I feel like I’m a pretty shitty programmer despite coding for like 5? 6? years

like I think I write okay code in the sense that I can structure and document code in a logical way but idk I feel like I work with “easy” (interpreted, dynamically typed, OOP) languages and I mostly work on “easy” problems and not like. networking or asynchronous shit or infosec. I mean I have coded async stuff but mostly just bots and shit with fairly extensive and established APIs. and I don’t do that for a living

honestly at least 60-70% of the time when actual programmers talk about their work I don’t know WTF they’re talking about

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@cam as someone who has coded for academic research and professionally, transitioning was very difficult for me, but the fact that you have read the rust book at all and are even aware of asynchronous programming puts much further than I was when I was a researcher

At the same time, I've met many programmers in web dev who wouldn't be very good at all in a research environment. Programming for research and web dev are surprisingly orthogonal skillsets

But also, I don't think software engineering is "real programming" either. A lot of web dev is full of configuration or researching libraries and APIs and a lot this work is just putting Lego pieces together

The most "progammy" stuff I have done is in my own hobby work. Only, like, 20% of the professional work I have done was invigorating to me

@wallhackio that’s true, I’m probably just thinking things are way too advanced to me when it’s more that I just haven’t been trained in those skills. I also think the most “programmy” stuff I’ve done is hobby work like making discord bots and whatnot

I do probably want to stay on the research side of things eventually and I want to be able to leverage my biology knowledge for that, whether or not I stay in academia. but I wouldn’t be opposed to doing back end stuff for genome sequencing platforms, there would just be a relatively big learning curve there since I would probably have to work in C/C++ and learn more about thoroughly optimizing code

@cam C++ is a blight upon humanity don't learn it

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