directory
- 1. Has Phil Jones failed after 10 years of hard work?
- Brother Feng these years
- 2.1 Getting Started programming
- 2.2 Learn and practice
- 2.3 Just cry out
- Brother Feng has worked hard in the past five years, but he is still mediocre
- 3. The theory of mediocrity
- On the art of “moving bricks”
- 5. Wish: Don’t donate!
He worked hard for ten years, but was let down?
Tough one day in the Hack on the News to see a hot post news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295… Phil Jones started working as a questioner on www.quora.com/ at the age of 40 and has answered more than 11,000 questions over the past 10 years. Now he’s quitting Quora to play programming and music. Phil Jones says that in the past ten years, she has put in a lot of effort, but the results are not matched. She has “failed” her ten years of hard work. Who should be held responsible?
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After answering more than 11,000 questions on Quora over the past 10 years, the author is quitting the platform. He’s not quitting in bitterness because Quora annoyed him, nor has he been abandoned by the platform. Instead, the author says Quora is an excellent platform.
The author says he is a Quora-aholic and can’t stop himself from browsing Quora and answering questioners’ questions. However, when the author looked through his previous answers, he found that there were many things that could be done, but he had never actually done them. In addition, many of the answers related to current events have become outdated over time, and people may not necessarily listen to the answers they spend hours writing down to persuade others to change their minds.
The author has spent thousands (if not thousands) of hours writing on Quora, answering more than 11,000 questions and more than 5,000 drafts. These drafts were never published because they were not polished. Fans follow and like the author, who has become a top trending “up “on Quora.
Finally, however, when he stopped to think about it, the author said that his decade of hard work had been “let down” — not in the economic sense, not in the social sense, not in the sense of personal growth. The author was 40 when he started writing on Quora, and now, at 50, his answers have become his biggest project and achievement of the last decade.
The author does not deny the 10 years he spent writing on Quora, which is something to be proud of. But it doesn’t add up to value. The initial hours spent writing answers get a lot of attention, likes, and satisfaction, but the marginal benefit gradually diminishes. In the past ten years, some of the author’s friends have published books, made small achievements in academia, and made achievements in film and television. The author’s achievements are a bunch of answers on Quora. This is not to say that the answers are worthless, but in the face of a decade of time, energy and talent, that decade has been “let down”.
The author mentions that a magazine article written 10 years ago earns more money than 11,000 Quora answers written in the past 10 years. Not the money, but that magazine article will add value to a resume, while few Quora answers will. In fact, the author has been aware of these situations for years, but each time the author quickly opens Up Quora, looks at notifications, argues over meaningless political questions or explains the well-defined concepts of a universal programming language on the Internet, and realizes that a day has been wasted on Quora.
The text of the post links as follows: exquora. Thoughtstorms. Info /.
Ten years of hard work, and he was let down? Only Jones Phil can answer this question accurately, but it doesn’t matter, feng is very happy for him, he quit Quora at the age of 50 to play programming and music, he will certainly not live up to his efforts in the future.
So who failed ten years of Jones Phil’s work? Brother Feng, who is over 30 years old, couldn’t explain why he felt empty in his heart. Jones Phil insisted on doing one thing for ten years and succeeded in doing this thing, but in the end he got “not worth it”.
Jones Phil has spent ten years learning a lesson that he believes is costly and valuable. Brother Feng reviews his work experience in the past five years, hoping to reflect on the lessons of Jones Phil and start a good start for 2022.
Brother Feng these years
Brother Feng graduated from two schools, in order to continue the time to find a job on three years of postgraduate, liberal arts major. It has been nearly five years since I started working in 2017. Over the past five years, Feng Brother has witnessed his mediocrity and has gradually become accustomed to it.
Think when going to school, feng elder brother nowadays 24, arrive 30 and 30 should be able to do a good thing. I can’t tell you anything now…
When I first started working, I thought that the 30-year-old architect directing Brother Feng’s code was only that good. In three years, I was better than him. Now what? It’s harder than that.
2.1 Getting Started programming
Brother Feng began to learn programming as a graduate student. At the beginning, he worked as a handyman in the information department of the school, learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript, thinking that this major was suitable for him. Look for a course to learn on the net, go to information classroom to see video after self-study class every evening.
