How to improve your programming skills • Hacker News Board

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#61

Post by calebmpeterson » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 9:50 PM UTC

Stwerner wrote: post #58

rimmjob wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i always hear about how many jobs there are for cobol programmers to maintain legacy code. i've never actually met any though. maybe they all commit suicide.

I've heard about a lot as well, especially in the banking industry, yet not actually met anyone. Does anyone have any data or any numbers on how much someone can get paid doing cobol legacy maintenance? Just for educational purposes of course.

An article [1] showed up on HN a while ago. In it the author gave a list of business which run their entire business on the mainframe. I work as a Java dev in rail transportation. The author is dead-on right - COBOL runs the world.

1. http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/06/hate-java-fight-wrong-b...

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#62

Post by rmc » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 10:10 PM UTC

JesseAldridge wrote: post #55

> 10. Don’t rush to StackOverflow. Think! Disagree with this one. My rule is, "If you get stuck for more than 10 minutes, post to StackOverflow." I'll post my question then continue trying to solve it myself. Sometimes someone will post a good answer right away, saving me lots of time. Other times I'll end up solving my problem on my own, but I'll still learn something valuable from a comment or answer somebody posts…

I'll post my question then continue trying to solve it myself

I also do that aswell. But it's a bit annoying when, within 10 minutes, my (unanswered) question is the top google result for the problem (due to high keyword relevance).

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#63

Post by chc » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 10:35 PM UTC

blaaah wrote: post #60

chc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you do anything? Like, anything at all besides learn C++? Do you know anyone else who does things? Think about what parts of those things are suboptimal and create something to make it better. For example, where I work, we get a lot of user-submitted content, but we can't use all of it. So we need to filter. The lady who is primarily responsible for this simply doesn't have the time to vet the massive number of im…

Well, I'm a college student, so no I don't do much else aside from learning how to do stuff.

I'm sure you study, research, write, socialize, etc. in addition to learning C++. If not, I recommend starting. Those are all way more important than C++.

And like I said, it doesn't need to be your pain that you're relieving. Look at the people around you — even if you yourself are chained into your bed with no hope of escape, I bet you know people who do things. You can help them do those things.

For example, take a look at patio11 on this site. He's built a whole business out of a simple tool he wrote in a few hours to help a teacher make bingo cards for her students, because making bingo cards is such a soul-sucking waste of time when humans do it. (To be clear, he's put a lot more time than that into building the program and the business over the years. But it only took a few hours of coding to solve the problem.)

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#64

Post by kvgr » Thu, Jun 30, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

8. is very important. Once you decide to write article, you got to have solid knowledge about the topic. You just can't write the code and see if it works :) you got to know why and how!

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#65

Post by blaaah » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 2:14 AM UTC

chc wrote: post #63

blaaah wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm a college student, so no I don't do much else aside from learning how to do stuff.

I'm sure you study, research, write, socialize, etc. in addition to learning C++. If not, I recommend starting. Those are all way more important than C++. And like I said, it doesn't need to be your pain that you're relieving. Look at the people around you — even if you yourself are chained into your bed with no hope of escape, I bet you know people who do things. You can help them do those things. For example, take…

Ah, alright, I see what mean. So the general idea is to create something that will help make other people's lives easier?

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#66

Post by roundsquare » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 2:29 AM UTC

JesseAldridge wrote: post #55

> 10. Don’t rush to StackOverflow. Think! Disagree with this one. My rule is, "If you get stuck for more than 10 minutes, post to StackOverflow." I'll post my question then continue trying to solve it myself. Sometimes someone will post a good answer right away, saving me lots of time. Other times I'll end up solving my problem on my own, but I'll still learn something valuable from a comment or answer somebody posts…

It sounds like you value "getting things done" over "improving your skills." That's not a bad thing, but its not what the article was about.

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#67

Post by chc » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 3:03 AM UTC

blaaah wrote: post #65

chc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you study, research, write, socialize, etc. in addition to learning C++. If not, I recommend starting. Those are all way more important than C++. And like I said, it doesn't need to be your pain that you're relieving. Look at the people around you — even if you yourself are chained into your bed with no hope of escape, I bet you know people who do things. You can help them do those things. For example, take…

Ah, alright, I see what mean. So the general idea is to create something that will help make other people's lives easier?

Yeah. It's a good way to come up with a concrete idea, and it has the benefit of, y'know, actually helping people. (And helping people sometimes has the benefit of turning into paying work in the future.)

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#68

Post by JesseAldridge » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 3:43 AM UTC

roundsquare wrote: post #66

JesseAldridge wrote: post #55

> 10. Don’t rush to StackOverflow. Think! Disagree with this one. My rule is, "If you get stuck for more than 10 minutes, post to StackOverflow." I'll post my question then continue trying to solve it myself. Sometimes someone will post a good answer right away, saving me lots of time. Other times I'll end up solving my problem on my own, but I'll still learn something valuable from a comment or answer somebody posts…

It sounds like you value "getting things done" over "improving your skills." That's not a bad thing, but its not what the article was about.

I don't know about that. My point was that by posting to StackOverflow you can do both more efficiently. I don't see much of a point in trying to trial-and-error a problem, hunt through documentation, etc, when somebody more experienced can just tell you what to do in a few seconds. The same lesson is learned either way.

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#69

Post by jrockway » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 4:14 AM UTC

One way to improve your programming skills: stop reading programming blogs and start programming.

Re: How to improve your programming skills

#70

Post by jrockway » Fri, Jul 01, 2011, 4:17 AM UTC

Deestan wrote: post #39

DavidMcLaughlin wrote: post #22

"Learn a new programming language" I would rephrase this to learn a new programming paradigm . There are fundamental differences between static typing and dynamic typing, object orientation and functional, manual memory management and garbage collection. There are also "pure" single-paradigm languages and multi-paradigm languages. If you learn the same type of language multiple times, you're really just learning new…

Counting proper languages I actually wrote something useful in, my path looks like: C64 BASIC -> C64 raw machine code -> QBasic -> x86 raw machine code -> Turbo Pascal -> C -> Visual Basic -> Java -> O'Caml -> Delphi7 -> Python -> C++ -> Erlang -> C# -> Haskell -> F# -> JavaScript To keep learning very different languages is also what guarantees you will be able to get a good job when your bread-and-butter language f…

Java and C++ are designed for serious work. In these, you take types, error checking and exceptions seriously, you keep the code clean and robust, and you R the FM thoroughly for every single external function you call.

What type is "null" in Java? What type is the stack in C++?

Java and C++ have very little typing. You have to type a lot of types into your source code, but they don't get you anything. For every Java or C++ program, there is some set of input that results in a NullPointerException or a segmentation fault. Guess what: if you had a type system, that wouldn't happen.

Java and C++ are designed for certifications, long-lasting career, and compiling [1].

[1] http://xkcd.com/303/