A collection of technical things every software developer should know (2017)

https://github.com/mtdvio/every-programmer-should-know

77•redbell•2h ago

Comments

pdntspa•1h ago

Can we pleeeeeeease stop putting emoji in the middle or end of sentences like this was a 6-year-old's training reader?

Any time I see a sentence end in that strong-arm emoji my douchebag-o-meter goes way way up.

dragonwriter•1h ago

Of all the things I’ve seen with emoji at the beginning or end of sentences, none of them are training readers for children and most of them are material by and for adults.

pdntspa•1h ago

A lot of early-reading children's books embed pictures in the sentences. It helps kids learn the meaning of words or something.

theideaofcoffee•1h ago

I second this. I feel very strongly that we have to do our best to make technical things more accessible to more people, but this trend of adding emojis to these readmes is just infantilizing. A lot of the content is interesting enough on its own, no need to candy-coat it.

pmichaud•1h ago

Probably not. I think it's the beginning of a major language evolution.

homeonthemtn•1h ago

Hieroglyphics comes full circle.

sunrunner•1h ago

Thistle bee ace.

redmattred•1h ago

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think the cat is out of the bag on this one. I await the return of ascii art though.

rustystump•1h ago

I dont mind them when they are not cringy. Arm flex is cringy.

TheHideout•1h ago

Very nice list... I do wonder how much money the author/contributors make by having Tuple's ad at the top of this popular readme file.

hangonhn•1h ago

I'm a little surprised by the answers in "Cryptographic Right Answers". Both libsodium and Chacha20-Poly1305 are not FIPS-compliant. "AES-GCM" is but it has important gotchas in regards to the IV and per key data volume. "AES-GCM-SIV" is more resilient but "AES-GCM-SIV" isn't FIPS compliant either but there is a proposal underway to certify it. So the cryptographic right answer is "it depends". FIPS compliance may not matter to some people but it does a lot to others depending on the context.

I think the safe answer is AES-GCM using envelope encryption?

NoahZuniga•1h ago

If you use libsodium, its very hard to screw up your encryption. If you use AES-GCM, it sounds at least like you can screw it up. Surely you'd want to use the first one?

hangonhn•18m ago

Totally agree with you on this but I think in some settings FIPS-compliance is a requirement -- especially anything to do with the Federal government. The obvious fix is for FIPS to catch up but until then the three choices the document listed aren't great. The first two don't meet the requirements and the last choice, as you've pointed out, can be a bit of a foot gun. I wonder if AES-CBC-HMAC (i.e. Fernet) should be listed as a choice for FIPS? Like keep the original 3 and then have a sub-heading: FIPS-compliant: AES-CBC-HMAC or AES-CTR-HMAC like it did originally.

hu3•1h ago

If you are starting your career and panic reading such list, that would take years to learn, if even. Don't worry.

Most of these items are more like nice to know than should know.

Yeah it would be great if every software developer knew everything. But I doubt even the repository owner know all that is listed.

My best advice to newcomers is get your hands dirty and stay away from endless hours of courses, YouTube videos and "awesome lists".

sho_hn•1h ago

Absolutely. This kind of list isn't the price to entry.

Toward the middle of your career you should have a reasonable understanding of roughly what's in all of those and why someone cared to write them down, and be able to know when to consult them. And you will know at least a few of them very well.

vodou•1h ago

Also remember: Even though many of these articles/books/papers/etc. are good, even great, some of them are starting to get a bit old. When reading them, check what modern commentators are saying about them.

E.g.: What every programmer should know about memory (18 years old) [1]

How much of ‘What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory’ is still valid? (13 years old) [2]

[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/250967/

[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8126311/how-much-of-what...

rustystump•1h ago

While i cannot comment on the specifics u listed i dont think the fundamentals have changed much concerning memory. Always good to have something more digestible though.

brcmthrowaway•1h ago

I laughed at timezones

leecommamichael•1h ago

Clever ad.

justinko•1h ago

You should know only what you need to know to solve a problem.

falcor84•1h ago

My contrasting advice is that you should use the problems you're facing as opportunities to learn and practice the wider competencies that will allow you to gradually take on bigger and more interesting problems.

waynesonfire•1h ago

You will eventually encounter each and every item on that list, and some. Software engineering is a learning grind till the end. The projects will dictate the skills needed for it to be successful. The difficulty is that you won't be given time to learn any knowledge gaps.

hungryhobbit•1h ago

A better title would have been "junior dev compiles collection of his favorite links".

Animats•1h ago

And adds an ad.

[1] https://github.com/mtdvio/every-programmer-should-know/commi...

random3•1h ago

:) Soon to be renamed to "a historical collection of things every software developer had to know about."

Will start with "software used to be..."

banashark•1h ago

Not every developer needs to know about all of these things. I'd take this more as a "list of interesting details related to common things you might depend on", it's akin to suggesting that doctors of specific specialties (dermatologist) should know about random things that are part of other specialties (proctologist).

alabhyajindal•1h ago

[flagged]

dang•1h ago

Please make your substantive points without name-calling. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

estimator7292•1h ago

The random use of emojis tells me this was written by an LLM. If it's not worth your time to write a list it's probably not worth my time to read

nice_byte•1h ago

> How to Win Friends and Influence People

really? in 2025?

AaronAPU•27m ago

Tangentially, am I the only one left on the planet who abhors watching videos in order to consume information?

It has been a nightmare watching the world’s information migrate over to YouTube when it used to be quickly digestible text formats.

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