Ben Halpern

Posted on Jun 7, 2019

What are you surprisingly terrible at, despite being otherwise competent?

#discuss #career

Top comments (79)

Anthony Bouvier • Jun 7 '19

Self-care.

Vaibhav Yadav • Jun 7 '19

I am terrible at explaining my code, despite knowing how & why it works.

Vicente G. Reyes • Jun 7 '19

Remembering the day. I thought yesterday was tuesday.

Tomas Forsman • Jun 7 '19

Yesterday was Tuesday.

mnivoliez • Jun 7 '19

I'm terrible at structuring stuff that are not code. I fail to structure my workflow, my day to day task (like folding clothes, dishes, etc...).

I'm terrible at remembering important date (heck, I even forgot my birthday almost each year).

But strangely, I'm not that bad I structuring software.

Fran González • Jun 7 '19

So much this. I have try countless times to be as perfectionist on this side of my life as I am with code but I just can't do it 🙃

Peter Kim Frank • Jun 7 '19

Remembering the order of the months. I basically always start at 1 and then sing-song my way up on my fingers. I flip March and May frequently. No idea how many days are in each month. I have tried to learn and put in some effort but just can't make it fit my brain properly.

Normally pretty decent at numbers and related activities. It's really weird and kind of annoying.

Angela Whisnant • Jun 8 '19

My son has the same issue! You aren’t alone!❤️😁

David Wickes • Jun 7 '19

Any time someone says "monad" my brain instantly stops working.

Nadine M. Thêry • Jun 8 '19

Maths, definitely. That was the reason I put off my developing dreams when I was young. Maybe then it was really important (I am talking about 20 years ago, when I was 10).
But today I've realized Maths is really not that complicated or deep into Front-End so I decided to come back :D

yucer • Jun 8 '19 • Edited

Do you mean Mathbox.js ;-)

The article series of MathBox.js are outstanding.

I knew the theory of imaginary numbers, but It was amazing to look into the dynamic graphics and see them rotating.

I wish I would have such tools in the high school.

I wish i would have time to use MathBox.js or threejs to explore datasets.

If one map properly the datasets to the three dimensions, I almost sure that we can find many more relationships instantaneously, because the brain is prepared to work with spacial structure and note those relationships in real time.

You know? The cyberspace was born with the science fiction writer William Gibson.

The web is still very limited to the cyberspace described in Gibson's books. In the books the characters take a Virtual Reality set and connect to 3D words, the servers, the data, the avatars, ... everything was interacting in 3D.

I guess that in the years to come, the web will reach the Gibson dreams. And math would be very important for that.

Are we ready? ;-)

Nadine M. Thêry • Jun 8 '19

I appreciate your passion about Maths... I wish I could share it.

Antonio Radovcic • Jun 8 '19

Exact same here 🤓

Nadine M. Thêry • Jun 8 '19

That's very conforming. Hehe.

Lisa Armstrong • Jun 9 '19

I hear you! I'm great at problem solving, but don't ask me to split the cheque.

Shi Ling • Jun 8 '19

I'm good with CSS, and I frequently find myself helping others to fix broken CSS, but I can't explain how my solutions work. My explanation is usually "Um... It's just like this so that this go here and then like that so it that that other rule applies... Do you get it?"

Ben Halpern • Jun 8 '19

I feel you 😭

Avalander • Jun 7 '19

Relational databases. I honestly go for document and key-value stores often not because I think RDBs are ill suited for the job but because I don't want to deal with them.

Brian Hanna • Jun 8 '19

Same! I'm awful at SQL and RDBs are the bane of my existence

rhymes • Jun 11 '19

aaaaah, you break my heart :P

Avalander • Jun 12 '19

It's not lack of will, it's lack of competence :p

rhymes • Jun 12 '19

What concepts you find hard? Maybe I can help.

In the meantime I think you can start here:

Everything you need to know about (Relational) Databases

Lucas Olivera ・ 16 min read

#beginners #database #sql

I'm not saying relational DBs are super easy, but I think they are really important to know, even if you end up not using them :D

Ryan Smith • Jun 7 '19

Sitting down with someone to look at the code or debug. If I'm not prepared and have not looked at the code for at least a few minutes by myself beforehand, I have no idea what is going on.

Tomas Forsman • Jun 7 '19

That's a great soil to grow a magnificent impostor syndrome!

Brian Hanna • Jun 8 '19 • Edited

In tech? SQL. It doesn't make any sense to me. At all. I can do basic stuff, but when you start talking joins, my eyes glaze over and I lose the previous 2 minutes.

Outside of tech? Telling when I'm done. I'll go and go and go and think I'm fine until I'm absolutely not, and it can be extremely unhealthy

Helen Anderson • Jun 8 '19

Joins aren't so bad!

SQL 101: All about SQL JOINs

Helen Anderson ・ 3 min read

#sql #beginners #data #database

Swanand • Jun 8 '19

I wrote a thing some time ago that may just help: info.pagnis.in/blog/2017/08/19/dec...

Max Ong Zong Bao • Jun 8 '19 • Edited

I'm bad at forming new habits. Could do something consistently for the start but falls till you are hit with time crunch.

It's funny i could follow through something consistently for months or years but had problems in forming new habits.

bvmcode • Jun 7 '19

e2e tests and explaining how my code works

Tomas Forsman • Jun 8 '19

Don't you have that coworker that takes a glance at your code and starts asking why you went that way with that function instead of this way that everyone is doing now? The one who never stumbles in describing their own code and always has a valid reason for any decision and if it turns out there is a better way that you know about they take that and understands it right away instead of the week it took you? Then they quickly finds the pros and cons and makes some improvements it will take you an hour to really understand? I thought that person had a clone in every company. 😉

Vesa Piittinen • Jun 9 '19 • Edited

I'm terribly sorry for being one representative of a person you described. Being pretty close to it anyway.

But for compensation of my kind, here are some things I'm terrible at:

Socializing: pick a random non-programming subject and we're likely not to have a long talk - the closer to small talk, the worse it gets. Additionally I don't drink alcohol and rather avoid any place where people drink. I also have very few stories to tell and as such I'm no good at telling them. I seem to lack the ability (or need?) to contact people.
Answering: I'll stare to nothingness for a good few seconds if somebody asks a question suddenly that has nothing to do with the current subject I'm dealing with. All too often my brains come up with a proper answer once the person who asked the question has left home.
Sharing my knowledge: I grew up very much in isolation as a developer and I learned a whole lot of things the hard way and didn't have names for them. We talk about 20 years of DIY. I've only known the word "refactor" for about 6 years now. The lack of having any kind of mentor means that I have no model for how to teach programming that would come naturally off me.

Tomas Forsman • Jun 9 '19

Ok, I need to be very clear about this, you do NOT need to apologize for being 'that guy'. Yes, you might be scary to deal with for those of us dealing with impostor syndrome and think more about development than coding, but that's our shit to deal with. You are, from the sound of it, an awesome coder and you should be proud of it.

Sure, socializing is good but while I'm good at blending in I kinda hate small talk. I rather enjoy people like you who either talk about something that is actually interesting for you or not much at all.

I hope that you get the chance to talk to someone who is not afraid to talk straight to you and let you know what parts of your communication needs some polish when it comes to other peoples code, because from the sound of it you have a lot of knowledge that others could grow from if they got to absorb it.

Again, do not feel like you should be sorry for being who you are, you probably rule!