"I don't like Programming" | Prime Reacts

Immersive Language Reading on Twigit

I don't like programming. I never liked
programming.
>> Look at that cheeky smile he already
has. Bro is baiting us like I've never
been baited before in my entire
lifetime. Don't even Don't even lie to
me.
>> In fact, programming. Now, I'm being a
little facicious here, but I'm going to
tell you what I mean. And that's going
to include a few themes, including our I
like his Montana based background going
on right here. Very nice. I guess this
could also be Colorado, but I would
assume this is Montana, the greatest
state in the union.
>> The things that we learned as
programmers or the things that maybe you
should learn if you're getting into it.
Are they useless? Does it matter if you
know what a hashmap is or like a lot of
those fundamental concepts and stuff? I
also want to talk about the type of
programmer that I am and a bit about my
like programming career trajectory. And
also I want to talk about the whole
transition uh to AI coding and also how
in some ways at least people are saying
the joy of programming has been taken
away from them. And I hear that a lot.
Anyone press one in the chat one in the
chat if the joy of programming has been
taken away. By the way, this is why uh
Odin this is why I actually went back to
this uh because Odin is the C
alternative for the joy of programming.
And I feel like in certain ways because
of the type of programmer that I am that
maybe I've adapted a little bit
differently than most people. When I was
in school in college, I took an intro to
C class back in 2016 and I learned all
sorts of things. Of course, a lot of
which I used in my career. I learned
about loops, if statements, logic. Of
course, I used those things on the job,
but I also learned about memory
management, right? And I don't think
professionally I ever needed to do
manual memory management even using a
language like C++. There's smart
pointers now. Why does anybody need to
know how to manage memory? Maybe there's
some niche. We did a whole bunch of
manual man memory management but the
large part of like even the television
app was being all upgraded to smart
pointers cuz we are largely on like a
half version of C++ 11. Apparently
there's two versions of C++ 11. The
version A and version B. Version B has
all the sweetnesses, but version A does
not. And we were on version A for a long
time and then slowly got up to
>> areas that it's like extremely
important. But most people, they're
never going to need that. And also, what
about DSA, data structures and
algorithms? I spent a lot of time doing
that, learning that, and I enjoyed it.
But did I ever really use it on the job?
I mean, not really. I mean the
fundamentals obviously like hashmaps,
loops, like efficiency and general
optimizations, but you can get that, you
know, at mostly just the leak code easy
level. You're not going to need those
graph traversals on the job. Why would
you? The only time I remember something
like interesting coming up at Google,
you know, the company, I'm not trying to
mention that in like a bragging way. I'm
just mentioning it because it's kind of
the company that's known for like DSA
interviews, right? And then you get in
and you don't really use that. And I
remember there was a case where uh
Google has CL's which is basically like
poll requests and then each CL will get
like a unique number and I forgot what
the exact detail was but I think it was
like each CL will have like a unique ID
of course that's autogenerated and then
uh when it's actually merged in Google
they have like a mono repo so every
piece of every CL every pull request is
merged into the exact same repo. Um and
I was asking like a question about like
something about the CL number conflicts.
I don't remember the exact details but
basically what he said was yeah these
are monotonic increasing so that there
won't be conflicts or issues and you'll
know which CL was merged before the
other one and when I heard that I was
like oh holy did he just say and this
was actually like right before I left
and he said it and I was like monotonic
increasing like hey DSA right but for
the most part like those concepts really
were not needed and I've you know I've
run into a surprisingly large amount of
them throughout my time I have written
multiple binary searches over ranges. Uh
I've had a lot of like just things like
that throughout my time. Why? Just
because we were I mean in 2012, a lot of
the stuff I was doing uh this was even
when I wasn't at Netflix. This was my
previous company. There was a lot of
stuff I had to do that was just simply
uh difficult, right? And you had to just
be like, "Okay, we can't just simply
linear scan through all this stuff."
>> Uh maybe nowadays we don't ever even
need to know how to use Git. But I mean,
you might still want to because it's so
damn painful to watch these LLMs do it.
And I don't know who made the judgment
