I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
we have dual boot in our college computers, linux and chad windows 7 ultimate* while doing programming and stuff or playing with raspberry pie* we use i mean students use nano or fking gedit for so called programming well here i am creating aliases in everycomputer i can with if some one type nano,gedit or any other editor it directly change to chad nvim now they cant get out or not even type hahhaah only alt+f4 but i heard 2 or more lab manager talking about someone tinkerd alot and we cannot go back i mean who fools made this guys lab manager they cant even figure it out how to get out i mean i just adjust aliases in zshrc (yeah i also installed oh my zsh in it haha) this teacher just reset the terminal instead of adjusting to it but i keep on doing it i even wrote a script which echo to .bashrc or zshrc automatically whenever those pc starts sir still tryna figure out who is doing ahhaha i loved it i am keep on doing it lol different things. i will target servers of college in labs nexttime in my second year. hope sysadmin notices that.
The distinction between fear and caution is interesting, but it's a scale. Caution can be rational, fear can be irrational when there is absolutely no reason for it. But fear can also be intuition which tells you there's risks out there. Even if you can't rationalize it (yet) the fear might be justified. The answer to 'what if it breaks' matters a lot too, I've deployed to production without any testing, generally because 'it's broken already anyway, so I can't make it worse'. But there's stuff a do where a bug means having to find the people to actually go and swap out thousands of devices all over the country. My level of fear there is different, and it should be. There is a huge difference between freezing a Netflix tab in a browser and getting MCAS wrong and crashing two airplanes.
Prime's advice about fear is absolutely spot on. Something I learned a few years ago is that bravery is a skill that you can practice and get better at. I wish I had learned earlier in life. As far as I understand it, it works like this: 1. You face something that scares you 2. You choose to push through 3. "Why be scared of something I can beat?" - Your subconscious 4. That, and everything else is less scary Or 1. You face something that scares you. 2. You give into fear and back down 3. "Clearly I'm at a lower level, I'm not cut out for this" - Your subconscious 4. That, and everything else is more scary
Or you face it and you actually do fail because your fear was justified. But even then you build resilience and self respect because "that sucked so bad and I am actually shit as this. But the world doesn't end when I fail and I can tank it all
Limitations still apply to everyone: - new business domain, - time pressure - hotfixes - etc I regularly had around 5-10% of tasks that I could not solve without help. To me that is a limitation. There will be always tasks that given the shortest timeframe, solution is not possible without help or some delay.
@@AdamFiregate of course, but backing down because it's scary does mental harm to yourself. I'm not saying that facing your fears makes you a super hero. But cowering at the sight of them definitely makes you weaker.
@@gu1581 When I say winning I mean psychologically. You win by facing the thing you find scary and not backing down. Doesn't mean you have to succeed at the task or whatever. Just facing makes you stronger.
Bravery and fear is more complex than that. You can fear some things and be super confident in other things. I am confident in my programming abilities, I am confident in my work place, I'm unafraid to try new things. But I suck at speaking in front of a crowd. Some neural pathway can trigger the flight response and cripple you. I think what differs all of us is how potent that response is, like prime said we're all on a spectrum there. It's not as easy for everyone to overcome X fear because we all have to climb a ladder with a different height, and its most noticeable when looking at the responses of newborns or young children. Fresh out the factory but they are all so very different. Society wants to mold us into one shape but it's not as easy for everyone to take that shape. I am working on my fears, and embracing what I'm good at. In some ways the challenge of overcoming our fears gives life meaning.
Blameless post-mortem isn't about avoiding fear; it's about enabling a healthy environment to lead better towards Root-Cause Analysis. If you've never been in meetings where people point fingers and shout at each other, I don't think you understand how bad people's ego can get.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Arguably a distinction without a difference. 'Fear' is multi-faceted though, the fear part might come in for the career limiting aspect. If everything you touch is 'aw hell, that's gonna suck' - it might not look good that you're the one plowing into all of the problems and nobody else. Culture is important. I think Prime is wrong in the keeping score part, teams usually know who are the ones taking risks, and those that are quietly playing it safe.
@@SeaBike007 I fully agree on the fear part. I think what he mentioned is the exact same thing as fear. You can easily rephrase the sentence to "I'm afraid it's gonna suck, so I don't really wanna deal with it." and it's the exact same meaning. Unless what he means to say is "I don't want to deal with that, but I'm gonna have to do it", and even then, I think it's better to shift it to "That's really difficult, I'm gonna deal with it anyways."
Man, your experience with going on a stage and talking to a lot of people really resonated with me. "Do or do not, there is no try". You either go 100%, even if you're shaking with fear, or you pack your bags and go home. As Dale Carnegie said: people will forget what you said, but not how you made them feel. You're clearly a very passionate person and someone that takes self improvement seriously. Your kids are very lucky to have someone like you they can learn from.
I will take the following belief to the grave with me: When you start changing your design to favor testability over functionality, you have jumped the shark and lost the plot. When your code becomes so abstract and so convoluted to support your suite of mocs and tests that no mere mortal can follow the call chain: you've lost the battle.
you're conflating testability with mocks and needless abstractions. one example of making your code more testable without the above is: try to avoid mixing business logic and fetching data from DB in one function.
