How do I know if I'm good at programming? • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by saimiam » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

I really want to decipher this statement but I just can't wrap my head around it -

> I know 2+2 = 4 but how do you know that how do I learn to know that!

Did you miss some punctuation?

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

#92

Post by debaserab2 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

Good programmers manage side effects. They have an idea of what kind of side effects a particular coding strategy or pattern is going to tend to produce. They understand the range of bugs they are likely to encounter with an implementation and shore them up quickly.

Likewise, they also tend to produce more desirable side effects - things that maybe weren't described in the spec but are a noticeable improvement (e.g., responsive UI behavior)

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

#93

Post by throwanem » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

Entangled wrote: post #87

If I give you $1379.87 do you know the minimum number of notes and coins you could get? Then you are an excellent programmer.

The change-making problem is trivial in US currency.

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

#94

Post by dasil003 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

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…

In practice you might have tension on a team between those who favor speed vs stability, but I resent the characterization that it is an inherent trait of the programmer.

If you want to be a great startup engineer you have to exercise judgement; knowing when to do something quick and dirty, what to polish, what code is likely to live a long time, when and how to address various aspects of scalability, etc. Someone who just has one mode of operation and does not consider the context is always a liability unless their role is very rigidly defined and management knows what they're doing.

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

#95

Post by d--b » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

I mostly disagree with the article.

> Is the code readable?

Readable code may not be good code. More readable code almost always means less efficient code. Readability is a trade off.

> Is it easy to extend?

Changing requirements are a thing for sure. But in almost every cases I came across, planning for shifting requirements always misses the point. It is much better to stick to your current requirements and keep your code simple, than introduce things that complicate your code for requirements that may or may not happen. Extending simple code is simpler than undoing code and replace.

> Is your code efficient?

It's very hard to self determine whether one own's code is efficient. Almost every one will think their code is efficient.

> can you write it quickly?

Again people tend to think that they are fast at writing code whatever their actual speed.

-- the reality is that it's really hard to qualify good or bad code. Self assession is particularly useless.

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

#96

Post by mevile » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

I'm looking forward to the day when we can get over our collective need to shore up our personal confidence. Reading through these comments might leave someone thinking that everyone is a good programmer, that just by wanting to learn code you're entitled to receive a participation trophy. We don't really need to handhold people.

Did you get a computer science degree? Did you land a job at a good company to write code after an extensive interview? Have you been able to keep that job for a few years? Have you written code other people find valuable? Do other engineers you respect commend you on your contributions?

If you've answered yes to all of the above or at least some then congratulations you're a good enough programmer. If not then there's room to grow and you can become one. Either way I laud you in your choice of career. It's a good one, and there's no reason to be handwringing about where you fit in the spectrum of engineering skills.

Just always be learning.

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

#97

Post by andy_ppp » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

I think it’s consistently choosing the harder more correct path. You know you need to refactor a piece here or name a variable consistently there, but I’m tired, I’ll just slack off this one time... unfortunately, as I’ve proven a few times, compound interest is a bitch.

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

#98

Post by jplasmeier » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

d--b wrote: post #95

I mostly disagree with the article. > Is the code readable? Readable code may not be good code. More readable code almost always means less efficient code. Readability is a trade off. > Is it easy to extend? Changing requirements are a thing for sure. But in almost every cases I came across, planning for shifting requirements always misses the point. It is much better to stick to your current requirements and keep yo…

"More readable code almost always means less efficient code."

Can you give examples? I'm not sold that the "low hanging fruit" of readability improvement (empty lines to break up "paragraphs", breaking up unintelligible one-liners into several lines, etc.) degrades performance. My intuition is that the compiler/interpreter ends up producing almost identical runtime code and therefore similar performance.

Unless you mean more along the lines of expressivity (i.e Python and Ruby can get a lot done with fewer statements compared to C), but to me this effect is in a different category than readability.

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

#99

Post by olavk » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

A good programmer always looks at the bigger picture. They understand when SOLID is appropriate and when "worse is better". A good programmer is familiar with the best practices and guidelines and principles, but always question them to understand their context and limitation. A good programmer understand that all tools and techniques are means to an end.

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

#100

Post by daef » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #79

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…

Sounds like you've worked with quite a lot of wannabe rockstar programmers. Look, you're not wrong - there are certainly mediocre programmers out there who have decided that quantity is its own quality, and can bang out lots of buggy code really quickly. However, just like there are a lot of middling to good musicians out there, but only a few truly great ones, there's something that separates the good from the great…

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