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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

#41

Post by emsy »

grecy wrote: post #10

I 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.…

I once worked on a project that was started by two construction engineers. It was a Java web app. It worked well enough, but many customers complained about the ammount of crashes and errors the app produced. But it had nothing to do with them being construction engineers. It was their mindset that they thought they now knew enough and don't need to become better anymore. When the complexity grew, the app was above their competency. Even when faced with their failures their were unwilling to admit that they need to learn more about professional software engineering.

I have talked with some developers about my observations and almost all of them had a similar anecdote to tell. Some of them included CS grads with a similar "good enough" mindset.

These anectodes are in no way a representable study, but for me, it put the radical professionalism movement of Uncle Bob in a whole new context.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#42

Post by gamesbrainiac »

mapcars wrote: post #22

>Some Small Advice: if you’re just beginning to program, I’d suggest starting with JavaScript/HTML/CSS because there is a plethora of help out there. What a terrible advice.

Absolutely. I always suggest python since it teaches kids to always indent and make code readable. It also has very good documentation and is a simple language. There is plenty of help out there for it as well.

I initially tried js/html with the kids in my school, and although it was fun because they were making making visual things, it turned them away from the console. This is not a good thing since the console is where they have to do a lot of the work, and having an aversion to it is one of the worst things that can happen to you.

I simply state this as my experience. Yours might be different.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#43

Post by girvo »

brudgers wrote: post #19
Tehnix wrote: post #11

Except for maybe Haskell[0] and Lisp[0], I've begun to feel like there isn't any language that I can't quickly learn with how I'm able to google at the moment. For example, I'm currently helping some fellow students with their F# assignments, even though I don't do F# at all. I just know what to google, because I know the concepts that I need translated to the specific syntax. [0] Maybe Lisp, but Haskell is way too d…

Take a look at APL. There will be three.

Or J, and related languages. Crazy stuff, but apparently super productive once you're used to them.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#44

Post by a-saleh »

Tehnix wrote: post #11

Except for maybe Haskell[0] and Lisp[0], I've begun to feel like there isn't any language that I can't quickly learn with how I'm able to google at the moment. For example, I'm currently helping some fellow students with their F# assignments, even though I don't do F# at all. I just know what to google, because I know the concepts that I need translated to the specific syntax. [0] Maybe Lisp, but Haskell is way too d…

I remember how I was starting to think at the beginning of college, that with a reference sheet I could pick any language and start writing in it ... you know, C++/Java/Python, it all looked the same.

Then I applied for a course in Programming paradigms, that boiled to 4 weeks of haskell and then 4 weeks of prolog.

So, definitely add prolog to your list :-) It was eye opening :)

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#45

Post by [deleted] »

grecy wrote: post #16
bdcravens wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a mindset thing; either you have the mind of a developer or you don't, degree or not. I'm self-taught, and early on I had a inferiority complex when it came to those with CS degrees. Didn't take long for that to wear off as reality exposed gaps in their ability/knowledge.

Fair enough. I have a Software Engineering degree (certified Engineer), so I already have a superiority complex anyway ;)

[deleted]

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#46

Post by Ronsenshi »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #36
yen223 wrote: post #4

Earlier 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?

OT: > "it's rather the exception than the norm" > "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved." How does one learn to use idioms like a native?

Reading literature, watching films, listening to the music.

Basically, delving into culture which contains common phrases, idioms and sayings scattered around. You hear/read them, understand meaning from context, and commit to memory so you can use it later on.

This is not really that different from how kids learn idioms too, isn't it?

By the way, a lot of idioms/saying are pretty similar in different countries. Their wording might be slightly off, but just by translating it in your mind you understand what it means.

Example: "Dark Horse" - One who was previously unknown and is now prominent. In Russian it is pretty much the same thing "Черная Лошадка" or if to translate it to English "Dark Horsey" ("horse" is used with affectionate diminutive suffix).

Source: Russian.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#47

Post by Natsu »

jdiez17 wrote: post #31
sanxiyn wrote: post #3

This 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…

As someone whose native language is not English (and didn't receive particularly good English classes at school, but had access to the Internet): if you start at a young enough age, you pick it up somewhat naturally. Seriously. In my case, wanting to "do X thing in VB6" drove me to read heaps of text in English, and even if I couldn't make sense of everything I could kind of guess what they were saying from the conte…

I'm not completely sure that 'youth' is a required attribute here. From my experience, this can happen later in life as well, though you may be limited to being good at only what you can practice easily.

For example, I'm much better at reading French than listening to it. The opposite is true of some other languages.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#48

Post by bpizzi »

My 2cents.

Don't be fooled by this false sense of know-how when you just start being able to write some html/js stuff.

Googling a problem is a reflex when you start coding, and yes, good or bad googling abilities could be the difference between you still being in the industry in 5 years or not.

But, still, this is only a first step on your path, and stopping there will also stop you from being a real hacker.

There are things that just can't be resolved with a single search: "How to center a div in CSS" is not like "How to share load across different servers", because a big question must be divided into a lot a smaller ones, and there comes the difference between you and your "code-god compatriot".

So the real path looks more like this: 1- read good literature (CS, functionnal programming, network, etc), 2- exercise, 3- read good code, 4- exercise, 5- goto 1.

Anyhow, best of luck at Google ;)

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#49

Post by laichzeit0 »

jdiez17 wrote: post #31
sanxiyn wrote: post #3

This 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…

As someone whose native language is not English (and didn't receive particularly good English classes at school, but had access to the Internet): if you start at a young enough age, you pick it up somewhat naturally. Seriously. In my case, wanting to "do X thing in VB6" drove me to read heaps of text in English, and even if I couldn't make sense of everything I could kind of guess what they were saying from the conte…

Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#50

Post by foobarge »

yen223 wrote: post #4
sanxiyn wrote: post #3

This 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?

France here - they don't. Relying on translated material is the kiss of death (it's old and will discourage exposure to the bleeding edge, trains will be leaving the station without you for the rest of your career.) I've noticed good forum answers though, mostly sysadmin related questions for Linux systems.
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