I clearly remember one night when I printed out the RGB color chart and I wanted to memorize it. Anyway, I feel like I found a right path after all these years of school, like a treasure.
At that time in 2015, we did not know the difference between web server and client, and we thought, where do we maintain the web pages we visit? It feels mysterious.
Later, I got in touch with Linux, Git, Vim and JavaWeb, and watched videos to learn the basic knowledge of Linux. Register github account, clone other people’s project transformation, learn vim command and force yourself to use Vim to edit documents; Look around the Internet for other people’s open source projects to learn the source code.
The most impressive winter vacation home hard disk downloaded Linux advanced courses to learn, but then did not learn much. At that time, there was no love for technology, but there must be enthusiasm. I thought I could find a programming job in the future and become a programmer. During my graduate study, I did two open source projects, one was to generate resumes suitable for programmers, and the other was a library management system complete with all the elements. Both of these open source projects had dozens of forks on Github.
2.2 Learn and practice
It was my great honor to meet a good tutor during my graduate study. The tutor once gave feng a research topic, but he gave it up after a week. He was really not fit for academic research.
My tutor also recommended a company that he worked with in his dormitory as an intern. The company was engaged in cross-border e-commerce. As a CTO, my tutor assigned me the task of “capture commodity price information of overseas businesses of major e-commerce companies (such as Tmall International and JINGdong International)”.
The company used PHP technology as an intern, so I printed a thick PHP book at that time. After work every day, the company lost all its staff. Brother Feng studied there and continued to read books at night, having a basic understanding of PHP language.
The company I worked in was far away from where I lived. I got up at 6:50 in the morning to make a frangipani with boiling water (at that time, all I had was a hot kettle, a tea pot, a fan and bedding). I hurried to catch the subway at 7 o ‘clock. Take the subway is the starting station, there is a place to sit, holding a thick book to read.
The company is open at 9:30, 8:30 or so to the company park, can not enter the company park on the stool reading. During that time, I learned about operating system processes, threads, virtual memory, races, and more.
Although the internship did not participate in the project, but also felt the real working environment. My tutor’s students are very busy. They don’t rest at noon and seldom work overtime at night. After working for five years, Brother Feng wants to come, which is actually very powerful. Of course, whether to work overtime or not is related to the focus of the company and the team documents. But brother Feng was shocked by the enthusiasm and efficiency of the tutor CTO in dealing with technology. Seeing that he was so busy, brother Feng was almost embarrassed to ask questions, feeling that he was wasting his time.
Over the last month or so, a crawler was produced that crawled millions of pieces of data. Due to the relationship of the mentor, purely there experience, did not give the company any output value. During this internship, I have experienced the real enterprise environment and understood the basic interpersonal communication in the enterprise.
2.3 Just cry out
Immediately after the internship, I was looking for a job in September. From September to November, I interviewed 10 or 20 companies, but basically failed to enter the three aspects. In the morning, I went to the school entrance exam or went to the interview. In the afternoon, WITHOUT the interview, I would read books at home, brush the algorithm problems on LeetCode, and watch the Basic things of Java. From 7:00 to 9:00 in the evening, I went to run in the Olympic Forest Park, and occasionally watched TV series. Every day is full, but slowly becomes anxious.
Sometimes Brother Feng would say to himself, is it really not suitable for programmer this road? But we have to do it. Once I attended a job fair in Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. It was an ordinary afternoon, and the canteen had not been ready for dinner. When I went in and sat down to recall that I had been running for one or two months and had no result in the interview, I cried.
In November, I took the initiative to contact the company where I work to ask why there was no second interview, because the performance of the technical interview was ok. The company said that I thought I was out of town and had no arrangement, so I immediately arranged the HR interview, and soon received the input notice. It was a dark and windy night. When I received the call from HR, I felt relieved and lightened. Finally, a company would hire me. Brother Feng said to himself, as long as GIVE me a chance, will certainly make achievements.
Brother Feng has worked hard in the past five years, but he is still mediocre
In February 2017, I started my internship in the company. Compared with my previous internship in the company, it is a big company with a large office area and standard procedures. However, brother Feng soon had trouble. The company did large-screen projects based on third-party platforms, and all it did was drag and drop controls and adjust styles, just like PPT, with little technical content. Brother Feng just entered the workplace to do it well, carefully check the product documentation, thinking about more possibilities of implementation, when doing things more ideas. There was one feature that the team didn’t know would work until I was involved in the project.
