For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

Post by tonyedgecombe » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

niklasd wrote: post #67

thebean11 wrote: post #59

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Interestingly a lot of the self-helpy books coming out recently say the opposite: that investing effort into improving strengths has a higher return than improving weaknesses.

I also heard that McKinsey adheres to that strategy when investing in training for their employees. Though that is only hearsay and it doesn't mean anything, they could also be wrong. But I think you are right when saying that the opposite approach also has a lot of followers right now.

Post by tonyedgecombe » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

loquor wrote: post #57

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #55

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This is why it's important to identify your weaknesses. Once identified they are no longer weaknesses but areas to work on.

I've heard that it's better to leave weaknesses be and instead utilize your strengths. The reason is because if you just work on your weakness, you end up being just mediocre. What's your opinion on this?

Post by Enginerrrd » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #71

markarranz wrote: post #12

> I write an average of five new programs every week. Poets have to write poems. I have to write computer programs. It seems more obvious now that I read it. A lot of programmers out there, including myself, are looking for ways to improve their skills and I never thought to myself to write more programs. And not just programs for the sake of programs, but programs that force you to explain to the computer that you u…

Something that I found useful is taking the concept of katas from martial arts. Writing the "same" program multiple times, but trying to refine the parts I didn't like in the previous iteration (e.g. try writing in less code, with smaller functions, with less libraries, in a more testable way, etc). It's specially rewarding to do this exercise with utility libraries, as it teaches you about the nuances one abstractio…

Post by paganel » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

danielscrubs wrote: post #190

paganel wrote: post #101

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> is a program from December 2019 that "finds n-bit binary squares that are palindromic". No dis-respect for Donald Knuth (who of course I found orders and orders of magnitude above programmers such as myself) and no dis-respect to people that found those types of programs interesting, but there are also programmers (like me) for whom those programs are just simple riddles, with almost no interest whatsoever. They're…

Is this your way of saying you're a programmer not a computer scientist? Because his job is as a scientist. Calling his exercises simple riddles is disrespectful. It's like calling doing a 5km run every morning, simple walking. The proof is in the pudding, he has impacted the world in a profound way. But on a more positive note. Which non-cs programmer heroes exists today? I'm thinking John Carmack.

Post by stjohnswarts » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

thewebcount wrote: post #178

bbbobbb wrote: post #78

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What does it mean though? What programs? I can't write new programs at work where I maintain existing applications for the most part. What kind of programs, not for the sake of programs, can you actually write almost daily?

I find myself writing debugging tools all the time. For example, our logs are overwhelming because our developers use them for debugging and then never remove their logging statements. So finding anything in them is next to impossible, and it's often interleaved with a bunch of other junk that's meaningless to you. And fixing the logging system we use would to make this work better would also be a huge task. So a lit…