Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 191 posts

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#11

Post by NicoJuicy »

ankurdhama wrote: post #2

Focus on the problem and not the tools ceremony around it. Don't follow the herd and the hype. When given a problem, keep drilling the problem until it is absolutely clear to you and then only work on solution.

I'd say this

But:

If you know multiple programming languages. Sometimes adjust for the toolset. Eg. Python or NodeJS for crawling websites. I always abstract it with an api. For eg. Try take a screenshot of a website in c# ( my most proficient language).

SOME tools do get you much faster to the end result with more options. Just make sure you tackle that problem with that programming language and try to abstract it away.

Edit: My solution for website as a screenshot, a c# wrapper for a nodejs api

The API in Nuget ( dot nets package manager): https://www.nuget.org/packages/WebsiteAsImageWebService.Api/

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#12

Post by klibertp »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #11
ankurdhama wrote: post #2

Focus on the problem and not the tools ceremony around it. Don't follow the herd and the hype. When given a problem, keep drilling the problem until it is absolutely clear to you and then only work on solution.

I'd say this But: If you know multiple programming languages. Sometimes adjust for the toolset. Eg. Python or NodeJS for crawling websites. I always abstract it with an api. For eg. Try take a screenshot of a website in c# ( my most proficient language). SOME tools do get you much faster to the end result with more options. Just make sure you tackle that problem with that programming language and try to abstract it a…

Yeah, you need to balance "not the tools ceremony around it" and "find the best tool for the job". Neither extremum is particularly useful, I'd say.

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#13

Post by Bdiem »

klibertp wrote: post #9

One of the most important things, in my opinion, is being able to admit that you don't know or don't understand something. The opposite attitude gets in the way of learning new things, which is really bad for programmers.

This exactly, but let me add: Develop an urge to understand things. One needs to understand the whole system environment just to be able to make good choices.

To give "urge" more meaning: These days I get a noticeable weird feeling in my gut if I'm working in a environment where there are too many unknowns.

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#14

Post by epynonymous »

attention to quality a.k.a thorough testing, i require that all interviews with dev candidates include being drilled on automation and testing. curiosity to learn new techniques and technologies, is this person playing around with new stacks, languages, etc in his/her spare time, does he/she have open source projects, that tells me that this person is quite passionate about development. i think another one is comprehension of the requirements, often times i see poor developers jump into a solution without fully understanding the requirements.

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#15

Post by brian-armstrong »

Study the idioms of whatever language you are using. If you're writing production code, consistency is everything. Don't write anything surprising or clever - you'll just paint yourself into a corner later, and it'll be impossible to maintain. Boring code is good code.

Take error handling really seriously. A program that can gracefully reject input with a detailed error message is far better than one that crashes mysteriously

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#16

Post by henrik_w »

A few habits I've found that work well for me:

1. Start small, then extend.

2. Change one thing at a time.

3. Add logging and error handling early.

4. All new lines must be executed at least once.

5. Test the parts before the whole.

6. Fix the known errors, then see what’s left.

Taken from here: https://henrikwarne.com/2015/04/16/lessons-learned-in-softwa...

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#17

Post by sgift »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #15

Study the idioms of whatever language you are using. If you're writing production code, consistency is everything. Don't write anything surprising or clever - you'll just paint yourself into a corner later, and it'll be impossible to maintain. Boring code is good code. Take error handling really seriously. A program that can gracefully reject input with a detailed error message is far better than one that crashes mys…

Please, everyone who thinks, "I just expect correct inputs" take note of part two. I've had so many discussions with colleagues about that "Why don't you check for null pointers and give an error message?" "I think it's perfectly fine to just crash with a null pointer, I don't expect null pointers."

That attitude hurts everyone who has to support what you write.

edit: Reformatted as a habit "Make sure whatever you write can be supported without unnecessary headaches."

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#19

Post by brad0 »

Understand the tools and languages you use day to day inside and out.

If you know how these things work internally you'll be 3x better than most programmers.

Fail as much as possible in an environment that is okay with failure. My environments have been side projects at home and professional work as well. Make sure you know why it failed and what you can do better next time.

Re: Ask HN: What habits make a programmer great?

#20

Post by perlgeek »

The "developer on fire" podcast closes out each episode by asking the guest to provide three tips for delivering more value.

Some that occur frequently are:

* Take care of yourself. Get enough sleep, exercise and healthy food. Have hobbies.

* Constantly learn new stuff

* Practice communication skills. Building stuff fast and well doesn't help if you're building the wrong thing, and you need communication skills to prevent that

* Think about the context that your program will run in (related to the reason above)

* Practice empathy

Post reply on HN