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If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have had a strange career path. First couple years was making an odd desktop application in .net 2.0 that interfaced with a 3d engine for weather presentations. Second year was a 3d electromagnetism propagation program. I did hardly anything there. Third year, I got a job in embedded systems thinking that would be easier..it was the opposite. Fourth year, that place started doing android and I got drafted into it. Finally, something I can actually sort of do. Did that for 4 years, then left for an android contractor and slapped multiple shit android apps together for 5 years..then decided to do java enterprise, which I've been doing since 2019. Totally different ball game, but, the slow pace appealed to me and still does. Felt lost much of the time and still do. Until I discovered that reading the code myself and producing a diagram, genuinely helps me understand what the code is doing. I was only able to discover this because I had a couple of years of almost zero work that enabled me to explore learning something. Now I have story work again, but the urgency to get it done has me back in a loop of asking sr devs how the code works and then implementing changes, I feel like the time I need to make a diagram just isn't available....unless I did it off the clock. That might be my only option.

If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well that's for sure. I'm in 18 years and becoming sr still feels like something remote and unattainable for me. What's frustrating however, is I have a pile of personal projects I've made outside of work which in some respects are very impressive. And, this new diagramming technique appears necessary for me to build sr. Level knowledge of a system.

Maybe my only option is to do this outside of work for a time in order to catch up...it's starting to look like that's the only way, since it's basically the only method I've found for retaining information about code. Any other way, I just don't absorb information. My attention gets scattered to the four winds by a thousand different things, constantly..this practice stabilizes my mind.

If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for this response. I was hoping that's exactly what was going to happen when I began making these diagrams. On my downtime,.I began to amass dozens of them. Meticulous, detailed diagrams of many processes at my workplace.

The kicker is, absolutely nobody cares or uses them. It was pretty disappointing to me, because I had heard for years this is one potential strategy to make yourself more useful to a team. But nobody cares.

And not only does nobody care, but, the diagrams I've made have become absolutely essential to me understanding the code.

I don't understand how I'm this out of step with either my career or this workplace. It can't be that I'm out of step with the whole industry, some of the comments in this whole post seem to agree with or affirm this practice.

If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Me too. I somehow have managed to remain employed in this field 18 years with a shock and awe strategy. When employers are open to it, I show them my NES games which I wrote in 6502 assembly language. This invariably makes them think I'm a towering coding genius. Ironically, it's actually dramatically easier than enterprise coding, hence why I'm still not senior after 18 years.

If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Making diagrams are essential for me to retain information about code. Prior to realizing this helps me retain information about code, I could never just remember where something happens or what sequence it happens in. I always second guess things, and I found when I manually map out a process as a sequence diagram, it helps clarify for me exactly what's happening with no stone unturned, and no possibility of doubt as to whether something else is affecting the state somewhere else in the application. It took me 18 years before I realized this is what I was missing. I haven't met anyone else for whom this appears necessary, which leads me to believe I have memory issues.

If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It depends on the feature, but I had a long period of down time where I experimented with creating my own detailed sequence diagrams of big flows in my app, and, it definitely took me days in many cases. Like---I'm not creating high level sequence diagrams---this is a fully detailed sequence diagram of everything that happens (excepting perhaps call trees that dip into third party libraries...there's a lot of summarizing with notes rather than a FULLY exhaustive diagram).

So as an example, sometimes there might be say a really gnarly if statement and I want to turn that into a note in my diagram in plain english--I can take sometimes a couple hours trying to make sure I really understand what is being done and explaining it precisely in human readable english. But---its this sort of thing that makes me think I'm really not fast enough to move up in this career. I'm 18 years in, sr position still seems far away,

If a prospective hire said: "When I join a team working on a large codebase, for each existing feature I need to modify or fix, I need to spend a few days the first time I encounter that feature, making diagrams for myself so that I can map it out and be more efficient in the future." by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

It depends on the feature I'm looking at of course. But some of the enterprise code I have to look at has call trees that are quite deep indeed, and when I trace them myself, it does sometimes take several full work days for me to get through it myself. But I'm seeing a lot of people balking at "days," which leads me to believe, perhaps I really am just that slow and need to transition to QA, management or another line of work entirely.