call to not just allow maybe like a text
input or something and I can just type
my own damn commit message and get this
done with. I know I can use the
terminal. This must be how Vim users
feel watching normal people type. But it
really is being a Vim user. Everything
else is so painful just watching. I
mean, it's why I can bar I could barely
stand pair programming. It is just the
worst experience in the universe.
>> You know, mentioning a few things and
I'm not going to act like I have the
answer to these things, but I'll tell
you for my opinion, my very humble
opinion that I don't think the things
that I learned and the things that I
worked on that I didn't directly use, I
don't think they were wasted. I really
don't because I did a lot in my life and
so have many of so has everyone, right?
And what I mean by that is I I did so
much things in school. We all learned so
many things, so many subjects, so many
concepts. And um do we really need that?
I mean, we all remember sitting in class
thinking when am I ever going to need
this knowledge that's right in front of
me? And many times you don't. But does
it mean it's useless? I'm not convinced.
Holistically, we are like people that
have all this like knowledge and I don't
think it's worth like cutting out
fundamental things. I think that's very
like dangerous. It sets like a really uh
scary precedence because okay, maybe
maybe it is useless. Maybe nobody needs
to ever know math anymore. We have
calculators. But I think learning is
extremely important. Uh because
>> All right, so I have to jump in. I was
waiting for him to kind of wrap up this
idea. Uh well, one reason why I think
that a lot of these things are super
important is that the act of actually
doing something is not just that you've
okay, you now know how to say program a
hashmap. I don't think that that's like
the it's not going to be something that
directly impacts you. It's not going to
be the thing that's like, oh, when I go
to my job, my job is going to be writing
hashmaps. Like that's just not going to
happen. You're probably never in fact
you're you're going to never write a
hashmap ever. Okay? It would be stupid
of you to do that. You should just use a
uh a library to do that. uh hashing is
actually extremely complicated. Just let
it go. But nonetheless, it's not even
it's it's about the journey. Always has
been. Okay. So, it's not about the
journey either because that that that
that entire statement, the journey is
better than the destination has this
really really wicked implication. Which
means that if it's about the journey,
you start off here. It's about the
journey, not the destination. It either
means that you stay the same or life is
always progressively slightly getting
worse because you're always finishing
part of the journey. Okay, that's not it
at all. uh just in case you're wondering
uh the destination in fact has to be
better than the journey because if
you're not you're going downhill. Okay,
so now that we got that little last bit
out of the way uh the thing is is that
if you are working on something and you
solve a difficult problem or you go
through some amount of of challenge
trying to implement some sort of
algorithm in which you're never going to
use again. You also got to remember like
every time I did one of those processes,
it like I could feel my brain go I have
a new way to look at a problem and fix
things. Like I can I have grown in my
ability to look at things that are
difficult to program and now wrap them
up. The reason why I am good at
programming is because I also did
hundreds if not thousands of these
really stupid kind of thought
experiments on programming. And by doing
that over and over and over again, it's
made my ability just to do regular ass
programming really really good. And it's
because you had to solve this over like
it's very very difficult. All of those
little things, they add up every day
that you go and program even a big
project. It's it's not like when you go
and program a project, you're somehow
getting smarter at programming. But if
you do the same project for a long
enough period of time, organizing that
information, thinking about it, slowly
building up the project, you do actually
start gaining new skills cuz you have to
refactor, you have to rethink things.
You will like gain new ways of looking
at something. And then of course, bada
bing, bada boom, you are now better at
programming and you don't really like
realize it. There's not like a certain
moment in time that you're like, I went
from A to B. It's like the constant
churning through it and doing stuff.
That's why I always worry about like the
vibe coded future. It's because I don't
understand how you get that experience.
Like I truly don't. Like there's only
two there's only two possibilities in
the vibe coded future which is vi like a
you never have to know programming ever
again or b you do and you're going to be
sad if you never know programming again.
