Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)

Ha yup - I've felt this one before :D

Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27333260 - May 2021 (494 comments)

Good docs are docs that make it easy to implement the next feature.

From an AI perspective, it's my observation that LLMs often write code with lower quantity / quality docs. At the same time, they are reasonably good at synthesizing / inferring meaning from code that lacks good docs. They often do so internally by forming a chain of thought / reasoning around how the code works. The docs that should be written as part of the code are probably the same things that an LLM would reasonably come to by spending tokens when modifying that code. I believe that this should be trained into model so that future LLM work starts with not having to build up context.

In the absence of that being built in, something I've been experimenting a little with is tuning what I want to see in docs that actually help source control / development. Currently that's at https://github.com/joshka/skills/tree/main/doc-steward - still needs a bunch of work, but it's generally better than nothing. YMMV

Pharmacists have to get a special degree before they can even get an interview, and I've heard that the education is heavy on organic chemistry. Then you get a job as a cashier selling pills.

> Hacker news and r/programming is only good to get general ideas and keep up-to-date. The comments are almost worthless.

You got me.

> Once, someone asked me who I looked up to and I said Conan O’Brien [...]

He wrote for SNL and studied literature at Harvard, so there's probably plenty going on up there.

If there's any 20-somethings here that make 6 figures, listen carefully:

  1. Max out your 401k, and invest all of it in a target date retirement fund. (Some companies are douches and will assign you mostly their own stock, which when it tanks, there goes your retirement... so check your allocation)

  2. Get an HSA and max that out. Invest it all in a target date retirement fund. Do not use any of it, pay for medical expenses with cash and save your receipts. Get reimbursed for the receipts when you retire.

  3. Contribute to an IRA and max it out (or backdoor roth when you make enough that that's necessary). Invest it all in a target date retirement fund.

  4. Keep 6-12 months of living expenses in a high yield savings account.

- I agree, 100%.

And here's a take that a lot of the folks will disagree, and categorically state that these both belong to two entirely different domains: "Rust, is the evolution of Java. Not Kotlin, not Scala, not clojure, but, Rust".

Some good points. Laughed at TDD is a cult. I mean a lot of software orgs/cultures are cultish (Agile, Scrum, whatnot). At work I often feel I'm part of a cult.

Then again, this person is obviously also lying to claim the engineer title - sit down, "data science!" You're only even here because Product prefers being lied to - so that really sets an ironically honest baseline on how seriously anyone should be taking any of this farrago.