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How do I know if I'm good at programming?

danielslater.net

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Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#81

Post by amelius »

StephenMelon wrote: post #18

There are 2 types of “good” programmers, who both think the other type is useless. The first is the “rockstar” developer type who is great at prototyping, hitting deadlines no matter what and delivering functionality, albeit full of bugs. They will write 80% of the code and will drive the support team up the wall by breaking the build, causing customer issues in production, security holes and basically seriously degr…

> But their boss will love them because they deliver the shiny when required.

It seems the boss is really the problem then :)

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#82

Post by [deleted] »

StephenMelon wrote: post #71
shubhamjain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds arrogant and condescending. I don't think that you should have a ship-at-all-cost attitude, notably when it comes with creating an unmaintainable kludge, but the second type, the meticulous kind, can also be ones who over-think every aspect of the output without taking the first step, which benefits no one.

Arrogant and condescending to whom? I said that both types were necessary to succeed exactly because I know the “over-thinking” types can be just as destructive to a software business as hackers who only think short term. My point is that you either identify and hire only unicorn-perfect developers, which you will probably never be able to find enough of, or you build a process that balances the strengths and weaknes…

[deleted]

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#84

Post by celticninja »

DC-3 wrote: post #34
Johnny_Brahms wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree. I have friends that can smash out amazing code in very little time. Looking through some repositories of programs I like, some of them were prototyped in very little time, but with a surprisingly excellent first revision. I had the pleasure to work with Zed Shaw quite some time ago, and even though his code might not be perfect, he writes a lot better code than the vast majority, in a lot les…

This is interesting to hear. I thought Zed's book on C programming was reasonably good but I lost an awful lot of respect for him with his strange and nearly incomprehensible tirades against Python 3.

It seems like he is over his python 3 hate now.

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#85

Post by joshvm »

dghughes wrote: post #46

>Identify the knowledge you lack and seek out the most relevant resource That can be difficult on the Web. When learning electronics searching the Web for help quickly showed how useless it is. There were many explanations but no teaching and often the explanation begun at a level too far past the level of the question asked. My guess is well over 95% of explanations I saw were just people posturing to show off their…

Out of interest what did you feel was lacking about electronics information online? Personally, I've always been bothered by how scattered the information is. One site has amazing amounts of detail on one thing, but often you have to flick between forum threads, random repositories and blogs to solve problems.

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#86

Post by whatever_dude »

StephenMelon wrote: post #18

There are 2 types of “good” programmers, who both think the other type is useless. The first is the “rockstar” developer type who is great at prototyping, hitting deadlines no matter what and delivering functionality, albeit full of bugs. They will write 80% of the code and will drive the support team up the wall by breaking the build, causing customer issues in production, security holes and basically seriously degr…

I think that's just of the many axis of how a developer can be. It's not as black-and-white and it's certainly not the only axis.

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#88

Post by fragmede »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #70
TamDenholm wrote: post #19

Depends how you define good. Some define good as getting the job done in a quick and efficient manner and making the client (or company) happy with the result, however code quality may suffer in this instance and it could be hard to maintain. Others define good as writing the highest quality code with high test coverage, deployment procedures, writing detailed JIRA tickets, great documentation, training other develop…

Deliverables is misleading. Would you rather a deliverable full of bugs that can't scale but is delivered 'on time'?

Why not just build code efficiency requirements and correctness into the spec then? Hah, I'm just kidding, I've worked long enough to know no one ever has a spec. (I've heard things about various NASA projects but have never worked there.)

What is this deliverable for? TechCrunch Demo? The only metric a demoable build, and even then people understand it'll have bugs.

There are still places where there's a drop dead date for code (firmware; physical media) but continuous deployment on the web turns that on its head - the software is constantly evolving; there's no single deliverable that's set in stone and can never ever be changed.

Developer hours is a very limited resource, better to launch the product with slow code and parallelize thanks to the cloud and optimize once hotspots are identified.

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." -Donald Knuth.

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#89

Post by dghughes »

joshvm wrote: post #85
dghughes wrote: post #46

>Identify the knowledge you lack and seek out the most relevant resource That can be difficult on the Web. When learning electronics searching the Web for help quickly showed how useless it is. There were many explanations but no teaching and often the explanation begun at a level too far past the level of the question asked. My guess is well over 95% of explanations I saw were just people posturing to show off their…

Out of interest what did you feel was lacking about electronics information online? Personally, I've always been bothered by how scattered the information is. One site has amazing amounts of detail on one thing, but often you have to flick between forum threads, random repositories and blogs to solve problems.

It seemed like every site showed you the answer but not the steps to get to it which is useless. It seemed as though people were trying to help by giving the answer but just giving the answer isn't helping.

The answer of one single problem is of no use. Another simple example imagine you want to know about multiplication say 5x5 but each example tells you the answer but not how to determine the answer. Knowing allows you to find any problem one example done for you does not.

Sites like the stackexchange network were OK although quite a bit of posturing as I call it and verbose rambling answers. Or worse a good tutorial but closed for apparently no reason.

I ended up at allaboutcircuits.com it was nicely laid out and with video tutorials. It supplemented what I was learning in class.

Re: How do I know if I'm good at programming?

#90

Post by marvy »

ziikutv wrote: post #55

Even though by OP's criteria I am a good programmer, I still think I am terrible compares to my manager. I want to step up. Currently at a web based startup. What can I do to become better in terms of knowledge?

Someone has to give the obvious (possibly wrong) answer, and it might as well be me. If you've already identified someone who you think is better than you, why not ask how they do it?
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