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Arguing with you has been quite productive! Thanks for writing the detailed response. It shows me the perspective of where you come from. I am baffled and in aw

Arguing with you has been quite productive! Thanks for writing the detailed response. It shows me the perspective of where you come from. I am baffled and in awe at what you can achieve with one correct process and routine. I still have some opinions but those are useless because you have a proven track of the things that I exactly wanted to know. 1. How do you get the confidence over time? I am sure I can also do what you can but will take me 3x or heck even 4x the effort. So, it feels a bit sad to know by the time I am done, it will be worthless despite enjoying the process. 2. I liked how you admitted you forget things too. So this process of relearning for the nth time, does it make the experience enjoyable? For me, I find it tiring to know that I have to do the same thing over and over and some people just get by. It feels kind of disheartening. And more to it, now it's AI that can do it better. 3. I have tried different things big or small. Did quite a few interesting things but nothing remarkable at all. I like engineering/design and making usable things. However, whatever I do is never enough for "others" while it is really okay for me. Now this is the source of all issues. Once I finish a project, I move on to the next project or venture. There is no introspection from what I built. I just like building but not pushing. Consequently, they do not look impressive because they are just replicas nothing more. I get the illusion that I am learning things, but once I blindfold and try to recreate it, I can't. It is disheartening too. 4. I actually come from a disadvantaged background. English is not my primary language. Thus, I put in extra effort whenever I do something to compensate for the lack of communication. It has helped me. Now not everything can be communicated when there is no remarkable portfolio to show. As you have proven yourself, things take time to build. The problem here is I can't afford the luxury of time because of other aspects of life. I get an hour of free personal time at max. 5. The whole idea of finding an average job was to finish it within 4 hours (because I don't have to put effort) and later use the remaining time for myself. This is the only way in which I believe I can make substantial progress in self-improvement. 6. Answering your final question. I am poor in terms of background, skills, and execution (time management). I can do enough to get by but not enough to impress or get other people interested in me for opportunities. This is why I am direly seeking a position where I can get by and still get a chance to improve. I thought college would give that, but it didn't. I thought a postgraduate would give that, but it didn't. I want something easy because I am genuinely tired. So, I am not living up to my potential, I am not getting hired because I don't have "experience" for entry-level positions in the field I am interested in. (Idk why it's called entry-level). Consequently, I just want to get through life, find easy tasks, get things done, and then carry on from there.

Exuma 3y ago
These are good question, and the first one of which is especially poignant for me, far more than you would realize. I have in past talked about intuition based learning (me) vs ... what I'd say 90% of developers are which is a practical/observational based learning. For me ESPECIALLY it's poignant because in my internal model of the world, I do NOT rely on things I've achieved previously to "carry me" through future interactions, or confidence in speaking. I simply don't think like that. Instead, it feels a like an silent void where every situation is infinitely complex with multitudes of different variables from every other experience in my life. I don't think many people are like that. I talk a lot more about this elsewhere if you actually are interested. It was months back let me find it... in it I talk more about my version of "confidence" Ok I found it, start here: https://i.imgur.com/o3xT5Jh.png https://i.imgur.com/o3xT5Jh.png and then my reply here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161 I have no idea if you are like that or not, but don't cut yourself short thinking it takes 3-4x the effort. Let me think about your questions throughout the day, as my mind has a lot layers of interconnected fibers, and I want to distil them all down into the most meaningful/impactful statements.
- throwaway1183 3y ago
  Sure, take your time! After reading your reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161, it resonated with me because I am this type of learner. I need to break things fast, reach the wrong answer, and get stuck so that I can see examples and learn from them. It is really good at getting what is out there. But being in academia surrounded by people who learn from abstraction and words, I can't get any confidence to speak about myself. It feels like I have seen the other side and now I am constantly evaluating myself with that. I always thought this way of learning was fake learning because everything relied on intuition and most of the time my intuition was wrong. I had to go back re-read and attempt again. Once I fixed it, I was done with it and next time I had to restart from scratch because to me, it's a completely new situation. This made me feel like I never learnt anything in the past and I was actually someone who cheated the system because I knew exact things to be said in the right way. Like an incantation of a magic spell. But after reading your reply, I will now dive a bit deeper into this kind of learning and see how it resonates with my internal world and learning! Thanks for sharing it! > The downside is always when I’m around strong people of the other type I get the sense they don’t respect this style of learning sometimes. It comes through in their words, tone, subtle body language cues. This is also one source of in-confidence. Everything started with the introduction of LLMs. It just punishes the person like me because I have a unique way of doing things. I claim this because I rapidly process information, try to understand behaviors and execute it. In any case I can't do it, I resort into finding other sources who has done it. I can understand the solution as long as it is written in clear way. It can be research paper, books, equations, code, blog, even just some random discussion as long as it hints into certain direction to trigger a spark. After that I try to use whatever I think is the best. Simply put, I can give a solution, not just the best one but one to get 80% job done.

Exuma 3y ago

These are good question, and the first one of which is especially poignant for me, far more than you would realize. I have in past talked about intuition based learning (me) vs ... what I'd say 90% of developers are which is a practical/observational based learning. For me ESPECIALLY it's poignant because in my internal model of the world, I do NOT rely on things I've achieved previously to "carry me" through future interactions, or confidence in speaking. I simply don't think like that. Instead, it feels a like an silent void where every situation is infinitely complex with multitudes of different variables from every other experience in my life. I don't think many people are like that. I talk a lot more about this elsewhere if you actually are interested. It was months back let me find it... in it I talk more about my version of "confidence" Ok I found it, start here: https://i.imgur.com/o3xT5Jh.png https://i.imgur.com/o3xT5Jh.png and then my reply here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161 I have no idea if you are like that or not, but don't cut yourself short thinking it takes 3-4x the effort. Let me think about your questions throughout the day, as my mind has a lot layers of interconnected fibers, and I want to distil them all down into the most meaningful/impactful statements.

throwaway1183 3y ago
Sure, take your time! After reading your reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693161, it resonated with me because I am this type of learner. I need to break things fast, reach the wrong answer, and get stuck so that I can see examples and learn from them. It is really good at getting what is out there. But being in academia surrounded by people who learn from abstraction and words, I can't get any confidence to speak about myself. It feels like I have seen the other side and now I am constantly evaluating myself with that. I always thought this way of learning was fake learning because everything relied on intuition and most of the time my intuition was wrong. I had to go back re-read and attempt again. Once I fixed it, I was done with it and next time I had to restart from scratch because to me, it's a completely new situation. This made me feel like I never learnt anything in the past and I was actually someone who cheated the system because I knew exact things to be said in the right way. Like an incantation of a magic spell. But after reading your reply, I will now dive a bit deeper into this kind of learning and see how it resonates with my internal world and learning! Thanks for sharing it! > The downside is always when I’m around strong people of the other type I get the sense they don’t respect this style of learning sometimes. It comes through in their words, tone, subtle body language cues. This is also one source of in-confidence. Everything started with the introduction of LLMs. It just punishes the person like me because I have a unique way of doing things. I claim this because I rapidly process information, try to understand behaviors and execute it. In any case I can't do it, I resort into finding other sources who has done it. I can understand the solution as long as it is written in clear way. It can be research paper, books, equations, code, blog, even just some random discussion as long as it hints into certain direction to trigger a spark. After that I try to use whatever I think is the best. Simply put, I can give a solution, not just the best one but one to get 80% job done.