A solid 5.
I'm happy with it too. They still pay me so I must be doing something right. Almost two decades now.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
71 points (94.9% liked)
Programming
17189 readers
483 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
5 years professionally and I can find jobs, so yeah I must do something decent. But that imposter syndrome is strong these las weeks
I got pretty good with BASIC back in 1983.
Nice!
I'm still struggling to get good at BASIC, myself.
BASIC was my first language, and I still don't feel like I've mastered it, so I still study it on some weekends.
I take so many modern tools for granted, now. It makes my learning progress in BASIC feel slow.
But I'm getting better at it.
The more I learn about my language the less I think it matters. Maybe in embedded C you can’t just leave everything to the compiler though.
It's a strong typed language with a minimal set of guard rails, so there is certainly some considerations to take into account, but the compiler are pretty good and give more leeway to the dev.
Not every thing, but still most things by far.
I’m mostly working in Java now. I’m proficient to the degree that I can solve most things without looking for reference online. I think that matters most to me.
It's funny because I often have to look for the prototype of a function because I often forget all the arguments a standard C function uses, but otherwise, i feel like I am proficient enough to know where to look for, which in my case is normal because I won't memorize all the details of how each peripheral of the mcu works.
I don’t think your question relates to the language as much as to the platform. The language of choice is somewhat irrelevant and what you care about is what actually happens under the hood.
For the likes of java and go you want to have some understanding of what runtime does for the memory allocations and how their GCs work. For python you sometimes end up in the spots where you need to understand what limitations the GIL imposes (even more important now that they are trying to get rid of it). When you run C (or C++ or Rust) on the embedded hardware it really helps to understand what exactly bit flipping does in specific registers and what DMA means for how you write your code.
You don’t really have to know it all. You can absolutely write code without caring about anything of that and I know plenty software engineers that do. Some people write amazing functional things in java without ever questioning what it does to the machines and what resources you need to run it.
If you start questioning it, that will only expand your understanding. It's not a lateral move from e.g. C to Rust where you need to learn a lot to write your code in a memory-safe way, it's a movement deeper into the stack and what you learn there will be applicable to any language you use for this stack.
Answering your question: I always feel bad about not understanding some low-level concept. I have stacks of MCU reference docs lying around, printed, highlighted; I have archives with sample code, and hand-annotated CMSIS reversing notes. Embedded world is hard because you can’t just know C and be done with it. You have to know the hardware, too.
Here's my advice for you. Make notes of things that you learn from people smarter than you. Create a web of those notes and see where your gaps are. Then, work on learning something in those gaps in particular and see if you can make a blog post or something of your own. When you share what you learn you become one of those people with deep understanding that others look up to. There's always someone struggling with something that you either know or know how to figure it out.
What I like about embedded is that it's between software and hardware, where you have to know both to a certain extent. It kinda feels like being a mad scientist bringing a monster to life. Seeing that my code makes physical actions (lighting a LED or controlling a motor) never seems to get old, even when trivial.
I am confronted everyday about the things I don't know because I work in a startup and I am the only one that does what I do. Any issue that I have tells me what I need to learn to fix the issue.
You are right that for a lot of people, what I do seems like magic and we often forget the extent of our knowledge because it has become innate.
Thanks for the insight, I appreciate it.
I'd say average.
In every project and in every team, I end up being strong because I fix the hard stuff. I debug better and I deliver mostly bug free code. My code is more efficient and performant than my coworkers most of the time.
That's gotta count for something.
Imposter syndrome is good for me. Keeps me learning.
I’ve been using Scala professionally for 3 years. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time because we have a ton of implicites and monads and extension methods. I just know the general idea and can get where I want by reading types.
I’ve been creating a language for fun for nearly 6 years. I often don’t know what’s going on under the hood because it’s somewhat complex. I think this is normal for every language. You don’t have to know everything to be able to use it. You don’t have to write blog posts once a week about the language subtleties you found.
The blogposts are the example I had because this is usually where I find my solutions.
I do understand that I don't need an in depth knowledge of everything about my language, but I sometime feel like I should know more. But again, this is the imposter syndrome talking.
I am thinking about blogging once my kids are older and I have more time because I am grateful when someone else does and I want to contribute as well.
Even the creators of languages don't know their own languages 100%. I wouldn't even call them the limit. So, I'm good enough in my main language that a lot of code doesn't surprise me. And I try very hard to write code that others can understand as well when in a team.