Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

Before committing anything, I double-check everything, refactoring the code I have modified/added. This is easy because, once you have your new functionality or fix working, maintaining the new correct behavior as you modify the code is low-risk if you do it step by step.

English, as being my second language, is an important part of my job. I try to read all the books, blogs, movies, and so on in English. Every time I come across a new word, I look it up in wordreference (plugin for chrome), and add it to a list in Sidenote (mac app). When I need to communicate through email, I sift through that list looking for words that may fit in my message. It is a simple practice that has helped me out big time in uplifting my skills (of course I share this list with my friends!). Certainly this not directly related to programmig but, as I see it, if you want to improve as a programmer, you're going to need to become rather fluent in English.

Writing a blog. Especially invaluable when you get feedback of your posts. Folks out there shall give you a kick in the ass more often than you expect. Expect and embrace them. It's a great way to grow up.

Get to know that the finest blogs, books and people are in your domain. For example, years ago I programmed in Java, usually building web sites with the help of very known frameworks (Spring, Struts, you name it). I thought I was quite competent until I come across a book called "Effective Java" by a dude named Joshua Bloch. Needless to say I was struck by it and I ended up feeling like I knew nothing (literally). You can't program in Java and at the same time not know who Bloch, Goetz, Unble Bob, and so on. Same with Lisp and Norvig, Siebel, Graham.

I always strive to keep up with the basics. This is the killer skill that shines when everything else I try fails. With a new technology, starting out learning the ropes from the top abstraction layers makes me feel competent because I can get my job done, plus or minus. Basics alone aren't that helpful, but when something arises that steers from the standard way of doing the stuff promoted by the top abstraction layers, a great deal of the times I will need to dig right into the core in order to be able to solve my issue. Well, plus or minus, I personally call this the Onion Theory. This is related to the 'darkness surrounding you' concept explained above. Awesome.

PS: By “debunked” it was discovered that the brain has more plasticity in how and where specific tasks where preformed that initially assumed. Also the high level understanding of what doing “Math” or “Poetry” has little connection to how the brain actually does this stuff. EX: Some people can count time accurately why reading other people can’t. The most probable explanation as you grow up the brain chooses how to approach high level problems in a fairly arbitrary fashion.