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

Post by bbarn » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 7:51 PM UTC

codegladiator wrote: post #47

bbarn wrote: post #35

"Programming" is easy. You pick a language, learn a set of rules, and over time learn how to tell the machine what you want it to do in that language fairly well. Software development is hard. Unlike many other building tasks that humans run into, software is rarely "done". Launch of software for most of us means the code we've written has just been promoted to a point where now it's important, and will likely be wha…

> "Programming" is easy. You pick a language, learn a set of rules, and over time learn how to tell the machine what you want it to do in that language fairly well. Chess is easy. You get the chess board, learn a set of rules, and over time learn how to pick the right piece to play the game fairly well. Being good at chess/programming would be totally different from knowing "whats happening programming/chess".

Post by wvh » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 8:10 PM UTC

runeks wrote: post #58

wvh wrote: post #40

I think there are different ways to be a good programmer, beyond basic intelligence and diligence. In security and high-availability related environments – where I've spent most of my time – it is important that you validate all ins and outs, system and function returns, check if writes succeed, in short, not unlike a chess player, to be able to fit all possible moves and scenarios that could go wrong inside your hea…

> Universities focus too much on mathematical formulas in my opinion; real systems are not clean and simple like a math function with few variabes. How many variables your functions consume depends on how much you split them up, although you'll of course end up with thousands of functions for a real application, if they each consume ~3 arguments. So, in other words, the limitation is to what degree your language enab…

Post by ensiferum » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 8:50 PM UTC

Post by anaheim_ducks2 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 11:01 PM UTC

webscalist wrote: post #11

If you're good at whiteboard programming solving well known interview questions, you're good. Computer science is a branch of mathematics and it is all about solving problems on whiteboard in front of peers.

Post by wolfgang42 » Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 1:01 AM UTC

jplasmeier wrote: post #98

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 m…

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