So I have been programming professionally and on the side for getting close to two decades at this point. I've spent many years writing Java, C, C++, Python, Rust, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript—you name it. If I could go back and correct one mentality of mine

from that entire time, I know exactly what it would be. So first, let me tell you a story so that way you can kind of understand where I'm coming from. In 2007-8-9, I was in college. I'm pretty excited just learning how to program, getting

pretty dang fast. You know, I did a little bit in high school. I did a little bit of it when I was like, you know, in sixth grade, but now I'm really actually doing it. And the thing is is that I've always been on a Windows machine at that point.

I just loved obviously gaming. That was my thing. You almost got me trapped. Oh, I had a lot of fun doing it. And now all of a sudden, I'm in college, and that's still the operating system that I prefer, of course. A lot of my classes and everything

require me to use CentOS or CentOS. I can't—I have no idea. The fresh maker—I have no idea how you actually say the thing, but either way, I, you know, would straddle the line, right? For labs, I used CentOS. At home, I used Windows and

NetBeans on both because come on, it's NetBeans, the greatest editor of all time. In about 2008, I decided I wanted to start a website. I called it 'Life in America is Hard.' I thought it was funny. You'd leave little notes about things.

that are hard in America such as having to wait in line for coffee, those kind of things, right? Anyways, while I was developing it, I kind of had this idea, okay, I kind of want to get good at Linux. And so in 2008, I got a partitioned machine, put Ubuntu on it, and I stuck with it for probably about a week, but I just, I kind of like avoided it, you know what I mean? Like, yes, I was using it, but I really just avoided it. I didn't actually do it, and ultimately I stopped

using it altogether. I kind of had this mentality that I was right, and when I looked at things that had some sort of friction or difficulty to them, and I could kind of perceive it, I would just assume they are wrong. And what I mean by

this, of course, is like using the CLI or Vim or any, you know, kind of like the more hardcore hacker type things. It just felt like they were kind of a thing of the past, a relic of the past, and really the future's in these IDs and that is it.

And I didn't realize how much that was going to hinder me for quite some time, uh, for many, many years. I just simply avoided all these hard things, uh, things that were different, not because they were not beneficial, but because I simply assumed they weren't beneficial. I had

this mentality where I believed I was right, and that didn't just stop with the technologies I used, it also happened to be when I was at work, how I treated people, all those kind of things, right? Because it all is one mentality. I simply believed myself to be more correct, more

often than others in all sorts of areas and yeah I was pretty smart I did the best top of my class I was obviously very good at my job excelled above other people confidence kind of you know even though it was a bad type of confidence it kept compounding in on itself and if

I could go back I really just wish I could tell myself you know it is okay to be uncomfortable it is okay to use something that is perceivably slower than what you use right now or even way more difficult to do the same thing because it's not about your

instantaneous speed up it's about that long-term dividend play if I would have known this I would not have had nearly as bad of an interview as I did for a company I had they asked me hey could you go through a directory and it has

subdirectories and all these different files have uh you know just have a bunch of HTML and all this but we've been hacked and there's a bunch of free viagra call this number throughout all these different files and we'd like to remove all of them now of course me

being the young spittin engineer with zero tolerance for the CLI and those other things what did I do I literally by hand wrote perfectly working Java code buffered writer tokenizer bam bam bam bam bam wrote the entire recursive directory walk from my heart of hearts onto the board and of course what did my

interviewer do you could have just used grep and it was kind of like in that moment I realized I should probably know more right because looking back on it it's obvious I know exactly how I would solve that now you know boom little said grep

super combo right it'd be super easy to kind of go through some stuff and just depending on like if you just want the list of files or do you want me to change them right and so I kind of feel stupid right now looking back and so I

really hope you can hear this it's not just me trying to get you to use Vim or saying the CLI is the best place but really for you to look at problems and understand that you don't know everything and that using things that seem different or strange it's okay

because ultimately it's gonna make you a better engineer and who knows it may pay some amazing dividends down the road and hopefully you don't look like such a doofus as I did during that interview so go ahead if all you ever use is VS Code

try Emacs look at this I'm not even suggesting my favorite editor Vim at this point go just try anything else go try IntelliJ go try some other things see what you can do your all you ever do is just do React and front end try Solid

try Vue expand your horizon try to understand things better because ultimately the more ways you see a problem be solved the more ways that you can solve a problem we are often limited by our experiences and that's really what separates a junior from a senior is

just experiences experiences seeing things done differently and ultimately that's going to make you a much better engineer and I really wish I could have told myself that a decade ago I hope you liked this video please subscribe and of course actually make a comment down

Below, tell me a little story about yourself. I probably will reply to you. My name is Primegen.