Right? Like there's not really like some
sort of middle ground that's going to be
like oh you just don't have to learn how
to program except if you're doing this
right? Like that just I just don't buy
it. I just don't purchase that. It's
either like things are going to be
solved or they're not going to be
solved. Vive coders are betting on a
vibe coders are betting on a but it's
there's still so much to a like anybody
with any level of experience can go
through and look at it and you can see
like you you will be driven nuts by some
of the things and you know that given
enough time and situations it's going to
get worse and worse and worse and it's
going to cause so many just annoying
problems. It's really trending towards a
and it could very well be a you know
honestly if it's a I'm going to be okay.
I am learning to accept and be okay with
A and be okay with B. Uh that's why uh
that's why I mean I I keep on always
trying to do both right. I do
handwriting and I do vibe coding. And
when I say vibe coding now I really am
pushing really hard into uh what's it
called? Seeing if can I can I get can I
with a prompt can I make a prompt do the
small change I want to do. And man, I
spend so like something that would take
me 3 minutes of hand coding is taking me
like 30 minutes of just like trying to
coax this machine into producing the
code I would produce. It is a little bit
frustrating. I'll tell you that much.
Not going to lie to you. I do feel I
feel I feel things emotionally going
through it. I'm trying not to be angry.
Like I kid you not, this function right
here, this is me regenerating it for
like the fourth time. I was like,
"Brother, here's what you're gonna do.
You're gonna use the function. You're
gonna use the function sprite draw.
Okay? I expect you to use Sprite Draw
minimally. And that's that. And I and I
even gave it this interface right here.
And I'm like, here's the interface
you're going to use right here. All
right. And I was just like, you're going
to use this interface and you're going
to use Sprite Draw. Doesn't use Sprite
Draw. Used it just didn't. It used it.
It copied the code right out of Sprite
Draw. And I'm just like, I'm I'm going
to I'm going to lose my marbles. I'm
just trying to figure out how to move
quick. I just [ __ ] just want to
destroy just want to kick a computer.
It's not just about like the concrete
thing. Okay. I learned this random
framework or random tool and now I got
to start a different job and I have to
learn a different tool now. Everything I
learned before is completely useless. I
don't think that because of uh this uh
concept that I haven't invented but it's
called like a mental model and we all
learn a lot of mental models just from
school. If you pay attention, for
example, in math, you learn these logic
rules, these rigid rules, and they're
consistent, and they teach you how to
think. If you take a math person who's
super good at math, and then you try to
put them into a programming career, they
excel, dude. Like, it's just a thing. I
can't tell you exactly which math
concept directly, you know, made them a
super good programmer or not, but it's a
phenomenon. This is a thing. And there's
so many different mental models in the
world of so many different concepts.
>> Okay, I do have to say I really did
enjoy my math classes as I got older. I
really, really, really enjoyed them and
I really excelled at them and I loved
it. I despised Oh, yeah. Like math, I
did not enjoy math for a long time, but
I forced myself to to enjoy it. I I
spent all summer school doing what 3
hours a day in math class 4 hours a day
in math tutoring until I got good at it.
And then once I got really good at it, I
didn't need the tutoring anymore and I
could just accelerate, right? I I didn't
I wasn't I didn't, you know, I kept it
humble. I ate some humble pie and went
to stupid tutorings and then I got great
at it. It was good. It was fun. I was I
really enjoyed it once I got good. It
was awesome.
>> Many in the programming world, many in
psychology, many in nature. There's like
the concept of evolutionary biology. And
the the important thing about these
mental models is they allow us to reason
about things that we do not understand.
Like in physics, there is this concept
of laws of nature. Newton's laws of
nature. They explain things. And when
you don't have these things, you do lose
something. I strongly believe that
because I remember, I don't know about
you guys, but I remember being a kid, I
remember thinking, why does the moon go
around the earth? It's so strange,
right? And of course, an adult who knows
is going to look at the kid and say,
"Oh, it's gravity. It's gravity."
Gravity is just a word. That doesn't
really explain anything. Newton's laws,
Newton's laws explain it. An object in
motion will stay in motion. And the
beautiful thing about these mental
models,
>> I was really hoping he was going to drop
the generalized gravitational formula.