I get Prime has no fears, and I similarly don't share what was mentioned, but it's still crazy to me that he isn't aware he isn't normal (as in not the norm, not... you know) To be clear irrational fears aren't just irrational because they aren't explainable, they are also irrational because they can't be reasoned for most cases.
Feeling that fear and the amount of it can vary drastically depending on the situation, I've experienced both having a complete team-wide yolo attitude and massive fear paralysis that eventually led to a physically debilitating burnout and a lot of potentially beneficial changes not being made, even worse, chosen over in favour of a safe but obvious regression
A comment I liked right here was "I don't fear software, software fears me.". I think that's the kind of mindset everyone should follow, even if right now you fear doing big things. It's not that you won't get anywhere by having fear, but that you can get to A LOT more places if you think you can do anything. This is the kind of mindset that gets you from you fearing your competitors, to your competitors fearing YOU.
One thing I've learned is that I do have actual limits and I'm the same way. I have a bit of delusion of grandeur in that I feel like I could do anything with enough time and effort, but I have failed before and I think it's important to realize what limitations you have in order to proceed better forward.
This really pulled me out of my delusional fear. I'm about to join a startup and I'm getting ahead of myself thinking I'll be fired during my probationary period coz I won't be able to keep up with the pace. Now I can focus on improving myself.
Interesting take on public speaking. I like the "neurons that fire together wire together". Your body WILL betray you when performing physically like that, but with experience you can learn to overcome that and even eventually turn it off. But it takes practice, persistence, and the willingness to fail in order to learn.
Still early on in my learning, I wrote a pretty big (for me) project. That was before I learned about testing... I was so scared to do much to it because it I could break it in obscure ways. I'm also still finding subtle bugs. Testing is so valuable. Prime loves to mention that time he broke the Netflix site. I feel like breaking production is a merit badge you have to earn in order to become a senior developer.
My daily job is making features that other peoples are afraid to do, and only seem to find problems in making them. It's all good, the stakeholders loves me
@@masterflitzer Nope. I was in the same position at my last company. I was the only not scared to tackle the difficult problems, so even if I made a mistake it was fine. No one else was going to do it after all. It just means I have more work to do. It's work that pays the bills though, so more work is good for me.
How to upgrade legacy code: 1. Log in and outputs of the affected procedure for some reasonable amount of time. This gives you an expected data set. 2. Keep the logging running 3. Write tests for the days you've connected so far. 4. Check current code passes the tests 5. If not, find the global state ruining your life. 6. Once all pass, validate any new data isn't creating new test cases. 7. Now create unhappy tests you expect to fail. 8. Get to a state that's crazy heavy on tests. 9. Start changing your code with an a/b test. 10. Phase in everyone else slowly. Or 1. Create a breaking change major and say fuck it :)
ffs prime how can you be such a good influence, and make me see something in life in a different and better way this many times?? thank you guess imma be a better human being now that I watched a random programmer talk online
@@steventolerhan5110 hmm, interesting I looked up the definitions, and now I am not sure why they are called synonyms in the first place. Anyway, thanks, will correct it.
that example as a neurodivergent guy who can juggle with swords made me chuckle. Basically because clubs or swords is no different except weight. But I feel you
I always try to stump the interviewee. I was asked a question during an interview which couldn't be answered, because they wanted to see if I would make something up. I do this now when I interview developers. It's a good measure of their confidence when they say, "I don't know." It shows they will be honest in a situation that might be critical. This goes with the personal safety principle in Crystal Clear/Agile Development - Alistair Cockburn. I've also been invited to a second interview when I said I didn't know the answer and was given a chance to see if I could learn the answer between interviews. I also love this approach, because the company was more interested in my potential than in my immediate knowledge. Things change quickly in software development. This kind of approach to an interview helps assess if that person can adapt, pivot, learn, etc. Best thing is to be honest. Lastly, if you don't know an interview question; use it as a learning opportunity. Go research that thing you didn't know. Finally, don't live in fear!
You can't just remove the fear when it's already there. What you can only do is to recognize that the fear is there, be aware that it could be irrational, and carry on despite it. Do that many times over a period of time and you'll recognize that the fear lessens, and/or you're getting better at managing the fear.
So many times I hear people say “Oh we can’t fix that, it means we have to change XYZ.” as if it means the conversation is over and not that we need to just make the scope a bit bigger.
Wow this absolutely blew my mind. Thank you so much for this advice. I don’t know how to move on when this discussion is brought up. From now onwards, I’ll state the scope needs to be increased and that fixing issue, will cause a waterfall of solutions and improvements. Thank you so much!
It's crazy that the CS community can make content about this stuff. A bad tradesman is afraid of the tool, also. Confidence is indeed key to not cutting yourself.
I think given enough time and resources I could code anything but in reality whether I get to eat or not depends on if I can code something quick enough and good enough to please someone enough, which are all very out of my control and hence makes me maybe not fearful but certainly nervous.
