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God bless you. I thought I am alone. I wanted to ask this question for a looong time but could not get it out.. I bet there are many more ppl like this.
God bless you. I thought I am alone. I wanted to ask this question for a looong time but could not get it out.. I bet there are many more ppl like this.
I also read Steven Kings book, "On Writing." Even though it's about prose, one of the most important things I took away from it is this: if I want to be a good ______ I need to show up, every day and _______. Usually, I won't know when I did good ______ until after the fact and if I don't ______, every day, I won't be able to measure myself and improve on my previous efforts.
This has helped me continue to plug away (at work, on my own time) and seek out interesting challenges that will help me to mark small, identifiable milestones of improvement.
I see this in many things, not just programming or writing.
"Spend just 15 minutes per day reading about your industry and within five years you will be in the top 1%"
I may not be in the top 1% but reading about programming has helped me come up with solutions that senior developers were not aware about. It has made me more interested in programming and had lead to more and higher paying opportunities.
I never programmed as a teenager. I took my first computer class in grade 11 and always felt out of place since practically everyone in the class had been programming for a number of years already. I got mediocre marks in university and even considered dropping out of Comp Sci because studying it didn't interest me. I also quit my first job after a year and took time off because I didn't know if I wanted to do programming. That's when I found I missed it.
It is relatively easy to find stories of naturally gifted athletes who amount to nothing. They end up going nowhere because they just rely on their natural "talent" and after a while, people who put in effort start to surpass them. The same is true of programming. Reading 15 minutes per day I finish 1-3 books per month. The average programmer probably doesn't read 1-3 books per year.
I should clarify that I mean read books (I have a subscription to Safari Books Online). Reading HN or Techcrunch for 15 minutes per day will probably not improve your programming ability.
Of course, perhaps this is not relevant for you and you are just in the wrong job but you do state that you want to be a good programmer. It sounds like you are. Programming is more than just writing code. It also has a lot to do with communication and understanding others which it sounds like you are skilled at.
I got some great advice early on in my career: "Spend just 15 minutes per day reading about your industry and within five years you will be in the top 1%" I may not be in the top 1% but reading about programming has helped me come up with solutions that senior developers were not aware about. It has made me more interested in programming and had lead to more and higher paying opportunities. I never programmed as a te…
I got some great advice early on in my career: "Spend just 15 minutes per day reading about your industry and within five years you will be in the top 1%" I may not be in the top 1% but reading about programming has helped me come up with solutions that senior developers were not aware about. It has made me more interested in programming and had lead to more and higher paying opportunities. I never programmed as a te…
What books do you recommend?
Sometimes I read about new languages I want to learn, sometimes about a tool I'm currently using but want to know more and sometimes just about programming in general.