Okay. I thought it was Dude, I I
honestly I was hoping Dude, I was hoping
he was I forget what exactly it is, but
I know there's two G's in there plus a
universal constant with something being
divided. Dude, I thought we were going
to get the universal gravit
gravitational law, and he was just going
to throw it on us. I was so excited.
Yeah, there's distance involved. Oh my
gosh. GM. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, that looks
that looks that looks that looks like
it. I was so excited. I was so excited.
We didn't get it. Very disappointed
right now. is Newton's laws, they don't
just explain why the moon goes around
the earth. It explains so many things.
And when Einstein, you know, built went
on top of the things that Newton did, he
had to deeply understand the mental
models that Newton did, right? That that
he created. And so it turned out that
certain things that Newton Newton's
certain things about Newton's theory of
gravity were wrong. But was it useless?
Obviously not. But anyways, I could
ramble about this literally all day. So,
I'll move on to the type of programmer
that I am. And
>> I feel like some of you will be will be
happy. I know who. Yeah, Einstein. Um,
there you go.
>> I'm about to make a very offensive
statement to a lot of people. I know
that.
>> Okay, everybody. They have warned us
that trigger warnings in fact don't
help. You will be now more triggered.
Okay, now that I'm saying it, you're
going to get more triggered. All right,
so let's get triggered together.
>> And I'm going to say it. I was the type
who got into programming for the money.
>> For those that don't know, this is
totally an age problem. That's it. It's
an age problem because you may not know
this, but in 2005 when you got into
programming like me, I was in college in
2005. So 11 years 11 years before him.
When I got into when I got into
programming, you didn't make money at
programming. Programming was not taking
off. Like programming was just at the
time like maybe in about five to five
more years it really started taking off
as a career you could make a lot of
money in but you couldn't make money at
that point. Yeah. When I graduated
college I got a $50,000 a year job. And
I was like bros we're eating Red
Lobster. Okay. I'm eating Red Lobster.
This is this is crazy. 50 $50,000 right?
Like and so it wasn't even an option.
There was no option like oh hey you're
going to go into programming. Oh man,
you're getting rich, bro. Bro, get the
money out. Right. And so that was crazy.
That that was completely different. In
2016, it was a very different feel. By
the time you were in the mid 20ou mid
2010s, people were like, "Hey, guess
what everybody?
You're making money." Okay. Oh, you're
going to come be a little little fang
boy. Hey, guess what fang boy? You about
to get a whole bunch of money, [ __ ]
We're going to rain on top of you. Also,
there might be some weird things that
happen, but don't worry about that.
Those are two different worlds. And so,
when someone says, "Hey, I'm in it for
the money." Like, I'm not shocked. Now,
if somebody graduated in like 2002 and
was like, "Yo, I'm in it for the money."
I'd be like, "How the hell did you
choose this career then? Why didn't you
choose like being a doctor? What are you
talking about?" Yeah. The mid the the
mids it wasn't it it it was just okay.
It wasn't fantastic. You weren't making
a lot of money. You weren't making no
money. So, you know, like, so when I see
when I see these things and people say
this, they're like, "Hey, I'm in it just
for the money." It's like, "Yo, dog."
Yeah, that's totally like, you got to
make that choice. When I was a kiddo, I
didn't get to make that choice. It
wasn't, "Oh, I'm going to do it for the
money." I There was only, "Oh, you're
going to become a programmer. You're in
it for the love of the game. That's it.
There's no other option because this
thing's not going to pay as well as
being a lawyer or a doctor or probably
even a nurse. Like you're just gonna be
at a computer and everyone kind of
thinks you stink and are stupid. Very
very different world. Very very
different world. Right. So it's just
different. It's totally different world.
I did I got into fang for the cash. I
really liked math. And
>> to be fair, I joined Netflix for the
cash. And uh to be actually the the
honest part is I left my job that I
liked because I wanted to take the risk.
I wanted to try to do something risky
and it was very I was very worried about
it. They say they fire fast. The problem
was is that I was always like the smart
kid in all the jobs I was at, but
they're all in Bosezeman, Montana. And I
wasn't sure if I was smart at all. Maybe
it was just like, you know, big fish,
little pond versus, okay, I'm going to
go out to the Silicon Valley where
everybody out there is a good programmer
and I want to give it a shot. I wanted
to really try to do something good. And
so I was like, okay, I'm going to get
