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What does it take to be a good programmer?

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Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#21

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #19

IMO good programmer writes code that: 1. Solves task. 2. Does that within a necessary performance constraints. 3. Uses commonly accepted approaches, libraries, style, does not reinvent things which are not necessary to reinvent. 4. Readable by programmers who'll work with that code in the future. That could be juniors or seniors, that depends on a particular company and project. 5. Extendable for changes which are li…

> Uses commonly accepted approaches, libraries, style

I would argue NOT to do this if you're writing Java. Java paradigms are awful, lead to way too many layers of abstraction, and code that is impossible to debug because your stack traces are just 30 calls of ".invoke()".

> Readable by programmers who'll work with that code in the future.

And yet Perl became popular.

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#23

Post by Joel_Mckay »

Communication skills, team participation, and 10000+ hours of practice with real-world problems. You wish that were true... ;)

People often choose careers for the wrong reasons, compete to be at the bottom, and end up miserable. If you are over 30, the burn-and-churn cycle you thought would be exciting... turns out to be really destabilizing and lame. Consider being a plumber, you will make more money, and not have a student loan for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqQlCOmXuHM

To be a good Programmer, you need to fantasize about being a Plumber everyday. As even knee deep in sewer water, people would have held you in higher regard given they could actually understand what you did professionally.

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#24

Post by mgkimsal »

vbezhenar wrote: post #19

IMO good programmer writes code that: 1. Solves task. 2. Does that within a necessary performance constraints. 3. Uses commonly accepted approaches, libraries, style, does not reinvent things which are not necessary to reinvent. 4. Readable by programmers who'll work with that code in the future. That could be juniors or seniors, that depends on a particular company and project. 5. Extendable for changes which are li…

> which are not likely to happen in the future.

Making that determination is something you really only get good at with the experience of making the wrong determination too many times.

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#25

Post by greenhearth »

I understand she is frustrated with the amount of new tech to learn, but why did she have to shit on teachers? That analogy was a mess of false equivalency and defective induction. Did it even prove any point (whatever the point was... "looking back on things," I suppose... oh, brother)?

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#27

Post by jacquesm »

vbezhenar wrote: post #19

IMO good programmer writes code that: 1. Solves task. 2. Does that within a necessary performance constraints. 3. Uses commonly accepted approaches, libraries, style, does not reinvent things which are not necessary to reinvent. 4. Readable by programmers who'll work with that code in the future. That could be juniors or seniors, that depends on a particular company and project. 5. Extendable for changes which are li…

5 and 6 are super hard decisions. You never really know what your code will be used for in the future, especially not if you make libraries.

I try really hard to do this and over the years I've found myself more than once caught out by something that I wished I had foreseen but did not and, conversely, I have spent a lot of time preparing code for changes which seemed to be likely to happen but that never did.

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#28

Post by xwowsersx »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #23

Communication skills, team participation, and 10000+ hours of practice with real-world problems. You wish that were true... ;) People often choose careers for the wrong reasons, compete to be at the bottom, and end up miserable. If you are over 30, the burn-and-churn cycle you thought would be exciting... turns out to be really destabilizing and lame. Consider being a plumber, you will make more money, and not have a…

You sound bitter and resentful. Also, student loan debt is not a requirement for becoming a programmer. I have student loan debt, but that's because I decided to go to law school before switching to software development :)

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#29

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

tunesmith wrote: post #9
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> You need to be really smart and have a scientific mindset. Most importantly you need to love learning new things. I'm not so sure that these are required . I think they are more akin to "commonly found characteristics." Especially the "scientific mindset" part. I have a disciplined mindset, but I suspect most scientists would take issue with me, calling it a "scientific" mindset. In my experience, being a good prob…

I worked with someone who didn't have what I'd call a scientific mindset, and it can really be a limiting factor. They confused correlation with causation, in other words were quick to launch on to theoretical explanations without testing or proving their thinking. When solving a problem, they tried tons of different approaches until they empirically found one that worked, without always fully rationally understandin…

Sounds like a bad problem-solver.

Maybe a good problem-solver is "scientific." Dunno. I have never had "scientific" training, but I have had plenty of "problem-solving" training.

Re: What does it take to be a good programmer?

#30

Post by tboyd47 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #19

IMO good programmer writes code that: 1. Solves task. 2. Does that within a necessary performance constraints. 3. Uses commonly accepted approaches, libraries, style, does not reinvent things which are not necessary to reinvent. 4. Readable by programmers who'll work with that code in the future. That could be juniors or seniors, that depends on a particular company and project. 5. Extendable for changes which are li…

Very nice summary here and I agree 100%.
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