Twelve Tips to Master Programming Faster

Thanks. I needed this advice. Especially that 'Read books' one.

some more: unit testing - annoyingly rather handy, had a good argument about why it's better not to use it, well I use it, I lost that argument but gained a lot. design patterns open source projects - a great benefit to your skills, there's something that needs kicking for any level. learn why it's handy to use version control rather then just use it (tip - it's because if something borks can roll it back a lot easier) linux - not just learn it, know it. bash scripting, piping commands and expect all have saved me multiple hours rss - handy

More like 12 tips on how to be a poser.

As to #6—software engineering, at a sort of medium level, is mostly object-oriented. At a high level, when talking about how to parallelize and scale, it's more relational, and at a low level, when designing algorithms, it's first very functional and mathematical, then when optimizing them, very imperative. OOP is only really done to figure out what you're building; once you know that, figuring out how you'll build it isn't necessarily OOP at all.

This scares me. I can relate to the OP in that I denied my interest technology until my twenties until finally embracing it. Evidently, we're both looking to up our game and become better programmers. However, a few of his points are really... concerning.

"Great code is easy to read"

Not at all. JWZ's code challenges me; heck, some of the Rails code baffles me until I sit down and think carefully. A lot of code can be unintuitive to the uninitiated and still be great.

"Use github."

Seems awfully narrowly scoped. Using SCM is undeniably beneficial, but using it to become a "master programmer" seems a bit misguided, like becoming a master hammer swinger will make me a master finishing carpenter.

"Code is surprisingly more like English than like math."

Ruby? Very little code I've read would be understandable if read out loud.

"Learn Linux."

Well, maybe. OP must be a web dev who grew up on Windows (like me). I don't understand how memorizing a series of command line switches will help anyone master programming. While understanding pipes, regexes, ACL, etc... is undeniably useful, there must be better approaches than "learning Linux."

All that said, I must give kudos to the OP. I'd like to master programming, too. I have no formal CS education, I get lost when spelunking through big code bases, I need to "learn Linux." But it seems to me that a better approach is needed.

The most intriguing part of the post was this comment: "You will read and learn more from a good $30 paperback book than dozens of free blogs."

I'm really curious about this. Does this hold true for anyone else? Are books about design patterns really more beneficial than reading the jQuery (par example) source? Dozens of times more useful?