If you are in a blameful environment, where people are fired, or severely career limited based on a single mistake - how can you embrace fear of failure? Blameless environment usually says you are not to blame until something has happened a second or third time. The first time was the systems fault, tech debt, the second time is your fault for not remediating a UX unfriendly system. In other words, the first time is the systems fault for being error prone, the second time is your fault because you are not doing anything to solve the error proneness. Good developers solve problems, poor developers resolve problems (ie: they make them hide temporarily, but they are not vanquished). w.r.t fear, if you get neither opportunity to do anything about problems after hitting them for a first time, because you are in a blameful environment, instead of solving the error-proneness of your system, your response is more likely to never ever do that thing again.
I know it's gonna break something, i know it's not gonna be perfect. My job is to let whoever is responsible for the entire project i.e. managers know about what the potential issues are. As for how well it goes after that, it's a problem for future me. Unfortunately I'm currently working on something that isn't easily testable, isn't created with tests in mind, has no metrics in place, has no way to do a canary test, etc. so things are a bit wild. I am pushing for some of those though, and things are looking up in the near future.
Reviewer: * Gives a LGTM PR review * Code: * breaks production * Reviewer: * Points finger at author * Blameless postmortem makes sense. Bad process causes issues. Any number of safeguards could have caught the problem upstream.
1:14 I do relate to what prime said more, maybe because I am still studying and don't have many high stakes. But I do wish I was afraid of doing big tasks more often because I end up piling a month of backlog in a week and then start questioning if I really like programming or if I am more suited for working at McDonalds.
So weird. I had insight into this feeling yesterday. Like building a card house, as it grows you progressively become more careful and "fearful". The drag force I experience grows as the code grows, and my productivity decreases as my changes become smaller, less meaningful, and I find myself deliberating more. Becoming familiar with and fighting against that resistance is absolutely necessary and required. That resistance is where the edge of my abilities are and where I can expect further growth to likely happen. git checkout -b and earn a red badge.
not sure if the author thinks too much of the negative outcome that "might be possible or not in the future" , thats why its a group work so you can collaborate how to tackle the task in smaller chunks, if they are afraid of change code dont they know test environment lots of test and QA
Idk if that's truly fear, but as a single DevOps I been burned by taking up too many tasks and being enthusiastic on taking challenge to just be blamed for slow delivery. Maybe I mis communicated a complexity of a single task or something, but still.
i think i am in the same boat, and i see a way out: being a yes man is dangerous. nurture your enthusiasm, but learn how to say no and focus on one thing at a time and stick to it (cultivate accountability). trying to please everyone ends up disappointing everyone including yourself.
23:20 I think upbringing might be a big part on this as well. If you're growing up and make a mistake and get punished for or blamed for it, it can mess with you way down the line. Also, imo I feel like being less anxious comes with having more of a margin for error in what you can afford to screw up, cause if that margin is extremely low your instinct for survival is gonna kick in and then there's often not really anything tangible in today's world that it can do to help you so you're just getting stressed instead of it helping you
"Fear is the mind-killer". And because we are naturally risk averse, it's easy to go into the negative feedback loop and... paralysis. And that "stage fright", God, can i relate... first few times i nearly s**t myself. Them i figured it was just the first minute so i just bs it by "checking the presentation tools", take a deep breath and power through it. Also, it becomes easier the more you do it. Kudos to the marvelous lady that gave me my "trainers training", as she hammered into our heads that most of the fear is simply "uncertainty". (re)Do it in the mirror, as many hours as it takes. All "perfect"? Great, now you only need to deal with "small unknowns", you already ironed out the big ones. Sounds a lot like "write code, catch obvious bugs, fuzzy inputs, catch more bugs,...." doesn't it?
I believe it just go with the experience and slefconfidence... I experienced a lot of fear at my 4th job, which was working with also most experienced developers I did, my confidence went really low... it was after about 12 years of experience... after I changed my job after 4 years, I just seen there is nothing to be affraid of, because the new team was on much lower level... my confidence went really up... and also... since no infrastructure around and process is so stupid... I just say.. whatever if I make mistake, its also managements fault to make the project without any unit tests or build pipleines go so far ... but you dont know this without any experiences from other jobs... just dont do stupid mistake over and over again and you should be fine ...
Fear got me, but not learning fear, or new thing fear... I was deadlocked in my learning mission until I let go of what people would think of my code on git.... seriously, I was afraid of being examined... I let go of that, and the last two months have been astounding to my progress. I decided to make an app FOR ME, and me ALONE. I don't care how you look at the code, it's for me. I don't care if you don't like the looks, it's for me. I wasn't afraid of not being able to figure it out, I know I can. I feared judgement.
My biggest hangup of the last 2 years is fear of understanding my (read: my coworker's) codebase.We're not programmers, we're scientists, so our priorities aren't the same as with, say, front end developers. It's a conglomeration of proprietary protocols, C++, python, etc built half by experienced devs and half by new students ranging from late-undergrads to PhD candidates. Everyone who wrote anything in it is highly intelligent, but this was at least half of our collaboration's first large project of their careers. So the codebase is largely badly document and even worse to read yourself. This is definitely a skill-issue on my end. That skill issue is my fear. Appearing incompetent has been the single worst thing for my productivity since joining and it's only now, 2 years on, beginning to really eb. I'd have 2-3x times as much work done now if I were able to just sit down without ego ages ago and just figure it out. Alas, fear is the mind killer. Edit: I should mention that this codebase over 400k lines all included. I interact with maybe a 10th of that, but you can see how this would be terrifying to a graduate student.
