How to be a Programmer
samizdat.mines.edu
How to be a Programmer
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: How to be a Programmer
#2I've been through this before and it does offer a lot of good advise but I really feel like it isn't describing how to be a programmer but just some tips for issues that programmers face. Being a programmer requires things like creativity and curiosity as well as experience with these things.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#3I've been through this before and it does offer a lot of good advise but I really feel like it isn't describing how to be a programmer but just some tips for issues that programmers face. Being a programmer requires things like creativity and curiosity as well as experience with these things.
I was going to ask about whether there is any of the latter but I guess not. Too bad.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#4Managed to skip forward to the one section with the word "synergize" twice in one pageful, stopped reading immediately.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#5Many of these are pretty good, but on a startup-focused site, I just have to point out this:
"It then becomes your job to help the entrepreneur find a reasonable solution which is merely hard and gets most of what they wanted."
Many startups are founded by doing something impossible (Google, Apple, Akamai, YouTube, PayPal). Most of the remainder are founded by doing something useless (Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, Reddit, etc.) This is for very good reason. If something is neither useless nor impossible, it's quite probable that there's a big company out there that's already working on it, and they can bring more resources to bear than you can.
So if you are the entrepreneur and not merely working for him, it's your job to do the impossible. And yeah, that means turning it into the merely hard and then doing it. But if you aim for "merely hard" to begin with, you'll probably end up producing a mediocre product in the end. After all, products never have quite the same glamor when they're done as when they're conceived in your head.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#6I like the bit about doc, I am in agreeance with most of that section.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#7Its a shame this is out-of-date a bit... optimising loops by removing floating point operations? On x86/x64 its hard to remove a native float and replace it with something faster without some quality/accuracy tradeoff these days.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#8Just a suggestion, but it worked for me. Play games that involve scripting/programming. The more fun you make it, the more likely you'll be to remember what you've learned.
You could start with WoW - learn how to create mods.
What I enjoy most, though, are MUD's ( multi-user dungeons). What these are, basically, are text-based games, most of which are RPG's, played through a client. IRE has made a few games in which combat requires scripting. Being able to script in your client's chosen language ( I use Lua ) gives you a big advantage over those of the player-base who haven't learned to script. I got into this about three years ago, and I'm still learning. While it's the most fun I have gaming, it's also sparked my interest in learning to program. What's best is I find myself grasping programming much more easily because of what I've learned while MUD'ing.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#9Many of these are pretty good, but on a startup-focused site, I just have to point out this: "It then becomes your job to help the entrepreneur find a reasonable solution which is merely hard and gets most of what they wanted." Many startups are founded by doing something impossible (Google, Apple, Akamai, YouTube, PayPal). Most of the remainder are founded by doing something useless (Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us,…
I think your point regarding impossible/useless ideas is very insightful, but I'd take slight exception to the word 'useless'. I think a better word would be pointless - things like twitter, reddit etc aren't useless by virtue of the fact that millions of people do use them, if however you describe what they do (and, as you point out, this is the reason that big companies wouldn't approach those sorts of ideas) then a reasonable response would perhaps be to describe them as pointless.
Re: How to be a Programmer
#10Many of these are pretty good, but on a startup-focused site, I just have to point out this: "It then becomes your job to help the entrepreneur find a reasonable solution which is merely hard and gets most of what they wanted." Many startups are founded by doing something impossible (Google, Apple, Akamai, YouTube, PayPal). Most of the remainder are founded by doing something useless (Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us,…
I think your point regarding impossible/useless ideas is very insightful, but I'd take slight exception to the word 'useless'. I think a better word would be pointless - things like twitter, reddit etc aren't useless by virtue of the fact that millions of people do use them, if however you describe what they do (and, as you point out, this is the reason that big companies wouldn't approach those sorts of ideas) then…
Perhaps "useless" from the perspective of advancing the state of the art?