up sometimes.
LondonPilot@reddit
I don’t have a technique for this, it mostly just comes with experience.
But I’d add… it comes with experience of the specific project, not overall experience. Put me on a new project, or even worse, move me to a new company, and formulating solutions takes ages again, because what I learned and applied on my previous project is no longer relevant.
So I’d say this is totally normal.
Sheldor5@reddit
a professor once told us you don't need to remember anything, just remember where to look it up
some people have the memory of an elephant (not me) and some people have the memory of a fly, if you are the latter revert back to 1.
you only have 2 yoe so plenty of time ahead to gain experience/memory so don't worry