He was lucky with the env maybe. I know i had that at my first job and it was mainky caused by colleagues that wanted to have "fun" on the back of the new guys. They acted like they knew more and like complex stuff was a simple as tieing your shoes.... Some have IS from other reasons. For me, it was because of the env... it really matters how ppl act in regards to ppl not knowing stuff.
I am more curious how software engineers who's in charge of writing code for spaceship at SpaceX or NASA deal with the fear you may screw up and result in the billion dollar loss or even life loss. I cannot imagine how it feels to see the rocket launch and knowing your code could screw things up.
Well, fear is what is keeping me away from work and progress. Every time i start coding or even starting to apply for a job, I just get anxiety attacks, and can't do anything anymore.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. It's a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert, but variations can be found in most religions. It's also true. Something I learned a few years ago is that bravery is a skill that you can practice. You need to build up by conquering every greater challenges. The first one doesn't need to be big, just something that you can face, feel the fear, but push through regardless.
Whiteboard interviews are scary because most of us never need to think about algorithms in the abstract way whiteboarding interviews present them. You could be an absolute beast in your domain (and the domain of the job you're interviewing for) and get completely railed by a single question that makes you look like an absolute idiot. That single question derails weeks/months of preparation and invalidates years of experience simultaneously ruining a future opportunity, which for some people is a massive quality of life upgrade. That is why there is fear. Front end, user focused / design side / suck at math brain devs - this is our own personal hell.
i like this very much 22:12 you will significantly hinder your growth as a person and in your life if you expect the world to be a safer place for you rather than you to become a more brave person for the world.
Weird article. Engineering is about exploring new paths and suggesting different solutions. You cannot be a conformist and a good engineer. The author is basically saying he/she is a conformist. Being cautious is different from being fearful. It matters. You can be fearful of your manager's attitude and decisions if something does not work too well however, that's legit.
programming is scary. Bugs creep me out. I cannot stand to see this piece of code. that I took 1 hour to write, fail in a buggy heap. That's why I release my code to production with no tests and let the QA get back to me with bug reports
Suddenly I seriously want prime to do a tier list of animals he thinks he could beat in fight.
Horse with laser eyes
Spock, with Star Trek fight music!
Vicious Chicken of Bristol is out of his league. He might be a good turkey puncher tho.
I don't fear software, software fears me.
- Chuck Norris
Software doesn't fear me. Users do
@@no_name4796users don’t fear me. Programmers do
Software doesn't fear me. Developers who have to work on my shitty code fear me.
Avg c dev
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
😮
Colleagues that are afraid of making changes are the absolute worst to work with.
As a fellow complainer, thank you for the reminder that doing something about a problem is harder than whining about it.
we have dual boot in our college computers, linux and chad windows 7 ultimate*
while doing programming and stuff or playing with raspberry pie*
we use i mean students use nano or fking gedit for so called programming well here i am creating aliases in everycomputer i can with if some one type nano,gedit or any other editor it directly change to chad nvim
now they cant get out or not even type hahhaah only alt+f4
but i heard 2 or more lab manager talking about someone tinkerd alot and we cannot go back i mean who fools made this guys lab manager they cant even figure it out how to get out i mean i just adjust aliases in zshrc (yeah i also installed oh my zsh in it haha) this teacher just reset the terminal instead of adjusting to it but i keep on doing it i even wrote a script which echo to .bashrc or zshrc automatically whenever those pc starts sir still tryna figure out who is doing ahhaha i loved it i am keep on doing it lol different things.
i will target servers of college in labs nexttime in my second year. hope sysadmin notices that.
The distinction between fear and caution is interesting, but it's a scale. Caution can be rational, fear can be irrational when there is absolutely no reason for it. But fear can also be intuition which tells you there's risks out there. Even if you can't rationalize it (yet) the fear might be justified. The answer to 'what if it breaks' matters a lot too, I've deployed to production without any testing, generally because 'it's broken already anyway, so I can't make it worse'. But there's stuff a do where a bug means having to find the people to actually go and swap out thousands of devices all over the country. My level of fear there is different, and it should be. There is a huge difference between freezing a Netflix tab in a browser and getting MCAS wrong and crashing two airplanes.
Prime's advice about fear is absolutely spot on. Something I learned a few years ago is that bravery is a skill that you can practice and get better at. I wish I had learned earlier in life.
As far as I understand it, it works like this:
1. You face something that scares you
2. You choose to push through
3. "Why be scared of something I can beat?" - Your subconscious
4. That, and everything else is less scary
Or
1. You face something that scares you.
2. You give into fear and back down
3. "Clearly I'm at a lower level, I'm not cut out for this" - Your subconscious
4. That, and everything else is more scary
Or you face it and you actually do fail because your fear was justified. But even then you build resilience and self respect because "that sucked so bad and I am actually shit as this. But the world doesn't end when I fail and I can tank it all
Limitations still apply to everyone:
- new business domain,
- time pressure
- hotfixes
- etc
I regularly had around 5-10% of tasks that I could not solve without help.
To me that is a limitation.
There will be always tasks that given the shortest timeframe, solution is not possible without help or some delay.
