Pessimism. Expect everything that can fail to fail and code defensively to deal with it gracefully. Doesn't make you much of a joy to work with though
Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
21–30 of 193 posts
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#22Core skill: Being able to read and write documentation.
After the inception of stackexchange, the ability (or motivation) to read man pages seems to have have plummeted.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#23To simply be a programmer, one must only write a program, nothing more. The essential skill I guess would be literacy, knowing how to read and follow directions, knowing how to use a keyboard, not much.
To be a good programmer, if I have to pick only one "skill" I would pick systemic thinking/understanding. This starts with the ability to learn and eventually understand how a system works. The next level is the ability to create a working model of that system in ones mind. Someone who can do that will be very successful at programming anything in any language on any platform given sufficient documentation.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#24Pessimism. Expect everything that can fail to fail and code defensively to deal with it gracefully. Doesn't make you much of a joy to work with though
haha there's a man thats been doing this for a long time. Every bug I have is an 8 man meeting (me being the only one who actually does anything) to explain why my TPS report cover wasn't there and how we can prevent bugs in the future.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#25No particular skill is needed. Sincere interest is.
I've met plenty of programmers who had no sincere interest, but just saw it as a job they did 9-5 and then never thought about computers outside of those times. Programming was simply seen as a skill that could lead to comfortable, reasonably well paid job, and that was all the incentive they needed to learn the minimal amount needed to get said job. Basically as long you have an incentive to want to learn and a bit…
This would be the worst job ever if I didn't love it. I can't imagine doing it otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#26Empathy. You need to be able to empathise with the user. That user might be the person giving you requirements. The person using your product. The user reading your code in a year's time.
That's not all you need, obviously. No one thing is the magic bullet which will make you a better programmer. But the worst programmers I've worked with only write code which works on their machine, for their specific use-case.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#27Communication is probably the biggest skill needed if you're trying to be an employed programmer working on a team.
If you're just trying to be a hobbyist and do stuff for fun then I'd say you need some things that aren't necessarily skills like curiosity, a love of challenging problems, and ability to easily retain information that you read.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#28One issue with learning to program,many people think learning the syntax of a particular language is programming.
The one thing all programmers need is a way of thinking about problems and systems.
Hard to teach.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#29- Communication skills Being able to clearly explain why your solution will solve a given problem better than the alternative and listen to your colleagues when their suggestion is better than yours, will save you an incredible amount of frustration. It is in my opinion the most important skill I have learned - Asking why when debugging Finding the code that's causing a bug is only the first step. The next is prevent…
I don't know the sense of OP, but there's a difference between 'programming' and 'software development'--the latter is done in a team. Often the terms are used interchangeably but the skills to make one a good solo software writer only overlap with developing in a group.
Re: Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
#30You gotta be smart and able to think abstractly. You are building virtual legos and keeping that all suspended in your brain and that's hard to do. I hear people throwing out general terms like literacy and communication. Not really. There's a certain type of brain that's built for programming if it comes easy to you. If it doesn't come easy just bail now.