D@m!**t Why Is Even This Hard

THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS GOOGLEFU

It’s official. The internet is trash! Like GARBAGE!

After over two decades spent perfecting the martial art commonly called “Googlefu.” I seriously thought I could find anything…in milliseconds…from anywhere.

False! Oh, I know what you’re thinking. ChatGpt or [insert the currently most popular “AI” tool here] would have made quick work of this. Right?

Wrong! (Keep reading to discover why)

So far, the only thing the internet has succeeded at this week - sadly, this is common and why I read books - is helping me find whole new ways to procrastinate. Like the Leetcode and CodeSignal problems I completed which one of my mentors says are completely unnecessary.

Totally spent a few hours on those. The ADHD battle is real…what can I say.

FAIL * FAIL * FAIL = COLLOSAL FAIL

What did I actually do this week? Embarrassingly, this:

  1. Found a promising tutorial written by some guy on Medium (hey, it’s written by a senior engineer at a FANG or is it FAANG. Whatever I didn’t get past my third round L5 Google Systems Engineer interview so he must know more than me right?)
  2. Completed it. Tested it. Seemed to work fine {spoiler: be skeptical}
  3. Published the 1st blog from a really complicated pre-built template to Github
  4. Wrote the 1st post, rewrote it, found some errors, and finally got it just right
  5. Excitedly told my 2 senior engineer mentors and a bunch of my friends about the blog and asked them to use it to hold me accountable to accomplishing tasks more efficiently
  6. Wrote a 2nd post about how this was such a great idea in record time. Things are going awesome
  7. Realized I #failed because the damn blog wasn’t updating. Spent multiple hours trying to diagnose the problem
  8. Mistakenly deleted the 1st blog trying to fix it with a backup from the same tutorial
  9. Mistakenly deleted the 2nd blog and the backup trying to use another tutorial
  10. Purposely deleted the 3rd blog during a fit of rage after realizing deleting blogs is the skill I mastered this week so I might as well use it

KRUGER DUNNING STRIKES AGAIN

If you’re reading this, then you can be certain of a few things:

  • I have wasted nearly 10 hours that should have been spent learning Golang on just the initial setup and publishing of this blog. I could have just signed up for Medium or used Blogger in minutes. But, no, I like my life complicated…because I like to understand what I’m doing…have more control…put in the work upfront that pays off in multiples later…or this is what I constantly tell myself anyway.
  • It is painfully obvious now that either (a) the bar to be an expert is low, very low, (b) being an expert, even a veteran FAANG employee, doesn’t mean you can teach what you know, or (c) I know more than I realize. Regardless…
  • …I’m pissed, tired, and a little defeated and I haven’t built anything in Golang yet. Except for 2 functions to solve essentially the same problem. I’ll post about this experience another time.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Don’t fall for the hype. Just because a tutorial has a lot of views or likes doesn’t mean you will learn anything relevant from it or be entertained. Remember when I spoke about how ChatGpt couldn’t help? Well, I tried it. Guess what? It did exactly as programmed: apply linear algebra, probability, statistics, and calculus in a specific way to lots of internet data to return words predicted to be most relevant to the ones I entered. Or, in English, it returned the same non-working sh@!t. It was prettier and better structured…wish that mattered.
  2. When in doubt, refer to the official documentation. As the Grey Poupon commercials say: “anything else would be uncivilized.” Ok. Duh, right? I don’t know why I relearn this every few months. When you have a question about something. Ask the person who built it. In this case, GitHub. And, sure enough, the solution was on the site in the help section.
  3. Buckle up. This is going to be a wild ride. Entertaining for you. But definitely trying for me. Time to add patience and pre-planning to the list of things I need to work on. {Internal Dialog: “Where are the random sheets of copy paper I jot notes on? Oh, that’s right. I threw them away yesterday while ‘cleaning up.’ Great!”}

I’M OUT

Join us next week as our favorite data nerd, anti-hero, and ADHDer makes his first relevant post. Or don’t. F**@# it. I’m worn out.

WEEKEND UPDATE: I’m going to Barnes & Nobles to kill some trees. Cancel me if you want. But, at least, publishers do the pre-screening so I don’t waste time following another expert’s experiment in self adulation disguised as teaching. If I ever offer a course on something, please remind me I said that.

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