@@AdamFiregate of course, but backing down because it's scary does mental harm to yourself.
I'm not saying that facing your fears makes you a super hero. But cowering at the sight of them definitely makes you weaker.
@@gu1581 When I say winning I mean psychologically. You win by facing the thing you find scary and not backing down. Doesn't mean you have to succeed at the task or whatever. Just facing makes you stronger.
Bravery and fear is more complex than that. You can fear some things and be super confident in other things.
I am confident in my programming abilities, I am confident in my work place, I'm unafraid to try new things. But I suck at speaking in front of a crowd. Some neural pathway can trigger the flight response and cripple you. I think what differs all of us is how potent that response is, like prime said we're all on a spectrum there. It's not as easy for everyone to overcome X fear because we all have to climb a ladder with a different height, and its most noticeable when looking at the responses of newborns or young children. Fresh out the factory but they are all so very different. Society wants to mold us into one shape but it's not as easy for everyone to take that shape.
I am working on my fears, and embracing what I'm good at. In some ways the challenge of overcoming our fears gives life meaning.
Blameless post-mortem isn't about avoiding fear; it's about enabling a healthy environment to lead better towards Root-Cause Analysis.
If you've never been in meetings where people point fingers and shout at each other, I don't think you understand how bad people's ego can get.
Sounds like it is a pill to treat the symptoms of the unhealthy environment rather than a cure,BUTT!! I am interested in the possibility
Still sounds like it's made for soft people. Any other explanation is cope
@@bonerjams2k3 god forbid we're tactful and mindful about people
Mister, I've never done a single mistake in my life
it also makes this sort of unhealthy behavior stick out much quicker and much clearer, to hopefully be addressed before it stinks up too much
In order to tell if your tests are good you need to break the system and see if testes designed for specific scenario are failing
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Dune😂😂
btw rawdogging production sounds so fun idc
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer
Surfe the Feature-Creep-Worm, Muhadib !!!
Lisan Al Gaibeagen
This deserves a classic rock song.
Here is Blue Oyster Cult singing
Don’t Fear the Repo
Prime: I don't fear things ever and think I can do it
Prime 1 week ago: I've been putting off content creation full time because I was scared
Never said no to code because of fear, usually it's because, "aw hell, that's gonna suck. I don't want to deal with that"
Fearing it’s gonna suck..
@@hadramyoumar3866fear is everywhere
vs knowing that it's gonna suck
Arguably a distinction without a difference. 'Fear' is multi-faceted though, the fear part might come in for the career limiting aspect. If everything you touch is 'aw hell, that's gonna suck' - it might not look good that you're the one plowing into all of the problems and nobody else. Culture is important. I think Prime is wrong in the keeping score part, teams usually know who are the ones taking risks, and those that are quietly playing it safe.
@@SeaBike007 I fully agree on the fear part. I think what he mentioned is the exact same thing as fear. You can easily rephrase the sentence to "I'm afraid it's gonna suck, so I don't really wanna deal with it." and it's the exact same meaning. Unless what he means to say is "I don't want to deal with that, but I'm gonna have to do it", and even then, I think it's better to shift it to "That's really difficult, I'm gonna deal with it anyways."
Man, your experience with going on a stage and talking to a lot of people really resonated with me.
"Do or do not, there is no try". You either go 100%, even if you're shaking with fear, or you pack your bags and go home. As Dale Carnegie said: people will forget what you said, but not how you made them feel.
You're clearly a very passionate person and someone that takes self improvement seriously. Your kids are very lucky to have someone like you they can learn from.
"Software can't hurt you. It can't. IT CAN'T"
I work in industrial automation. My software CAN hurt you.
@@GuyFromJupiterreal
Robotics be like
If write some very stupid code it can get you fired. That might hurt. Maybe even a lot.
Yes it can. Haven’t you read about the xray machine bug? It toasted a lot of people
I will take the following belief to the grave with me:
When you start changing your design to favor testability over functionality, you have jumped the shark and lost the plot.
When your code becomes so abstract and so convoluted to support your suite of mocs and tests that no mere mortal can follow the call chain: you've lost the battle.
you're conflating testability with mocks and needless abstractions.
one example of making your code more testable without the above is: try to avoid mixing business logic and fetching data from DB in one function.
"I write a test to drive development." "it's the opposite of TDD!" too funny
I get Prime has no fears, and I similarly don't share what was mentioned, but it's still crazy to me that he isn't aware he isn't normal (as in not the norm, not... you know)
To be clear irrational fears aren't just irrational because they aren't explainable, they are also irrational because they can't be reasoned for most cases.
Feeling that fear and the amount of it can vary drastically depending on the situation, I've experienced both having a complete team-wide yolo attitude and massive fear paralysis that eventually led to a physically debilitating burnout and a lot of potentially beneficial changes not being made, even worse, chosen over in favour of a safe but obvious regression
Julia Evans is THE BEST!!! I own many of her printed Zines, she absolutely rocks!
A comment I liked right here was "I don't fear software, software fears me.". I think that's the kind of mindset everyone should follow, even if right now you fear doing big things. It's not that you won't get anywhere by having fear, but that you can get to A LOT more places if you think you can do anything. This is the kind of mindset that gets you from you fearing your competitors, to your competitors fearing YOU.
