HN user
You think this was written by AI? I'm curious, why? Anytime I'm about to read a long post I generally paste it into a few detectors for sanity, but none of them flagged anything for this one. I read the entirety and thought it was pretty compelling - long maybe, but thoughtful. I appreciated the historical quotes interjected, and didn't find the prose suspect.
One check of their LinkedIn.
Oh that’s such a high horse position lol - I try and learn as much as possible every day by shipping fast and profitably. Learning to be successful in industry is a completely valid (and common) goal.
Completely fair - but at least my PoV comes from having actually worked as a SWE, you know? I feel like the best understanding this fellow can have is purely secondhand from watching the success / failures of his students.
I also think I get doubly upset from advice like this because it’s given and marketed to impressionable young students. Even agreeing with all the moral points he’s made, I truly think this advice would set up a new grad for failure and have them focusing on the wrong skills for this market.
The bit about ignoring trends feels too head in the sand for my liking :/
There's something so off-putting about academics giving industry advice when they haven't spent a day working as an engineer at a company.
Care deeply about your craft. Refactor code until it is clear and elegant. Write good documentation for other humans to read. Have the courage to go slowly, especially when everyone else is telling you that you need to go fast and cut corners.
Outside of the bit on avoiding cutting corners, this advice seems like a straight path towards unemployment in a few years. The implication is that "your craft" is writing and polishing code, a skill which seems to be increasingly antiquated in favor of higher level system design. Who is going to read your carefully crafted documentation lol? The agents who replace you?
If a tree falls in the forest...