Introduction Impostor syndrome is where you feel that you are in a position that you don’t deserve because you’re not good enough at something, in contrast to all the people around you who all seem to be good enough, and one of these days someone will discover you to be the fraud or impostor that … Continue reading Impostor syndrome and the programmer’s brain
Category: Rambling
People: an end or just a means?
This post is inspired by an episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, with the psychologist Svend Brinkmann. I guess a good way to introduce it is to give you an example from the podcast. Imagine you go to a shop to buy some milk. You go to the checkout with your milk, and the … Continue reading People: an end or just a means?
Competence vs. Tribalism
There is a sometimes tangled relationship between what we can do and how we think of ourselves. I'm going to look at a part of this below. I can't do X because I'm a Y Have you heard someone (or yourself) ever say something of the form "I can't do X because I'm a Y"? … Continue reading Competence vs. Tribalism
Performance optimisation – for machines or people?
I recently watched a video and listened to a podcast that form an interesting pair of opinions about performance. The video is Patterns for high-performance C# and the podcast is SE-Radio Episode 357: Adam Barr on Software Quality. There are two things where the podcast and video have no differences: the system must behave correctly, … Continue reading Performance optimisation – for machines or people?
Programmers should play nicely with others
Introduction There is a stereotype of a certain kind of programmer. It’s of a young white able-bodied man, alone in his room, creating the future through the force of his intellect. This creation leads to widespread change and a gazillion dollars for him. While it can be amazing to create things in code, and there … Continue reading Programmers should play nicely with others
Programmers, mental models and decisions
Introduction I listen to the podcast Art of Manliness - its title is possibly misleading, as it's quite a mix of philosophy, practical skills, self improvement, lives of interesting people and so on. The episode I listened to most recently was about mental models, from Shane Parrish who is the person behind Farnam Street. I … Continue reading Programmers, mental models and decisions
Balancing big picture and details when coding, testing and documenting
Introduction I very much hope that this avoids being a rant. I also hope it avoids being self-indulgently clever rather than being helpful. Finally, I understand that people learn in different ways; I think I like images and like to get the big picture before getting into detail. Other people like to be led along … Continue reading Balancing big picture and details when coding, testing and documenting
Is Computing a Science?
There's the term Computer Science, which puzzles me - is this field a science? Before I go on at probably great length, I feel it's important to say a few things to set the context. The most important one to me is: it doesn't matter. You can be good or bad at it whatever you … Continue reading Is Computing a Science?
Random Tech Thoughts 