I'm going to give it here we go. I'm
going to give it a I'm going to I'm
going to give it a good one. And so
there we go. And it turns out I did okay
also out there. So I was very happy. It
was very scary though. I I was actually
pretty worried. My wife was uh 30 weeks
pregnant or 32 weeks pregnant for the
first our first kid when we got the
first interview and we moved out there
at like 36 weeks pregnant. Had no
doctor, knew not a single person, didn't
even have a place to live and she was
about to have a baby at any moment. It
was kind of it was generally pretty
stressful
>> physics. So, I actually studied uh
electrical engineering when I first
started in college, but they required me
to take a programming course, which I
wasn't happy about, and it was intro to
C. And I really wasn't excited about it.
I really struggled with it. Even just
print F was really hard for me to wrap
my head around. I don't know why. I'm
kind of of a slow learner. But once like
I think a month or two into the class,
you know, you learn about variables, you
learn about the different types, you
learn about if statement, loops,
functions, reuse code, you learn about
strrus. And then there comes a moment
where for me something just clicked. I
realized that wait a minute, these small
number of primitives that are very
logical and very consistent actually
it's it's so few of them yet they're so
extremely powerful. They have the the
power of infinite complexity. These
small primitives can create incredible
software operating systems, right? And
that's what I loved about it. The same
thing I loved about Newton's laws that a
small number of things can actually
explain so much that a small number of
fundamentals have an incredible amount
of power. So actually I loved it. I
loved memory management. But then I had
to get practical. And then when I was
looking at the job market, I was like,
"Okay, well, I got to learn web
development, right? Got to learn
JavaScript and I got to learn what an
XHR is." And an XHR, an XML HTTP
request, is named that. Yet, it's not
necess. By the way, if you haven't, if
you haven't done that, if you haven't
done an XML HTTP request, I just want to
let you know, you need to go back to the
basics, buddy. Okay? You need to go back
to XHR business. Okay? He must be
trolling too. Yeah, I'm a little bit
surprised why he was doing XHR in 2016.
Like I I don't really believe that at
that point you had I mean dollar
sign.get.jax.post
those were all around for some time at
this point. Like those that was jQuer
that was the jQuerious day and I was
using that in like 2009 2010, right?
There's no way that jQuerious was not
had at that time. I just I refuse to
believe I refuse to believe you're hand
rolling your own format and it's not
necessarily HTTP and it's not
necessarily a request. It could be a
response to an XHR could mean response.
So, as a person who who likes logic and
likes consistency, oh my god, you cannot
believe how much web development pissed
me off. I hated programming to an amount
I cannot articulate. As much as I loved
C and the primitive nature of it, I
hated web development just as much for
the opposite for the same reasons
because it was kind of the opposite,
right? So, I did get a little bit jaded.
I will say that the web environment is
just a piece of crap. And I tweeted out
earlier today that I feel justified
every single day in in my disgust of the
web ecosystem. And I feel it more and
more. And with the non-stop shy
hallooting where you're getting
constantly wormed all the time, I have
never felt more uh more exonerated in my
life than saying, "Hey, it's really not
a good idea to have like this e this is
not good. What we have created is not
good. We should not be living like this
people. I think it's dangerous." When I
started using rust, what was my one my
first major complaint of rust? Cargo
looks like npm to me. I don't like it. I
don't like that we're breaking out every
last little thing. I don't like that. I
don't like it. And guess what? I was
right. I don't think it's good. I
>> I've talked about this before, but I was
unemployed for like a year after I uh
left Amazon. Uh and during that year,
let me tell you something. Let me tell
you something. I did not do any sort of
real development. All I did for that
year was make leak code videos in
Python, only Python. And then I I did I
was lucky enough to get into Google. And
when I got into Google, I did not do any
Python. I did not do any TSA. But I also
did pretty well at Google. I got
promoted within a year and I think
obviously the fact that I have a CS
degree and I didn't cheat through that
degree. I actually did learn the
fundamentals and the important stuff
that did help me a great deal and the
fact that I was still thinking program
pro like a programmer um doing DSA uh
videos and also kind of communicating my
thoughts. I think that helped me a lot.
And then so at Google, I was a what I
