How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
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How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
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Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#2This, for me was a bit surreal and strange, because it took a long while for me to arrive at the same conclusion but from the complete opposite end.
I came to computers from electronics and for me, Data Structures and Algorithms was (to an extent, still is) black magic with Don Knuth the presiding head wizard. For me, compilers, filesystems and OS internals were all sort of deep dark places that I wasn't equipped to handle. On the other hand, banging out a shell script, spewing perl, or reciting python was just a matter of figuring out the right set of incantations ...not really hard. I learned html, css, js, a lot of python and was (/am) happy to just 'get-things-done' with these skills. I looked at people who could talk about BigO, concurrency, monads and the rest as the 'privileged' -- I could never be /that/ good. And yes, I thought all of this was relevant to software engineering (as opposed to science) and that I would never get there. Fortunately, I no longer think this. Thanks to all the resources available online these days, the limits, I know now, are not inherent nor are imposed by ability to understand, they are imposed simply by time for learning and practice. So, I am still learning and yes, in that sense, the art of googling well can make you a better programmer -- irrespective of what you know today.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#3This is very true, but it's a bit more complicated than that.
"I'd come to understand that the answer was out there, somewhere." The answer is out there, but so is the wrong answer. Recognizing the right answer is the hard part.
I also must point out that the answer is out there if you know English. Knowing English is a strong privilege. Success rate plummets if you Google programming questions in a language other than English.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#4This is very true, but it's a bit more complicated than that. "I'd come to understand that the answer was out there, somewhere." The answer is out there, but so is the wrong answer. Recognizing the right answer is the hard part. I also must point out that the answer is out there if you know English . Knowing English is a strong privilege. Success rate plummets if you Google programming questions in a language other t…
This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#5This, for me was a bit surreal and strange, because it took a long while for me to arrive at the same conclusion but from the complete opposite end. I came to computers from electronics and for me, Data Structures and Algorithms was (to an extent, still is) black magic with Don Knuth the presiding head wizard. For me, compilers, filesystems and OS internals were all sort of deep dark places that I wasn't equipped to…
I'm in a similar boat. I majored in "Information Systems" which was practically a glorified business degree with some IT, networking, and a tiny bit of programming thrown in.
I was able to pick up comp sci fundamentals from various awesome online tutorials and even just good old Wikipedia.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#6I'll argue that good programmers need to have a working understanding of algorithms, databases, compilers and all that. Sure, it's not something you will use day-to-day in a software engineering job but it's important to know how all the low level pieces of your stack fit together in order to write good code.
There's nothing worse than a programmer that fits together code snippets from Stackoverflow and similar sites without understanding what it is actually doing.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#7This is very true, but it's a bit more complicated than that. "I'd come to understand that the answer was out there, somewhere." The answer is out there, but so is the wrong answer. Recognizing the right answer is the hard part. I also must point out that the answer is out there if you know English . Knowing English is a strong privilege. Success rate plummets if you Google programming questions in a language other t…
This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?
I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Speaking for myself, you cope by studying English. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?
I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Speaking for myself, you cope by studying English. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved.
For what it's worth, your English is pretty good.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?
I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Speaking for myself, you cope by studying English. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved.
...uh...seems to have paid off well for you.
Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
#10I currently work with a bunch of people who are "business majors" or whatever and are similarly self-taught in the Tech/IT/Programming space.
It's interesting to watch how they work and the kinds of outputs they produce. Quite a lot of the stuff works... mostly...
It's entirely untestable, not repeatable, undocumented and just stuck together with flaky glue code.
Sure, if you aiming to "make it work" you can do that. If you're aiming to do well... I suggest learning proper technique.