After graduation in July, his girlfriend followed Brother Feng to a first-tier city. At that time, Brother Feng was full of emotion, filled with “I have come, a lot to do!” Passion. I clearly remember that after work, I went to the market to buy food with my girlfriend. Brother Feng was absent-minded and thought, “Will it be a waste of time? Should we use this time to learn?” . At that time, I did struggle. In the rental house, I got up more than six o ‘clock in the morning to read and write articles, so as not to disturb my girlfriend to sleep. I bought a lamp with adjustable brightness and adjusted the brightness to the gentlest.
At work, Brother Feng was lucky to meet a good leader, who could be said to be a noble person. The leader appreciated brother Feng very much. Besides work, he talked about career planning and personal development. The key is to give a lot of trust and encouragement. With the care and help of the leaders, Brother Feng was promoted within one and a half years after he joined the company. During this period, I also wanted to change jobs for many times, but changing jobs requires hard skills. In order to spare time to study in busy work, I remember that Brother Feng once went to the park to read books at noon. During that time, I bought a Kindle to read electronic books, downloaded technical books, and spent most of my fragmented time reading books, such as riding the subway.
In 2019, Brother Feng went to another first-tier city with his girlfriend. Just graduated in a rented house in the morning to read afraid of noisy girlfriend sleep thought “if there are two rooms can separate how good”, now realized, the new rented one room one hall. But in these three years feng’s passion faded away and he became an “old man” in the company, living the life of a monk ringing the bell. In the past three years, brother Feng seldom got up early to read books, and seldom thought about progress and development, but he was very busy. In other words, because he was very busy, Brother Feng forgot to think and read. The project tasks were overwhelming, and brother Feng was so tired that he seemed to become a machine in the factory, and everything became passive. These three years are more laborious and seem to be more diligent than those two years when I could get up and read books in the rented house. But what do we get? At that time, there was a lot to be done, but now it has become a habit of “resignation”. For three years, brother Feng seldom updated his blog, and did not go into deep research on technology. What did he do then? Of course, work is a project, but the project pressure of people out of breath to think. Without the ability to think, Brother Feng has “fallen” in these three years. At the beginning that drags control to resemble to do PPT the same job can make the feng that spend comes, now can follow one’s footsteps to walk hastily and have no direction only.
3. The theory of mediocrity
Excellence is a habit, and so is mediocrity. Excellent people will say that they are mediocre, that is a kind of self-deprecation; Mediocre people will say that they will become excellent, that is a kind of confidence; There are mediocre people say that they are really mediocre, that is a kind of self-knowledge.
Brother Feng is a self-aware person, in fact, there is no need for five years of work to prove brother Feng’s mediocrity, a poor primary school study, secondary school re-study one year to pass the ordinary second book feng can be excellent to how? At the very least, it proves mediocre intelligence. Brother Feng has social phobia and mediocre emotional intelligence. IQ and EQ are mediocrity, it is mediocrity.
Now that Brother Feng has realized his mediocrity, embracing mediocrity is of great benefit to brother Feng. How to put it?
When brother Feng writes a technical blog, he will thoroughly understand what he is writing and spend more time to verify and understand rather than mislead others. What difference does it make to spend more time? Please remember brother Feng is mediocre.
When brother Feng studied a technical problem, he would read the official documents for two or three times if he didn’t understand them, check more materials to understand them, and compile more demos to verify them. What does it matter if others master in one day and Brother Feng master in three? Please remember brother Feng is mediocre.
When Brother Feng saw that the technical genius had such a clear way of solving problems, the efficiency of the output structure was so efficient, and even the documents were beautifully drawn, he lamented the gap. What he thought was how to improve his own ability instead of feeling sorry for himself. What does it matter if someone is an architect in five years? Please remember brother Feng is mediocre.
Yes, according to the 80/20 rule, only 20% of the best people. Most people are mediocre, and if you embrace mediocrity and try to do something different, it won’t change, but it will.
When brother Feng writes a technology blog, he does not focus on quantity but on quality. Every article he produces can help him understand technology and help others grow. It’s just not easy.
When brother Feng was studying a technical problem, he read the document for three times and still had so much dependent knowledge to understand, so he didn’t really understand the technical principle. At this time, Brother Feng did not give up, from the very beginning, the most basic knowledge of learning, a little bit of digestion and finally master the technology. It’s just not easy.