Yesterday I was rocking changes directly on prod, because I didn't want to bother doing it on dev. Fear is the mind killer
One thing I've learned is that I do have actual limits and I'm the same way. I have a bit of delusion of grandeur in that I feel like I could do anything with enough time and effort, but I have failed before and I think it's important to realize what limitations you have in order to proceed better forward.
Self-knowledge is important.
I think people's background will always matter when it comes to fear and disappointment. That would influence in how you chase your goals.
This really pulled me out of my delusional fear. I'm about to join a startup and I'm getting ahead of myself thinking I'll be fired during my probationary period coz I won't be able to keep up with the pace. Now I can focus on improving myself.
I make the Kernel panic often.. it must be afraid of my power
Interesting take on public speaking. I like the "neurons that fire together wire together". Your body WILL betray you when performing physically like that, but with experience you can learn to overcome that and even eventually turn it off. But it takes practice, persistence, and the willingness to fail in order to learn.
Still early on in my learning, I wrote a pretty big (for me) project. That was before I learned about testing... I was so scared to do much to it because it I could break it in obscure ways. I'm also still finding subtle bugs. Testing is so valuable.
Prime loves to mention that time he broke the Netflix site. I feel like breaking production is a merit badge you have to earn in order to become a senior developer.
17:50 "What cures a lot of fear is being logical about your approach." - The name is ThePrimeagen
I've got an interview next week for a job that would literally move me across the world. This video helped a lot.
"some fears are irrational, and they can infect other people" is a great summary of the US (in general) 😅
My daily job is making features that other peoples are afraid to do, and only seem to find problems in making them.
It's all good, the stakeholders loves me
until you mess something up
@@masterflitzer Nope. I was in the same position at my last company. I was the only not scared to tackle the difficult problems, so even if I made a mistake it was fine. No one else was going to do it after all. It just means I have more work to do. It's work that pays the bills though, so more work is good for me.
Me out there riding motorcycles scared of whiteboards. Thanks man this is motivational truly.
How to upgrade legacy code:
1. Log in and outputs of the affected procedure for some reasonable amount of time. This gives you an expected data set.
2. Keep the logging running
3. Write tests for the days you've connected so far.
4. Check current code passes the tests
5. If not, find the global state ruining your life.
6. Once all pass, validate any new data isn't creating new test cases.
7. Now create unhappy tests you expect to fail.
8. Get to a state that's crazy heavy on tests.
9. Start changing your code with an a/b test.
10. Phase in everyone else slowly.
Or
1. Create a breaking change major and say fuck it :)
The real problem is nowadays many people just don’t like to take responsibility
ffs prime how can you be such a good influence, and make me see something in life in a different and better way this many times??
thank you
guess imma be a better human being now that I watched a random programmer talk online
"Don't be the victim in your own story". That's a good one.
Fear in the absence of danger is nothing but a litmus test for your willpower.
I just want to remind people of something:
Courage is not being not afraid. Courage is facing one's fear.
You’re thinking of courage
@@steventolerhan5110 courage and bravery are synonyms
@@kuhluhOGsynonyms in a loose way, not in a strict sense
@@steventolerhan5110 hmm, interesting
I looked up the definitions, and now I am not sure why they are called synonyms in the first place.
Anyway, thanks, will correct it.
I have a fear of failure. Though it generates a fight response in me, and it's what drives me, rather than holds me back.
- "I am sorry, I f... uped"... "soo... How can we prevent this from happening again?"
- You are fired.
What gives me real fear from this article - moving away from metrics and alarms to exception-generated emails
0:29 u sounded just like Michael Scott xd
that example as a neurodivergent guy who can juggle with swords made me chuckle. Basically because clubs or swords is no different except weight. But I feel you
I always try to stump the interviewee. I was asked a question during an interview which couldn't be answered, because they wanted to see if I would make something up. I do this now when I interview developers. It's a good measure of their confidence when they say, "I don't know." It shows they will be honest in a situation that might be critical. This goes with the personal safety principle in Crystal Clear/Agile Development - Alistair Cockburn. I've also been invited to a second interview when I said I didn't know the answer and was given a chance to see if I could learn the answer between interviews. I also love this approach, because the company was more interested in my potential than in my immediate knowledge. Things change quickly in software development. This kind of approach to an interview helps assess if that person can adapt, pivot, learn, etc. Best thing is to be honest. Lastly, if you don't know an interview question; use it as a learning opportunity. Go research that thing you didn't know. Finally, don't live in fear!
You can't just remove the fear when it's already there. What you can only do is to recognize that the fear is there, be aware that it could be irrational, and carry on despite it. Do that many times over a period of time and you'll recognize that the fear lessens, and/or you're getting better at managing the fear.
So many times I hear people say “Oh we can’t fix that, it means we have to change XYZ.” as if it means the conversation is over and not that we need to just make the scope a bit bigger.
Wow this absolutely blew my mind. Thank you so much for this advice. I don’t know how to move on when this discussion is brought up. From now onwards, I’ll state the scope needs to be increased and that fixing issue, will cause a waterfall of solutions and improvements. Thank you so much!
It's crazy that the CS community can make content about this stuff.