If I could give advice to myself when starting as a software engineer

ThePrimeagen

초기 프로그래밍 경험과 아쉬운 점

다양한 언어에 걸친 20년간의 프로그래밍 경험.

2007~2009년 Windows 및 NetBeans를 사용한 대학 경험.

실험실에서는 CentOS를 사용하고 가정에서는 NetBeans와 함께 Windows를 사용합니다.

2008년에 Linux를 배우려고 시도했지만 금방 포기했습니다.

불편하다는 인식으로 인해 어려운 도구(CLI, Vim)를 기피하는 사고방식.

도전을 회피하는 것의 부정적인 결과

이러한 기피 현상은 기술을 넘어 대인 관계로까지 확대되었습니다.

불편함과 대체 도구를 수용하지 않은 것에 대한 후회.

CLI 지식 부족으로 인한 부정적인 면접 경험.

도전과 다양한 도구 수용의 중요성

다양한 도구와 기술(Emacs, IntelliJ, Solid, Vue)을 사용해 보도록 권장합니다.

지평을 넓혀 문제 해결 접근 방식을 확장합니다.

주니어와 시니어 엔지니어를 차별화하는 데 있어 다양한 경험의 가치.

소프트웨어 엔지니어로서 겪었던 경험을 바탕으로, 과거의 자신에게 해주고 싶은 조언은 새로운 기술이나 도구에 대한 거부감을 버리고 불편함을 감수하며 다양한 시도를 해보는 것이다.

자신이 옳다고 믿는 고집스러운 태도는 성장을 저해하며, 다양한 문제 해결 방식을 경험하는 것이 엔지니어로서의 역량을 향상시키는 데 중요하다.

새로운 도구나 기술을 배우는 것은 단기적으로는 비효율적으로 보일 수 있지만, 장기적으로는 큰 도움이 될 수 있다.

🕰️ 과거의 후회: 엔지니어로서의 초기 시절

Primeagen은 거의 20년 동안 소프트웨어 엔지니어로 활동하면서 다양한 언어를 사용해 왔습니다. **그는 과거의 자신에게 단 하나의 멘탈리티를 고쳐주고 싶어합니다.** 2007-2009년 대학 시절, Windows를 선호했지만 수업 때문에 CentOS를 사용해야 했습니다.

2008년에는 'Life in America is Hard'라는 웹사이트를 만들면서 Linux에 익숙해지려고 Ubuntu를 설치했지만, **실질적으로는 Linux 사용을 회피했습니다.** 그는 CLI나 Vim 같은 "hardcore hacker type things"이 과거의 유물이라고 생각했습니다.

**Primeagen은 자신이 옳다고 믿는 오만한 태도가 기술 선택뿐 아니라 직장에서 사람들을 대하는 방식에도 영향을 미쳤다고 합니다.** 그는 자신이 다른 사람들보다 더 옳다고 생각했고, 이러한 자신감은 오히려 독이 되었습니다.

🤦‍♂️ 면접에서의 실수: grep을 몰랐던 과거

만약 과거로 돌아갈 수 있다면, **불편함을 감수하고 더 어렵거나 느린 도구를 사용하는 것이 장기적으로 도움이 된다는 것을 자신에게 말해주고 싶다고 합니다.** 한 회사 면접에서 그는 디렉토리 내의 모든 파일에서 특정 문자열(해킹된 광고)을 제거하는 작업을 받았습니다.

그는 CLI를 사용하지 않고 Java 코드를 직접 작성하여 문제를 해결하려 했습니다. **면접관은 grep을 사용하면 간단하게 해결될 문제였다고 지적했고, 그는 그 순간 자신이 부족하다는 것을 깨달았습니다.**

💡 성장을 위한 조언: 새로운 시도와 경험의 중요성

Primeagen은 Vim을 사용하라고 강요하는 것이 아니라, **다양한 문제를 해결하는 방법을 이해하고 새로운 것을 시도하는 것이 중요하다고 강조합니다.** VS Code만 사용한다면 Emacs나 IntelliJ를 사용해보고, React만 사용한다면 Solid나 Vue를 사용해보라고 조언합니다.

**다양한 경험을 통해 문제 해결 능력을 향상시키고, 주니어와 시니어를 구분 짓는 것은 바로 이러한 경험의 차이라고 말합니다.** 그는 다양한 관점을 통해 문제를 해결하는 능력이 더 나은 엔지니어가 되는 길이라고 믿습니다.

Primeagen은 시청자들에게 자신의 경험에 대한 이야기를 댓글로 남겨달라고 요청하며 영상을 마무리합니다.