Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by dntrkv on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @12:14PM (#14402459)

I've tried a similar approach in the past and it just does not work for me. Besides the fact that it is very tedious, I don't retain any of the knowledge because it's like reading a dictionary. It's impossible to absorb that much information, for me at least.

My approach to learning a new codebase has always been to do a general overview of the structure while taking notes. Then just assign myself some easier bugs and start working on them, and then slowly moving up in complexity.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by JimboOmega on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @12:25PM (#14402580)

I recently joined a company as a senior developer with a partially unfamiliar stack, and it's very interesting to me how much my style of learning contrasts with others in that way.

I regularly am recommended to "read through all the docs, step through all the code", which might work for some. My brain just wants to switch off whenever I do that.

Instead a day or two of fixing problems - implementing a fix, seeing how/why it doesn't work, trying a new one - suddenly I get it.

Everyone's different.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by grogenaut on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @03:26PM (#14404393)

One of the things I see in your comment that marks you as more senior is you didn't say "push it out" on the fix but "see how / why it didn't work, trying again". Just because you wrote code doesn't mean it needs to go out, just because a systems isn't to your brain's pattern doesn't mean it needs to be gutted and aligned with your brain immediately upon encounter.

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