A bad tradesman is afraid of the tool, also. Confidence is indeed key to not cutting yourself.
I think given enough time and resources I could code anything but in reality whether I get to eat or not depends on if I can code something quick enough and good enough to please someone enough, which are all very out of my control and hence makes me maybe not fearful but certainly nervous.
"Software can't heart you but it can enslave you" ~Skynet
I don't fear software, my boss is the one who fears when I start having too much fun
If you are in a blameful environment, where people are fired, or severely career limited based on a single mistake - how can you embrace fear of failure?
Blameless environment usually says you are not to blame until something has happened a second or third time. The first time was the systems fault, tech debt, the second time is your fault for not remediating a UX unfriendly system. In other words, the first time is the systems fault for being error prone, the second time is your fault because you are not doing anything to solve the error proneness. Good developers solve problems, poor developers resolve problems (ie: they make them hide temporarily, but they are not vanquished). w.r.t fear, if you get neither opportunity to do anything about problems after hitting them for a first time, because you are in a blameful environment, instead of solving the error-proneness of your system, your response is more likely to never ever do that thing again.
The power of version control is that you always have a big red REVERT button.
I know it's gonna break something, i know it's not gonna be perfect. My job is to let whoever is responsible for the entire project i.e. managers know about what the potential issues are. As for how well it goes after that, it's a problem for future me.
Unfortunately I'm currently working on something that isn't easily testable, isn't created with tests in mind, has no metrics in place, has no way to do a canary test, etc. so things are a bit wild. I am pushing for some of those though, and things are looking up in the near future.
Reviewer: * Gives a LGTM PR review *
Code: * breaks production *
Reviewer: * Points finger at author *
Blameless postmortem makes sense. Bad process causes issues. Any number of safeguards could have caught the problem upstream.
1:14 I do relate to what prime said more, maybe because I am still studying and don't have many high stakes. But I do wish I was afraid of doing big tasks more often because I end up piling a month of backlog in a week and then start questioning if I really like programming or if I am more suited for working at McDonalds.
4:48 "i usually use tests as a way to drive development" 😌👌👌👌
obviously stripped brutally out of context. i do think prime makes a really good point in there actually:)
I fear the hustle and the people who want me to write the code, those who read my code, and the code of others.
The real definition of legacy code is "code that was written by someone you can't ask questions of"
So weird. I had insight into this feeling yesterday. Like building a card house, as it grows you progressively become more careful and "fearful". The drag force I experience grows as the code grows, and my productivity decreases as my changes become smaller, less meaningful, and I find myself deliberating more. Becoming familiar with and fighting against that resistance is absolutely necessary and required. That resistance is where the edge of my abilities are and where I can expect further growth to likely happen.
git checkout -b and earn a red badge.
not sure if the author thinks too much of the negative outcome that "might be possible or not in the future" , thats why its a group work so you can collaborate how to tackle the task in smaller chunks, if they are afraid of change code dont they know test environment lots of test and QA
Idk if that's truly fear, but as a single DevOps I been burned by taking up too many tasks and being enthusiastic on taking challenge to just be blamed for slow delivery. Maybe I mis communicated a complexity of a single task or something, but still.
i think i am in the same boat, and i see a way out:
being a yes man is dangerous. nurture your enthusiasm, but learn how to say no and focus on one thing at a time and stick to it (cultivate accountability). trying to please everyone ends up disappointing everyone including yourself.
23:20 I think upbringing might be a big part on this as well. If you're growing up and make a mistake and get punished for or blamed for it, it can mess with you way down the line. Also, imo I feel like being less anxious comes with having more of a margin for error in what you can afford to screw up, cause if that margin is extremely low your instinct for survival is gonna kick in and then there's often not really anything tangible in today's world that it can do to help you so you're just getting stressed instead of it helping you
"Fear is the mind-killer". And because we are naturally risk averse, it's easy to go into the negative feedback loop and... paralysis. And that "stage fright", God, can i relate... first few times i nearly s**t myself. Them i figured it was just the first minute so i just bs it by "checking the presentation tools", take a deep breath and power through it. Also, it becomes easier the more you do it. Kudos to the marvelous lady that gave me my "trainers training", as she hammered into our heads that most of the fear is simply "uncertainty". (re)Do it in the mirror, as many hours as it takes. All "perfect"? Great, now you only need to deal with "small unknowns", you already ironed out the big ones. Sounds a lot like "write code, catch obvious bugs, fuzzy inputs, catch more bugs,...." doesn't it?
Sometimes loathe, but never fear.
20:00 - Baseball players are SUCCESSFUL when they fail 7 out of 10 times.
FROM THIS DAY FORWARD...
Whenever I have a problem with Netflix I'll think of Prime...
And the possibility, his code is causing an inconvenient bug XD
Risk assessment & liabilities... It's where it all stem from. Thus, prototyping tools should offset such "fears"
I believe it just go with the experience and slefconfidence... I experienced a lot of fear at my 4th job, which was working with also most experienced developers I did, my confidence went really low... it was after about 12 years of experience... after I changed my job after 4 years, I just seen there is nothing to be affraid of, because the new team was on much lower level... my confidence went really up... and also... since no infrastructure around and process is so stupid... I just say.. whatever if I make mistake, its also managements fault to make the project without any unit tests or build pipleines go so far ... but you dont know this without any experiences from other jobs... just dont do stupid mistake over and over again and you should be fine ...
