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Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

#2

Post by rkalla »

For me, it has been writing small little utility projects using technologies that I'm curious about.

Recently it was jQuery and the Play! Framework -- for the longest time I was trying to think of some "grand" project that I could write to use them all together and become the master of all that is web... then a year went by and I continued to try and figure out what this ultimate project would be.

What a waste.

Then one Saturday I was bored and sat down and wrote a simple collection of AJAX utilities that do the most basic crap that anyone could write - using those two technologies. It helped get me over that hump and I learned a lot about the two techs I was curious about.

I went ahead and stuck the utils online for anyone to use and moved on with my life.

It was a great exercise for me, and a method of write/release I plan on using from this point forward for just about anything.

Re: Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

#4

Post by j_baker »

Learning. I'll probably be in the middle of learning something new and interesting the day I die. Some on here will disagree with me, but I'm a huge advocate of learning at the expense of doing. Spend time to learn how to not only do something, but do it well. After all, most programming tasks are only useful for a limited time. Knowledge is usually useful for much, much longer. Sometimes I'm surprised at how useful useless facts really are.

Plus if nothing else, you'll be able to do that task much faster the next time.

Re: Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

#6

Post by minalecs »

j_baker wrote: post #4

Learning. I'll probably be in the middle of learning something new and interesting the day I die. Some on here will disagree with me, but I'm a huge advocate of learning at the expense of doing. Spend time to learn how to not only do something, but do it well . After all, most programming tasks are only useful for a limited time. Knowledge is usually useful for much, much longer. Sometimes I'm surprised at how useful…

to add to that.. reading. I spend a lot of time reading, books, documentation, forums, and blogs

Re: Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

#8

Post by aaronblohowiak »

minalecs wrote: post #6
j_baker wrote: post #4

Learning. I'll probably be in the middle of learning something new and interesting the day I die. Some on here will disagree with me, but I'm a huge advocate of learning at the expense of doing. Spend time to learn how to not only do something, but do it well . After all, most programming tasks are only useful for a limited time. Knowledge is usually useful for much, much longer. Sometimes I'm surprised at how useful…

to add to that.. reading. I spend a lot of time reading, books, documentation, forums, and blogs

i find i can spend a whole day reading stuff and feel like i am much better off. if i spend half the time reading and half the time trying to apply what i've learned, then i will retain it soooooo much better.

Re: Ask HN: What habits made you a better programmer?

#10

Post by zacharypinter »

I'm a big fan of technologies that have steeper learning curves, but pay dividends over time. Examples are: Emacs, Lisp, XMonad, git, my Kinesis Advantage keyboard, swype, etc. It's nice when technologies are user friendly or obvious to use immediately (like Quicksilver), but If it's something I'll be using all the time I go for long-term efficiently over early user-friendliness.
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