I Feel Bad For New Programmers

I have a different take on this. I am a seasoned programmer who has been in the industry for over 30 years now. I have a background in electrical engineering and that pretty much gave me an edge when I was starting out. I had an in-depth understanding of how computers worked from the basic circuitry. There are so many layers of abstraction even in those circuits and trying to understand all of them won't get you anywhere. The software industry is moving fast and companies are looking for engineers who are familiar with their stack. So I see no harm starting out at a higher layer of abstraction and moving on to lower layers when you get a job or after you get relevant industry experience. In the end people need to get by and it's okay if you want to start from a higher layer. Your value as an engineer is not measured by how much you know, but how you use what you know and what is available to solve existing problems. That's my opinion.

As a new programmer, learning higher level stuff is kind of like watching family guy without knowing references. You kinda get it because the jokes work on their own so you just move on without much thought. Then when you learn about the references (or tools) you look back at the episode and you’re like “omg I understand everything now!”

This is why I feel bad for people trying to change careers at React bootcamps.

On the one hand, having a solid understanding of the foundations is almost always beneficial no matter the field. On the other, the current state of many fields is so far off in space that if you stop to shore up that understanding, it seems impossible to catch up to where everyone else is in current developments. One of my personal issues is a tendency to get obsessed with those basics and never moving on.

At university, I see so many people with enough superficial knowledge to get by, and sometimes I really feel bad for them. As soon as things get complicated enough to go below theor comfortable layer of abstraction, they are lost.

The bad thing is that after learning all these things, we don't become good at programming; we just become good at using those abstracted tools. We don't know how these things work internally, and the moment these abstracted tools become obsolete, we're thrown back to step one

dude my university doesn't even teach how MEMORY works, none of my peers know what assembly is, the lowest level language we're being taught is JAVA

The discipline required to peel back the abstraction layers is pretty overwhelming these days.

2 pieces of news for programmers who are just starting out: 1. It's hard, and most of you probably will quit after a few punches you'll inevitably receive. 2. If you can manage the stress and take those punches without throwing your laptop out of the window and staying diligent, you'll have a high chance of becoming a professional in this field.

self taught web dev here in this day and age, there's no wrong answer in picking your stack. Every framework and new technology is copying features from each other, not to mention open source contributions. So any way you take will get the job done, accordingly pick whatever you're comfortable with