would call a copy paste programmer. And
I'm embarrassed to admit it, and I know
I'm not doing myself any favors by
admitting that, but I was just so lazy
because a lot of the work at Google is
not that interesting. You're not doing a
lot of the the the fun interesting
computer science concepts that I'm I
enjoy develop.
>> People don't realize that Fang is really
boring. Like fang is just generally
super boring. A lot of what you're going
to do at larger companies is a lot of
nothing. You're going to argue. It's
going to take you weeks upon weeks to
like change a button color. This is why
like I mean how many articles have we
read? I had that one private message of
somebody dumping me their actual day.
It's mostly meetings and then you have
to go like everything I even at Netflix
even all the stuff I had to do. I had to
like write a backing document. I had to
come up with the reasons why we're going
to do it. I had to go and get really
arguy for the things. Luckily, I picked
a bunch of big projects that would take
time to actually program, but
nonetheless, I had to like go and first
fight for my right to program and then I
could program, right? Like it it is it
is a different world. Startups, yeah,
startups are much much different because
startups the ship can be moved really
easily. At a bigger company, it's hard.
I don't necessarily even blame them. The
thing is you can't at a small you can at
a small company say I don't like X. I'm
going to change X from the front end to
the middleware, from the middleware to
the back end, from the back end how the
data looks. Like you just can't do that
at a bigger place because you're
actually intersecting so many different
teams, right? And so it's just like it's
not the same. You know what I mean?
Anyways, I like this.
>> Just looks very different there. And I
wasn't really enthusiastic about
learning all those internal tools and
stuff like that, but I still did it.
Basically, uh, most of the code, you
know how people say that with AI coding,
most people aren't handwriting code
anymore? Baby, I was not handwriting
code for a long ass time. I mean, not
literally, but um for example, like you
know, back in a hundred years ago when
Stack Overflow was a thing, a lot of
people were the types of programmers
that they would just, you know, if they
had a question, they just blindly open
up Stack Overflow, copy and paste a code
snippet into their code, maybe change
some variables around, and then they're
good to go. Maybe they didn't even fully
understand that piece of code. I kind of
did that uh at Google. They don't have
Stack Overflow, but they have like their
internal mono.
>> Did you guys do that? Who did that? Type
one in the chat if you did that. Type
one. You guys disgust me. Okay. I would
go and I I would certainly copy it and
paste it into my editor, but then I
would debug it. I would have to
understand why it worked the way it did.
I would then want to change a bunch of
stuff about it. I never liked the shape
that it was in. So, I always wanted to
put it off into functions and different
ways I put it or spread it out or change
it. But rarely did I ever just copy,
run, see it work, and move on like that.
That's crazy. that I I don't understand
that at all. Gross. Prime debugging is
odd. True. True.
>> Which is like in code search. And so I
would just, okay, I needed to use this
library. I could use the document. I
could go read the documentation. The
documentation sucks ass at Google. So
screw it. I'm just going to go into the
codebase, find somebody else who used
this API, copy and paste their code, try
to understand it a little bit, change my
variables around, and I'm good to go.
And so even though I'm the type of
person who likes to go deep into things,
I like to do a small number of things
and do them extremely well and extremely
thoroughly and extremely deep, but
that's not the nature of being a
programmer in most jobs including at
Google because let's say you know you
have like
>> I'd say that's one benefit of doing your
own games like writing writing up stuff
and and going through that is that you
do get to go deep. You get to go deep as
all you want. And there is something
that's kind of beautiful, I guess, about
AI in this sense. If you're like, I
don't care about how pathing works and I
don't want to really care about physics
and stuff. I'm just going to be like,
yo, make the monsters walk the path. No
mistakes. Like, you can totally do that.
You could spend all your time just on
shaders because you're like, "Dude, I
love shaders." Or maybe you don't like
shaders at all and you don't want to
learn anything about shaders and so you
can just invert that and be like, "Yo,
make the grass kind of look wavy and
then move on." Like, to me, that's okay.
That's one kind of thing I do like about
AI is you can kind of like skip certain
steps if you want to and just focus on
the things you like. That's the part of
what makes LM's great.

