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Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

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Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#151

Post by hurril »

p-e-w wrote: post #102
tehnub wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like telling a student learning an instrument never to practice scales or études because there are other skills necessary for playing in an orchestra. Those other skills are important, but you have to develop your chops at some point, and being a better a programmer will certainly help with basically all those skills you listed anyway.

> This is like telling a student learning an instrument never to practice scales or études No, it's like recognizing that an orchestra conductor doesn't need to play every instrument (or even any instrument!) in order to make music. Or alternatively, that a violin player doesn't need to understand the physics of acoustic dispersion in order to be the best in the world at playing the violin.

This is correct, a conductor does not need this. But you are not the conductor in this analogy, you are a player of one or more instruments.

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#153

Post by brosco »

kylegalbraith wrote: post #121

Total long shot. But does anyone have any good side projects that would center around simulating fluid dynamics? I’ve always been interested in aerodynamics and I’ve wanted to see if there is a way to learn more about it with my programming skills.

If you're interested to learn more about aerodynamics I would highly suggest learning a bit of classical aerodynamics. It will not be software oriented, since most of the theory deals with approximating very complicated behavior with simple analytical models.

It could be interesting to do a comparison with finite volume methods to see when/how those approximations break down.

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#154

Post by mkii »

ketzo wrote: post #18
jaggederest wrote: post #11

I think a little toy raytracer is another great thing to try out. Just something that outputs bitmap graphics of spheres and does diffuse and specular reflection, couple light sources. Should be a relatively self-limited project if you don't go too crazy with it.

I went to a university with a great computer science & video games major, and while I didn’t finish out all the credits, I took a couple of the videogame classes; holy shit, you will never learn more about how to abuse geometry and data structures than trying to render graphics.

Not just geometry on the math side but numerical computation and linear algebra as well. Was enough to make my head spin.

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#155

Post by yu3zhou4 »

p-e-w wrote: post #107
bobsomers wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you think a search engine requires the use of "real engineering skills" like picking and choosing libraries and identifying which opportunities will yield fruitful optimization. Literally all of the listed projects, text editors, compilers, operating systems, and ray tracers, can exercise the exact same activities. I'm more inclined to think that your comment is really more revealing about what…

> Literally all of the listed projects, text editors, compilers, operating systems, and ray tracers, can exercise the exact same activities. In the linked article, these projects are all explicitly described as opportunities to learn about low-level stuff like how to efficiently store editable text. The difference with a web search engine is that nobody today can build such a thing completely from scratch, therefore…

I enjoy reading your discussion and just wanted to add that some people write a big scale software from scratch nowadays - for instance Marginalia for web search and Andreas Kling and team for operating system and web browser

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#156

Post by tugberkk »

steve_taylor wrote: post #74
p-e-w wrote: post #24

While writing a text editor, a compiler, an operating system, or a raytracer might make you a better programmer, it won't make you a better software engineer. In fact, it might make you worse at software engineering, because it embodies the disastrous "Not Invented Here" doctrine. Hackers like to obsess about Big-O, data structures, HoTT, and other high-theory stuff, yet the following skills, essential for software e…

Notice it said programmer , not software engineer . Speaking for myself, software engineering is something I do because I have bills to pay. Programming is something I started doing because it’s fun. The projects in this article are the types of projects I would do for fun if I had the time.

I like watching Tsoding in my spare time and I love what he calls "recreational programming". That is what we need imho, more recreational programming.

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#157

Post by lodovic »

p-e-w wrote: post #102
tehnub wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like telling a student learning an instrument never to practice scales or études because there are other skills necessary for playing in an orchestra. Those other skills are important, but you have to develop your chops at some point, and being a better a programmer will certainly help with basically all those skills you listed anyway.

> This is like telling a student learning an instrument never to practice scales or études No, it's like recognizing that an orchestra conductor doesn't need to play every instrument (or even any instrument!) in order to make music. Or alternatively, that a violin player doesn't need to understand the physics of acoustic dispersion in order to be the best in the world at playing the violin.

I'd rather put the violin player with understanding of acoustic dispersion in the same bracket as a software engineer who understands the effects of magnetic interference on a memory controller.

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#158

Post by [deleted] »

p-e-w wrote: post #24

While writing a text editor, a compiler, an operating system, or a raytracer might make you a better programmer, it won't make you a better software engineer. In fact, it might make you worse at software engineering, because it embodies the disastrous "Not Invented Here" doctrine. Hackers like to obsess about Big-O, data structures, HoTT, and other high-theory stuff, yet the following skills, essential for software e…

[deleted]

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#159

Post by cryogenicfire »

p-e-w wrote: post #24

While writing a text editor, a compiler, an operating system, or a raytracer might make you a better programmer, it won't make you a better software engineer. In fact, it might make you worse at software engineering, because it embodies the disastrous "Not Invented Here" doctrine. Hackers like to obsess about Big-O, data structures, HoTT, and other high-theory stuff, yet the following skills, essential for software e…

I don't understand why you believe low-level "intrusive" programming and general software engineering are mutually exclusive. There is a big, open field for high quality, low-level software to be written well bearing good practices and practical decisions.

1. To be faif, these kinds of "hacking" projects aren't technically meant for learning software engineering in the context of a job, but they are really interesting and a treasure trove of new knowledge for anyone willing to put in the effort. I don't think it's a bad thing. A person can learn to be a good software developer and simultaneously have deep knowledge of the systems they are working with.

2. The goal of this project is not to research and implement some novel algorithm to replace existing works. The goal is to learn how things work. You are still going to use libraries, procedures and algorithms designed by other people and compile them into a cohesive system, it is merely the depth and complexity of the problem that makes it an interesting learning challenge. It's not about some absurd NIH philosophy, it's about curiosity.

3. Software development is not as straightforward as you make it seem. It's not just about best practices, management and finding an optimal way to combine existing libraries into your project. Sometimes you run into unforeseen issues, strange niches that your libraries may not account for. Sometimes you need to dive into the specifics of these libraries, understand at a lower level why they do not function for your use case. You might need to "hack" these libraries. Fork and customise them to truly fit in your project and produce the desired results. And the only thing that will help you then is deep knowledge and the ability to work with low level software.

Re: Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

#160

Post by snovv_crash »

hilux wrote: post #133
tehnub wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like telling a student learning an instrument never to practice scales or études because there are other skills necessary for playing in an orchestra. Those other skills are important, but you have to develop your chops at some point, and being a better a programmer will certainly help with basically all those skills you listed anyway.

Nowadays (and increasingly, going forward) it's possible to be a very productive programmer without knowing much low-level stuff. This may seem unfair to those who spent years wrestling assembly and then C pointers but that's just today's reality. It's not possible to be a "productive" musician on a traditional instrument (i.e. excluding iPads) without knowing how to play scales, chords, etc.

This is also the reason a computer with 4GB of RAM can't run Gmail and Spotify at the same time.
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