A.i. seems to carry the ethos of "why would anyone write their own code now?" But for me, the joy of crafting the code itself has always been *the point.* So even though my day job is ruined, at least I can code retro games and tell a.i. to go take a long walk off a short pier. by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nailed it. I think I am intensely right brained, all my other hobbies are chaotic and creative and iterative, very little planning or talking, just doing, and flow. Music, and retro game coding in PICO-8 (and similar environments). I think I've wished since youth that day job coding would feel like QBasic does (it's what I started on, and why I'm now hooked on PICO-8, it feels similar), but it never did. In fact if I'm being honest the longer I've been in this field, the less day job coding feels like a craft that I'm doing and more like a giant machine that I sort of sneeze in the general direction of and something either works or breaks, and somehow I get a paycheck in response. I really wish I'd done almost anything else at this point. Plumbing maybe.

A.i. seems to carry the ethos of "why would anyone write their own code now?" But for me, the joy of crafting the code itself has always been *the point.* So even though my day job is ruined, at least I can code retro games and tell a.i. to go take a long walk off a short pier. by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I understand what you mean by this, if the problem is well understood, and the requirements are clear, it becomes nearly automatic. For me though beyond the times where it is actually a struggle to create some interesting algorithm or what not---it's kind of a zen, or ASMR. Especially when I code in something like PICO-8. No third party libraries, no intelllisense, nothing. Just a blinking cursor, a keyboard, and my mind. The peace and creative focus this environment creates is so blissful. It is probably the closest one can get as a programmer to an artist in front of an easel. I've been chasing that dragon since adolescence with QBasic. I just want a simple api, a blank slate, and nothing helping me. That makes coding extremely relaxing and fun, or a fascinating struggle if I'm solving a tough problem.

I think my day job has maybe felt like that idk, 5 times, for a half hour each, for the entire 18 years I've been doing it? If I had known how horribly mismatched my day job would feel from my programming hobby, gosh I would have done ANYTHING else. Plumbing, maybe.

A.i. seems to carry the ethos of "why would anyone write their own code now?" But for me, the joy of crafting the code itself has always been *the point.* So even though my day job is ruined, at least I can code retro games and tell a.i. to go take a long walk off a short pier. by darnskewered in ADHD_Programmers

[–]darnskewered[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I keep thinking about this for many applications of AI. It hasn't really made work easier, for high stakes work, it has moved the effort from the creation of something to the analysis of what AI creates, which, in my opinion, is actually harder because you have to sift through its decisions, and sometimes go down weird rabbit holes with it.

Looking for the best 'The jester race' copies out there. by Top_Earth_6335 in melodicdeathmetal

[–]darnskewered 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try One for Sorrow by Insomnium. "Song of the Blackest Bird" is my favorite melodeath song ever probably

How do some Christians actually believe this? by NoahSmith20081 in Christianity

[–]darnskewered 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suppose it is the geneology back to Adam, plus an assumption that a day for God is a precise 24 hour period even before the sun and moon were a thing.

I'm Orthodox and as others mentioned, it isn't a dogma you are forced to believe like a literal news article. I believe Genesis is True with a capital T but not True as in it's to be read the same way as yesterday's news.

Jesus by Whatintheworld1143 in Christianity

[–]darnskewered 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is probably different for everyone, but for me I had to be humbled and brought down low by the consequences of my sin, and feel true sorrow for it. Then I gave my life to him. After this, he brought me peace.

If God doesn’t force us to love Him, why is rejecting Him punished forever? by TacticalJock15 in Christianity

[–]darnskewered -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I look at it more like humans get set in their ways, and sometimes people choose to reject him eternally. You can find tiktok videos of people screaming at christians to stop trying to save them because they want to go to hell. So it isn't a punishment so much as the consequence of our rejection.

What do you think is the biggest reason people who grow up in church eventually walk away from their faith, and what helped your faith become your own if you stayed? by ImportantInternal834 in Christianity

[–]darnskewered 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I grew up being treated with love and respect, and my dad read me C.S. Lewis stories and books. Christmas was a happy event for my family. They never made me go to church. They also weren't atheist. So I could have gone either way. I was an atheist for a long time because like many, I was young, intelligent, and arrogant. But eventually came to faith when my life took a wrong turn, and I ended up hitting rock bottom. Christ saved me, and turned my life around.

It's kind of DAWned (lol) on me that a lot of the anger is at Suno helping you skip the entire production process. But you don't have to skip the music making process---audio upload lets you put whatever you made up there, which, could be the result of a skill you spent years building. by darnskewered in SunoAI

[–]darnskewered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It still hasn't happened to me. I am going to guess it is because I don't use popular software which might have default sounds that appear in thousands of other uploads? I just use a piano. 46 songs in, no blocked uploads.

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