Watched only 1:15, and that's all I need to know. Good job, gigachad, no matter what challenge I face - I can do it.
Thanks for this talk! Really helps with aspects also besides software programming!
Fear got me, but not learning fear, or new thing fear... I was deadlocked in my learning mission until I let go of what people would think of my code on git.... seriously, I was afraid of being examined... I let go of that, and the last two months have been astounding to my progress. I decided to make an app FOR ME, and me ALONE. I don't care how you look at the code, it's for me. I don't care if you don't like the looks, it's for me. I wasn't afraid of not being able to figure it out, I know I can. I feared judgement.
Our client wouldn't dare to touch the preproduction environment, only production.
They did dare to complain about breaking production.
My biggest hangup of the last 2 years is fear of understanding my (read: my coworker's) codebase.We're not programmers, we're scientists, so our priorities aren't the same as with, say, front end developers. It's a conglomeration of proprietary protocols, C++, python, etc built half by experienced devs and half by new students ranging from late-undergrads to PhD candidates. Everyone who wrote anything in it is highly intelligent, but this was at least half of our collaboration's first large project of their careers. So the codebase is largely badly document and even worse to read yourself. This is definitely a skill-issue on my end. That skill issue is my fear. Appearing incompetent has been the single worst thing for my productivity since joining and it's only now, 2 years on, beginning to really eb. I'd have 2-3x times as much work done now if I were able to just sit down without ego ages ago and just figure it out. Alas, fear is the mind killer.
Edit: I should mention that this codebase over 400k lines all included. I interact with maybe a 10th of that, but you can see how this would be terrifying to a graduate student.
1:00 You never experienced imposter syndrome, that's a very good thing, even if it makes you less relatable :)
He was lucky with the env maybe. I know i had that at my first job and it was mainky caused by colleagues that wanted to have "fun" on the back of the new guys. They acted like they knew more and like complex stuff was a simple as tieing your shoes....
Some have IS from other reasons. For me, it was because of the env... it really matters how ppl act in regards to ppl not knowing stuff.
Only weak people experience that.
@@bonerjams2k3 "Weak" is such a weak word.
Juggling swords is surprisingly doable
If they are made for juggling
Julia has great zines.
As I say to people "it is just code", devs just need to calm down and think clearly
Blameless... until we need to decide promotions or layoffs.
I am more curious how software engineers who's in charge of writing code for spaceship at SpaceX or NASA deal with the fear you may screw up and result in the billion dollar loss or even life loss. I cannot imagine how it feels to see the rocket launch and knowing your code could screw things up.
Hmm, i used to think i can do any thing, but there comes a time to know one's limit and call in a profressional.
Well, fear is what is keeping me away from work and progress. Every time i start coding or even starting to apply for a job, I just get anxiety attacks, and can't do anything anymore.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
It's a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert, but variations can be found in most religions. It's also true. Something I learned a few years ago is that bravery is a skill that you can practice. You need to build up by conquering every greater challenges. The first one doesn't need to be big, just something that you can face, feel the fear, but push through regardless.
@Hector-bj3ls thank you :)
Whiteboard interviews are scary because most of us never need to think about algorithms in the abstract way whiteboarding interviews present them. You could be an absolute beast in your domain (and the domain of the job you're interviewing for) and get completely railed by a single question that makes you look like an absolute idiot. That single question derails weeks/months of preparation and invalidates years of experience simultaneously ruining a future opportunity, which for some people is a massive quality of life upgrade. That is why there is fear. Front end, user focused / design side / suck at math brain devs - this is our own personal hell.
My moto - if you die, you die.
Julia Evans zines are awesome, btw.
Hell yeah Julia Evans fucking rocks
Slowly Prime transformed to Dr. K from HealthyGamer. Potential collab?
Just to say i am following you because of the voice :)
Wym fear? I’m Tony Stark. Genius, Billionaire(Not yet), Playboy(Afraid of women), Philanthropist(One day).
i like this very much
22:12
you will significantly hinder your growth as a person and in your life if you expect the world to be a safer place for you rather than you to become a more brave person for the world.
22:12 prime for prez
"Ask not what the country can do for you..."
Julia Evans fucking rocks
13:00 I don't think the score often exceeds 1. For most people a postmortem-worthy breakage is a once in a lifetime event.
Fear Google SIMA
Classic state change rerender loop bug
Weird article. Engineering is about exploring new paths and suggesting different solutions. You cannot be a conformist and a good engineer. The author is basically saying he/she is a conformist. Being cautious is different from being fearful. It matters. You can be fearful of your manager's attitude and decisions if something does not work too well however, that's legit.
Fear and Software in Dakota
Fear is the wrong word here. "Uncertainty" is more appropriate
I like to refactor and rework entire codebases. 'Nuff said. 😎
Julia is the best
programming is scary. Bugs creep me out. I cannot stand to see this piece of code. that I took 1 hour to write, fail in a buggy heap. That's why I release my code to production with no tests and let the QA get back to me with bug reports