Ask HN: Can build CRUD apps, what now?

135 points

5 years ago

I have been building good amount of CRUD apps for the past 10 years or so, but I feel stuck, like a massive wall in front of me.

I started coding in 2010 when I was in High school using JScript and Microsoft PageBuilder with the Help Manual(chm file) that it came with (I had no internet connection). Later I picked up PHP, JS, Java and a whole lot of other technologies which allowed me to be an amazing CRUD app developer, My resume is filled with the latest trendy words like Docker, Scala, Kafka, Spark, Hive, react, K8s or any new framework that seems to make a buzz. All this was amazing but I recently realized that I am not so smart and I can't seem to build anything other than CRUD apps and it is quite depressing.

There is a world out there about compilers, run-times, drivers, emulators, VMs and OSes that I can't seem to grasp, it is just too complicated for me. My Computer Science degree and the newer degrees do not focus on these, they have become 4 year long coding boot camps that focus on getting people job ready with AWS, React, Ruby or whatever trendy. This is true for the majority of the not so prestigious universities out there.

I see a pattern and I feel the older generation is way more capable and knowledgeable when it comes to Computer Science in general. I am pretty sure a lot of people are or were in the same boat as me. I don't really have the time(Have wife & kids) to take a compiler course or set out to build my own OS, what would be the easiest way to learn these lower level things?

Things I have tried so far,

1. Reading the Dragon book(I find this would be useful only once you have built a bad compiler) 2. Paying people older than 40-45 to teach me some C/C++ and some tricks of the trade (expensive but I gained a huge amount of knowledge in a short time)