Vocabulary & Translations

I don't like programming. I never liked

programming.

>> Look at that cheeky smile he already

has. Bro is baiting us like I've never

been baited before in my entire

lifetime. Don't even Don't even lie to

me.

>> In fact, programming. Now, I'm being a

little facicious here, but I'm going to

tell you what I mean. And that's going

to include a few themes, including our I

like his Montana based background going

on right here. Very nice. I guess this

tutaj

could also be Colorado, but I would

mogłoby być również Kolorado, ale ja bym

assume this is Montana, the greatest

state in the union.

>> The things that we learned as

Rzeczy, których nauczyliśmy się jako

programmers or the things that maybe you

programiści

should learn if you're getting into it.

Are they useless? Does it matter if you

Czy to ma znaczenie, jeśli

know what a hashmap is or like a lot of

wiedzieć, czym jest hashmapa lub lubić wiele

those fundamental concepts and stuff? I

te podstawowe koncepcje i takie tam? Ja

also want to talk about the type of

również chcę porozmawiać o typie

programmer that I am and a bit about my

like programming career trajectory. And

ścieżka kariery

also I want to talk about the whole

transition uh to AI coding and also how

przejście na kodowanie AI

in some ways at least people are saying

the joy of programming has been taken

away from them. And I hear that a lot.

Anyone press one in the chat one in the

chat if the joy of programming has been

taken away. By the way, this is why uh

Odin this is why I actually went back to

this uh because Odin is the C

alternative for the joy of programming.

And I feel like in certain ways because

of the type of programmer that I am that

maybe I've adapted a little bit

differently than most people. When I was

in school in college, I took an intro to

C class back in 2016 and I learned all

sorts of things. Of course, a lot of

which I used in my career. I learned

about loops, if statements, logic. Of

course, I used those things on the job,

but I also learned about memory

management, right? And I don't think

professionally I ever needed to do

manual memory management even using a

language like C++. There's smart

pointers now. Why does anybody need to

know how to manage memory? Maybe there's

some niche. We did a whole bunch of

manual man memory management but the

large part of like even the television

app was being all upgraded to smart

pointers cuz we are largely on like a

half version of C++ 11. Apparently

there's two versions of C++ 11. The

version A and version B. Version B has

all the sweetnesses, but version A does

not. And we were on version A for a long

time and then slowly got up to

>> areas that it's like extremely

important. But most people, they're

never going to need that. And also, what

about DSA, data structures and

algorithms? I spent a lot of time doing

that, learning that, and I enjoyed it.

But did I ever really use it on the job?

I mean, not really. I mean the

fundamentals obviously like hashmaps,

loops, like efficiency and general

optimizations, but you can get that, you

know, at mostly just the leak code easy

level. You're not going to need those

graph traversals on the job. Why would

you? The only time I remember something

like interesting coming up at Google,

you know, the company, I'm not trying to

mention that in like a bragging way. I'm

just mentioning it because it's kind of

the company that's known for like DSA

interviews, right? And then you get in

and you don't really use that. And I

remember there was a case where uh

Google has CL's which is basically like

poll requests and then each CL will get

like a unique number and I forgot what

the exact detail was but I think it was

like each CL will have like a unique ID

of course that's autogenerated and then

uh when it's actually merged in Google

they have like a mono repo so every

piece of every CL every pull request is

merged into the exact same repo. Um and

I was asking like a question about like

something about the CL number conflicts.

