Ask HN: How can I self-evaluate my programming skills? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How can I self-evaluate my programming skills?

#41

Post by coldarchon » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 10:08 PM UTC

First, you should not do this, it is very normal that you question your skills for something that has no special area in your brain.

Secound, there is a huge diversity among programmers, don't try to be like everyone else.

3rd, there are forums to find people who code like you, you find out very easily where you stand.

4th, join a site like http://codercharts.com/ or project euler for fun. You can use any language you want.

5th, I'm trying to build up a team for an AI competition where you code a bot for Starcraft 1 http://code.google.com/p/bwapi/ You can learn a lot there, just drop me a line ..

Re: Ask HN: How can I self-evaluate my programming skills?

#42

Post by FredBrach » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 11:40 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #10

How should I be evaluating myself? The only metric that matters is the delta between what you know and what you need to know to build what you have to build. How do you find out what this is? By building that which must be built. When you get stuck, you will have to find a way to get unstuck: by getting educated, by consulting others, by finding others' solutions, or just by old fashioned figuring it out. How often?…

It remember me a party where a friend was constantly asking me and a couple of school mates what algorithmic is... oh gosh=) So, we were making huge explanations with 'complex' words.. It lasted hours =)

Finally, she said: "Oh I think I got you guys, you are finding solutions to solve problems."

Happy! :>

Re: Ask HN: How can I self-evaluate my programming skills?

#43

Post by pavelkaroukin » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 6:06 PM UTC

carucez wrote: post #37

pavelkaroukin wrote: post #34

Never stop coding. Look back each 3/6/12 months at code you wrote back then. If it looks as cool as it was 3/6/12 months ago - you stuck. If it looks like shit - you are on a right track and right speed.

Occasionally, I take 2-4wk coding breaks to re-evaluate something that's been nagging me each time I code. Is OO working for me? Do I like functional languages (I don't)? How's that PHP treating you (unstable buggy broken)? I've discovered that PHP makes me angry. Functional is good for small stuff. I need [much] more practice with OO. I don't know anything about ... a lot. The next 2-4 wks are spent reading and comp…

Offtopic, but since I see you lean more toward OO - look into perl's Moose. There are few presentation on Moose basics out there. Especially, look for Roles/Traits.

Re: Ask HN: How can I self-evaluate my programming skills?

#44

Post by kellyreid » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 3:27 AM UTC

glimcat wrote: post #22

lawn wrote: post #6

The funny thing is that it's nearly impossible to evaluate where you stand before you've reached the next level or even the level after that. You think your solution is clever? Wait 6 months and you think it stinks. You think you have a nice abstraction? Wait until you need to do something you didn't think of and you find it's useless/too complex/unnecessary and so on. I find that the best way to evaluate yourself is…

"You think your solution is clever? Wait 6 months and you think it stinks." I can't even count the times I've put together a "clever" function only to find out that an optimized solution existed in a common library and I could have done the same thing in 1/20th of the code. Software development is humbling.

i usually roll my own first, even if i'm sure a library exists. it helps me get a better understanding of the problem space, and since i'm still a greenhorn this understanding is critical.

i am then grateful for the library and how easy it makes my life!

Re: Ask HN: How can I self-evaluate my programming skills?

#45

Post by jsmartonly » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 4:02 AM UTC

IMHO.

I believe that master the ability of learn on-the-fly is the most important thing. We simply do not have enough time to learn all knowledge.

Whatever you are working on, if you ask deeper and deeper questions, you will be able to continue to learn. And this way learning is much less abstract.