When brother Feng cooperated with the ox man and was crushed on the ground, brother Feng stood up and patted the dust on his body, summarized the details that were ignored by himself, and quietly recorded the place that was crushed by the ox man. If there was an opportunity, he would learn to supplement it. It’s just not easy.
Mediocrity plus unsimplicity equals trotting to excellence. The formula is: mediocre + not simple >> excellent.
On the art of “moving bricks”
When Brother Feng had not been working, he only heard that programmers “move bricks” and knew that “move bricks” meant work, but did not understand the real connotation of it.
After work, brother Feng suddenly realized that his daily work in the company was “adding, deleting, modifying and checking” the database, which was very similar to moving bricks on the construction site. “Moving bricks” means a job that is unskilled, repetitive and has to be done in large quantities.
Coding is only a small part of a programmer’s job. In fact, an enterprise employs programmers to solve problems. Most of the time may be spent in connecting with customers, sorting out requirements, understanding requirements, architectural design, coding implementation, unit testing, sorting out release packages, on-site implementation, solving online problems, etc. Even when I’m actually writing code, I spend most of my time looking at code or copying and pasting answers in search engines.
If you’re working on a new project, you’re lucky, because most of the projects you’re working on are existing projects that need to be added or reused. It’s time to fill someone else’s hole or take the fall for someone else.
In short, programmers are no different from other professionals. But the programming industry has its own characteristics, which is that programmers have to constantly learn to keep up with the technology. So programmers who like programming like to learn new knowledge, willing to study.
Brother Feng learned programming by himself, and he did a lot of work in programming and made a lot of mistakes along the way. Like Jones Phil, Brother Feng believed that many of his efforts were failed or he could do better.
Brother Feng has looked for “what is the core of programming?” in search engines for many times. “And didn’t get a perfect answer. Up to now, Brother Feng has not been able to give the answer to this question, but his understanding of programming in the past five years has accumulated some understanding of the art of “moving bricks” :
Development language framework, programming tools are only auxiliary programming tools, can not indulge
A company usually has its own mainstream programming language, which may be Java or Go or other, so it is necessary to learn this language and related frameworks in depth when it is used in work. However, it is not necessary to be too addicted to learning each framework, especially not to stay at the application level and not to study the principles behind it. No matter how much effort you put in, you’re just getting familiar with a framework and not improving your programming skills.
Programming languages also need to learn more about other languages at the language level. By language level, I mean not the implementation of a language’s class library, but the way the language solves problems, such as programming paradigms, dynamic/static typing, strong/weak typing, etc.
Don’t get bogged down in researching styles for vim, IDE, etc., unless you want to write a style. If you think someone else’s theme is cool, you can configure one if you have time, but don’t waste too much time, it won’t improve your core programmer skills too much.
Programmers read books and understand them
Programming often encounter a lot of problems, if they are “easy to read, do not understand”, then will harvest very little, a lot of things feel like metaphysics. Over time, you will gradually lose confidence and interest in programming.
If you can encounter valuable problems thoroughly researched, and their own experience recorded, shared, will be of great benefit. , of course, it also involves a problem is the following knowledge system, person’s energy is limited, if you are outside the knowledge system of a question not understand just don’t have to struggle, like a git may conflict you clearly, there is no change to the code when a pull the conflict as a result, this time to check online or consult other people solve problems, and don’t spend too much time to study, Unless you’re working with Git, which requires systematic learning to solve your problems, you won’t be able to waste your time trying to find it online.
Use your blog to write down what you have learned in your daily research and be able to explain it to others. That’s how you really get knowledge.
If you want to create a personal blog for free, you can refer to: fengmengzhao. Making. IO / 2018/06/07 /…
People’s energy is limited, define their own knowledge system to develop in depth
There are a lot of computer science knowledge related to programming to learn: operating system, programming language, database, network and so on, each branch is not so easy to study thoroughly. And a person’s energy is limited, it is impossible to become an expert in all branches. Defining one’s own knowledge system and developing in depth within the knowledge system can bring qualitative transformation. Avoid the cat-fishing situation where you study the back end one day and it’s not so easy, and then you study the front end the next day and it’s harder to master, and you lose faith in computer science.
