I've been finding that in order to motivate myself for programming I have to not think of it in terms of, "sigh, a basic GUI front end for MySQL....". I have to make myself identify some interesting problem, or new skill which challenges and interests me. That way I feel motivated to work through the easy stuff I've done before because then I can work on the interesting problem.
Why People Initially Suck at Programming
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#12So the question is: why are novices, novices?
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#13> "So if you find yourself lacking some motivation, maybe thats why you aren’t that great. Go find it and last time I checked, money pushes so many people forward." The problem is that money isn't motivation to actually enjoy programming. When you start coding to get money, you're seeing coding as means to an end, and not an end in and of itself. That sucks all the fun out of coding just for its own sake. I used to l…
Interesting. I'm wondering though, was it really one or the other? Weren't you able to just continue doing it for fun and exploring new ideas, but sell just because/when they reached some specific level of quality?
Or did the business side take over just because... well - it's good to get money for the work?
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#14Algorithmic thinking is both a skill and a kind of thinking most people have not done prior to programming.
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#15I've got no. 11... "Just deal with it".
I haven't seen that attitude before, but recently an idealist graduate joined my team. I can't remember now how many times lately I had to tell "Yes, it has bugs, but writing a new implementation would take a year, so we're just going to patch the library."; "No, it doesn't have a documentation - check if it behaves correctly."; "No, it really doesn't need to be a fully speced system on its own JVM, it doesn't need more than a shell script."; "Yes, requirements change, get used to that."...
Of course we'd all love to have 100% correct, documented libraries, specs which are unambiguous, properly designed code that will stay at version 1.0.0 and with same API forever... Well - it just doesn't work like that, even if it's a good thing to aim for. I can swear every day at some RFCs and the bunch of monkeys who wrote them, but that doesn't mean it's going away. It's already out there - if you have time, build something better. If you don't... take a break, breathe, come back and make it work.
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#16One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of beginners make, is that they don't break the problem up into sub problems that they can easily solve. What I always tell students is to write some code, and then test it right away. Too many students try and solve the entire problem without compiling once, and then they are bewildered when they have 1000 errors because they forgot a semicolon at the end of each line.
I think you one should always map out his or her data structures first. Form follows function.
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#17This is a pretty poor article on the whole. These "reasons" aren't supported by anything other than conjecture. Should be titled "10 reasons why I think it could be that some people suck at programming, based on my personal biases on the topic and on no actual data."
On top of that, the writing is loose, the ideas aren't really thought through. Basically, it's just someone's spontaneous, unrefined brain fart on the topic.
Sorry if the author is reading this, but it's honest feedback. You can do better than this piece of linkbaiting trash.
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#18I've got no. 11... "Just deal with it". I haven't seen that attitude before, but recently an idealist graduate joined my team. I can't remember now how many times lately I had to tell "Yes, it has bugs, but writing a new implementation would take a year, so we're just going to patch the library."; "No, it doesn't have a documentation - check if it behaves correctly."; "No, it really doesn't need to be a fully speced…
Of course we'd all love to have 100% correct, documented libraries, specs which are unambiguous, properly designed code that will stay at version [4.x] and with same API forever...
Qt 4.
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#19One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of beginners make, is that they don't break the problem up into sub problems that they can easily solve. What I always tell students is to write some code, and then test it right away. Too many students try and solve the entire problem without compiling once, and then they are bewildered when they have 1000 errors because they forgot a semicolon at the end of each line.
After a few years of teaching new recruits how to program, this still amazes me: so many people will go a day without compiling once! I mean, I've been programming professionally for 7 years, and much more before. But whenever I need to do something that I haven't done in the last week or so, I still always start with a tiny function to make sure I still remember how to do even the basic stuff, and build from there.…
This is the normal way that I write code. But sometimes I feel really confident and write a couple hundred lines without compiling. Then it's always fun to find out - did everything "just work" or did I omit something?
Re: Why People Initially Suck at Programming
#20This is a pretty poor article on the whole. These "reasons" aren't supported by anything other than conjecture. Should be titled "10 reasons why I think it could be that some people suck at programming, based on my personal biases on the topic and on no actual data." On top of that, the writing is loose, the ideas aren't really thought through. Basically, it's just someone's spontaneous, unrefined brain fart on the t…
I clicked the comments thread for this link because I felt this way about the article and I wanted someone to speak my thoughts. Thanks.