I don't remember the exact details but

basically what he said was yeah these

are monotonic increasing so that there

won't be conflicts or issues and you'll

know which CL was merged before the

other one and when I heard that I was

like oh holy did he just say and this

was actually like right before I left

and he said it and I was like monotonic

increasing like hey DSA right but for

the most part like those concepts really

were not needed and I've you know I've

run into a surprisingly large amount of

them throughout my time I have written

multiple binary searches over ranges. Uh

I've had a lot of like just things like

that throughout my time. Why? Just

because we were I mean in 2012, a lot of

the stuff I was doing uh this was even

when I wasn't at Netflix. This was my

previous company. There was a lot of

stuff I had to do that was just simply

uh difficult, right? And you had to just

be like, "Okay, we can't just simply

linear scan through all this stuff."

>> Uh maybe nowadays we don't ever even

need to know how to use Git. But I mean,

you might still want to because it's so

damn painful to watch these LLMs do it.

And I don't know who made the judgment

call to not just allow maybe like a text

input or something and I can just type

my own damn commit message and get this

done with. I know I can use the

terminal. This must be how Vim users

feel watching normal people type. But it

really is being a Vim user. Everything

else is so painful just watching. I

mean, it's why I can bar I could barely

stand pair programming. It is just the

worst experience in the universe.

>> You know, mentioning a few things and

I'm not going to act like I have the

answer to these things, but I'll tell

you for my opinion, my very humble

opinion that I don't think the things

that I learned and the things that I

worked on that I didn't directly use, I

don't think they were wasted. I really

don't because I did a lot in my life and

so have many of so has everyone, right?

And what I mean by that is I I did so

much things in school. We all learned so

many things, so many subjects, so many

concepts. And um do we really need that?

I mean, we all remember sitting in class

thinking when am I ever going to need

this knowledge that's right in front of

me? And many times you don't. But does

it mean it's useless? I'm not convinced.

Holistically, we are like people that

have all this like knowledge and I don't

think it's worth like cutting out

fundamental things. I think that's very

like dangerous. It sets like a really uh

scary precedence because okay, maybe

maybe it is useless. Maybe nobody needs

to ever know math anymore. We have

calculators. But I think learning is

extremely important. Uh because

>> All right, so I have to jump in. I was

waiting for him to kind of wrap up this

idea. Uh well, one reason why I think

that a lot of these things are super

important is that the act of actually

doing something is not just that you've

okay, you now know how to say program a

hashmap. I don't think that that's like

the it's not going to be something that

directly impacts you. It's not going to

be the thing that's like, oh, when I go

to my job, my job is going to be writing

hashmaps. Like that's just not going to

happen. You're probably never in fact

you're you're going to never write a

hashmap ever. Okay? It would be stupid

of you to do that. You should just use a

uh a library to do that. uh hashing is

actually extremely complicated. Just let

it go. But nonetheless, it's not even

it's it's about the journey. Always has

been. Okay. So, it's not about the

journey either because that that that

that entire statement, the journey is

better than the destination has this

really really wicked implication. Which

means that if it's about the journey,

you start off here. It's about the

journey, not the destination. It either

means that you stay the same or life is

always progressively slightly getting

worse because you're always finishing

part of the journey. Okay, that's not it

at all. uh just in case you're wondering

uh the destination in fact has to be

better than the journey because if

you're not you're going downhill. Okay,

so now that we got that little last bit

out of the way uh the thing is is that

if you are working on something and you

solve a difficult problem or you go

through some amount of of challenge

trying to implement some sort of

algorithm in which you're never going to

use again. You also got to remember like

every time I did one of those processes,

it like I could feel my brain go I have

a new way to look at a problem and fix

things. Like I can I have grown in my

ability to look at things that are

difficult to program and now wrap them

up. The reason why I am good at

programming is because I also did

hundreds if not thousands of these

really stupid kind of thought

experiments on programming. And by doing

that over and over and over again, it's

made my ability just to do regular ass

programming really really good. And it's

because you had to solve this over like

it's very very difficult. All of those

little things, they add up every day

that you go and program even a big

project. It's it's not like when you go

and program a project, you're somehow

getting smarter at programming. But if

you do the same project for a long

enough period of time, organizing that

information, thinking about it, slowly

building up the project, you do actually

start gaining new skills cuz you have to

refactor, you have to rethink things.