

Tired of being a script kiddie - zackzackzack

http://zacharymaril.com/blog/2012/02/15/tired-of-being-a-script-kiddie/
======
diwank
Hey Zack,

To put it simply, you rock. You know and understand programming a lot better
than most people ever do in their lifetime. And to be honest, you are really
better off than I am. Please don't underestimate yourself.

 _Being a script kiddie on Hacker News especially sucks. You see everybody
bouncing around with their Phd’s in CS or engineering from Stanford or MIT
talking about how there are so many people out there who are terrible
programmers because they don’t know the difference between a linked list and a
vector._

I know the feeling. It often gets at your nerves. But here's the thing, those
people too were at some time in the past very much like you are right now. In
fact, I know a lot of people who'd agree that it is really * what you do with
your skills * that really matters.

The primary reason you feel like that is because, in essence, you are a hacker
and not a computer scientist. Read pg's brilliant thoughts on this.
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html>)

 _Confession: I have no idea what the difference is between a linked list and
a vector. Well, before I wrote this I had no idea._

I didn't too. Big deal? :)

 _I looked it up so I know now in theory what the difference is._

See, that is the whole point of learning things. You always have to be ready
to assimilate new things and look up the strange bits as you come across them.
And you're doing a blimey good job at that.

 _I can glue things together as fast as the next guy._

An invaluable skill for two reasons:

\- Most great ideas/products come up when two or more existing ideas are glued
together.

\- This helps you understand how things connect and inter-operate.

 _But I have no idea how to make my programs go faster or take up less memory.
Or why the program actually works._

Don't worry. You will, in time.

 _I got on the phone with the interviewer and one of the first things out of
their mouth’s was “Sorry, I don’t really understand functional programming at
all.”_

My take on this one? Find people with overlapping interests. There'll be
plenty of startups working with Lisp and Clojure. Keep looking in the HN Jobs
section. Maybe this one for instance.
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3580917>)

 _I suspect it will give me more confidence when talking to people about
computers. But I don’t really know._

I read a very good article recently - "The Biolar Lisp Programmer"
(<http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm?>)

I don't know about you but I feel like that all the time. I think hackers
often suffer from a huge lack of confidence. (Note: confidence is different
from self-esteem; in that it is your perception of other people's image of
you.)

You seem to have a decent amount of self-esteem. (ready to accept things) So
here's to you - Cheers, my friend, you are doing great!

you can write to me here: singh@diwank.name

~~~
zackzackzack
Woah. Thanks for the kind words! Mostly, I just want to be able to say I
understand how things are working. Like memory and data structures. Once I
grok that I think I would feel much more comfortable. I want to know all of
those tricky things so I can forget about them safely.

Also, I was just reading hacker and painters (the book) over dinner tonight. I
forced the kids in my clojure class to read bipolar lisp programmer for
homework. Excellent, excellent essays.

~~~
diwank
I hope you found some comfort in what I said. And yes, Hackers & Painters is a
truly amazing read.

Anyway, take care and have fun. :)

------
giusemir1978
Actually, with the sort of knowledge you have in your bag, you could not be
considered a script kiddie anymore.

Learn what you want because it moves you in the direction you want to go and
don't care too much about the others.

It is all about your ability to hack a problem and the having fun while doing
it.

cheers.

------
arctangent
Don't worry about it too much. IT is a very humbling field of endeavour. To
paraphrase Douglas Adams, IT is mind-bogglingly big - you'll never learn it
all. You're doing exactly the right thing by identifying new things to learn
and then learning about them. Good luck!

~~~
zackzackzack
Thank you! It will be fun.

------
mistercow
A lot of the insecurity you mention is known as "impostor syndrome":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome>

Basically, you know enough to see the gaps in your own knowledge, but you
can't so easily see the gaps in others' knowledge.

~~~
actionbrandon
impostor syndrome sounds like modesty to me.

------
JonnieCache
Get yourself an arduino or similar. You'll learn C, and working with such
limited memory/cpu/program space will force you to learn all the leet
optimisation tricks you crave. Plus you'll be making things flash, beep, and
spin around, and probably also burn and explode if you keep at it. What more
do you want?

Tip: try and get away from the arduino libraries asap, they are widely held to
be awful and they shield you from the intricacies of the hardware.

------
zackzackzack
Messed up the submission. Should be a link not a post to HN. If a editor could
fix that, I would be really thankful.