Each branch of computer science is related to each other, so it is necessary to develop the breadth of knowledge system and broaden the horizon
If the knowledge system is compared to a tree, the depth of knowledge mentioned above means “how deep can the roots of the tree go”, and the breadth of knowledge means “how many branches can the tree branch out”. The two are also complementary. Spreading branches helps root deeper, and the deeper the root, the more chance there is for new branches to grow.
When a back-end development is assigned front-end work, do it without prejudice or resistance. The front end is just another programming language to deal with a different set of problems. This is the time for a developer to expand the breadth of knowledge and branch out the knowledge system.
Depth of knowledge determines how strong you are, breadth of knowledge determines how strong you can become.
Look down at the road, but also up at the sky
Marx said, “Capitalism comes into the world with blood and filth at every pore.” This sentence can only be understood by those who have been beaten by the cruel society. In the capital of sugar-coated shell temptation and whipping drive down, programmer workers eyes full of blood, the body was hollowed out, the spirit of their own “sorrow, anger not courageously”. This group of people often say to themselves, “I’m going to reverse the test tomorrow. I’ve had enough. I quit!” “Doing such work all day makes people dry waste, I need to read a good book to change a job”, “the leader is really brainless, do not want to stay another day “… . But tired work comes home at 10 o ‘clock in the evening, it is difficult to spare time to learn, the morning is not to get up, that is, the use of will to force up, found do not know what to do.
This is the dilemma of most programmers, and it is a vicious circle. They put in energy and time, but they didn’t grow up personally. It might take three or five years to go round and round every day. At this time, the only one who can lead workers out of the dilemma is themselves. Capital drives workers as machines, and programmers should endow their souls. It is no problem to look down at the road, do projects and complete work, and it is also their responsibility. Am I stuck in a vicious cycle without trying to change anything? Do you feel good about yourself by staying in your comfort zone? …” . Brother Feng is also a person in trouble, or anyone at his stage has the so-called vicious circle to varying degrees. If you don’t know what to do, you can try:
- Do what no one else can do. Everyone has their own advantages, combined with their own strengths to develop, you have won a lot of people. For example, if brother Feng can understand more than a few English words, he will find some high-quality foreign blog translation, on the one hand to improve himself, and on the other hand to help beginners.
- Do what others don’t want to do. It seems that programmers are reluctant to document, and being able to document a project in all its aspects is a powerful skill.
To look down at the road, at the same time don’t forget to look up at the sky, take a look at the original intention, take a look at their harvest, take a look at the next road is not what they want, take a look to do something…
5. Will: Don’t give
So who is to blame for Jones Phil’s failed decade of hard work? Probably because he found himself a Quora-junkie but didn’t have the courage to change. Brother Feng has worked hard in the past five years, or is he mediocre? Who will be responsible for that? Should be depressed head only look at the road in a hurry, do not remember to look up at the day of that thinking.
May the year of 2022:
Mediocre programmers like Brother Feng can strive to be mediocre but not simple, remember that mediocre plus not simple is to run in the direction of excellence.
Programmers who bend, stretch, and half-lie down to make code changes are able to catch bugs without killing them.
Programmers who mentally or out loud say “it’s time for a miracle” are more confident and smile, less lonely and disappointed.
The hair that falls on the table or the floor can be redeemed: “I’m bald, but I’m strong.”
Those who are fed up with a little more courage and action can break the vicious cycle and survive adversity.
The programmer who gets run over and scratches his or her head and says he or she can’t learn to wonder if he or she is a good programmer can find his or her bearings and get better over time.
Those who have not yet entered the workforce and are struggling to find a job, or those who have left their jobs for one reason or another, can meet talent and find a good job.
All the programmers can look down at the road and look up at the sky, day arch a pawn, not tang donates.
6. References
Jones Phil blog address:sdi.thoughtstorms.info/Hack News original address:News.ycombinator.com/item?id=295…Brother Feng github resume generation warehouse:Github.com/FengMengZha…Brother Feng gitee synchronous resume generation warehouse:Gitee.com/fengmengzha…
Brother Feng github Student management system warehouse:Github.com/FengMengZha…Brother Feng gitee synchronizes student management system warehouse:Gitee.com/fengmengzha…
Step by step learn how to create a free personal blog:Fengmengzhao. Making. IO / 2018/06/07 /…
