This is severely biased toward things that require no in-person interaction.
So I'll add two:
0. talk to other programmers 11. attend a Coding Dojo
How to improve your programming skills
41–50 of 93 posts
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#42-Build something that is bigger/more complex than your current skill level.
This will not only improve your skills in general, but learning from the mistakes you make is probably the best way to grow as a programmer.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#43But how does one get ideas for a project? I started learning programming using C++ about 5 months ago. I've been making good progress on learning the concepts but I just can't think of anything useful to create.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#44Reading and trying to work with the Linux kernel source is hardly a good way to get better programming skills. It's really large and hard to understand. Something like Minix, MenuetOS, or LoseThos is a much better alternative to hack on. LoseThos particularly reminds me of old school hackable boxes like the Commodore64.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#45While people recommend reading code, like the Linux sources, I also find more code focused sites like Code Project (www.codeproject.com) very useful. These aren't blogs like Coding Horror, which are more "philosophy". These articles on Code Project typically are explaining code in detail.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#46-Build something that is bigger/more complex than your current skill level. This will not only improve your skills in general, but learning from the mistakes you make is probably the best way to grow as a programmer.
By the way, I can't recommend going out and reading massive textbooks. That might be useful in a vacuum, but in reality you only have so much time. Programming should always be number one on this list; followed by:
-building something completely different than your used to (either in scope, by features, or by language)
-looking at code from open source projects
The main thing: always challenge yourself. When your at the inflection point of your learning curve, do something different. Expanding your boundaries will not only help you learn different technologies, but it will give you a better perspective on your actual specialties.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#47I like how "Program" is all the way down at number 5
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#48"Learn a new programming language" I would rephrase this to learn a new programming paradigm . There are fundamental differences between static typing and dynamic typing, object orientation and functional, manual memory management and garbage collection. There are also "pure" single-paradigm languages and multi-paradigm languages. If you learn the same type of language multiple times, you're really just learning new…
Counting proper languages I actually wrote something useful in, my path looks like: C64 BASIC -> C64 raw machine code -> QBasic -> x86 raw machine code -> Turbo Pascal -> C -> Visual Basic -> Java -> O'Caml -> Delphi7 -> Python -> C++ -> Erlang -> C# -> Haskell -> F# -> JavaScript To keep learning very different languages is also what guarantees you will be able to get a good job when your bread-and-butter language f…
i always hear about how many jobs there are for cobol programmers to maintain legacy code. i've never actually met any though. maybe they all commit suicide.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#49-Build something that is bigger/more complex than your current skill level. This will not only improve your skills in general, but learning from the mistakes you make is probably the best way to grow as a programmer.
By the way, I can't recommend going out and reading massive textbooks. That might be useful in a vacuum, but in reality you only have so much time. Programming should always be number one on this list; followed by: -building something completely different than your used to (either in scope, by features, or by language) -looking at code from open source projects The main thing: always challenge yourself. When your at…
Some things are better found in books though. I've been reading Lisp in Small Pieces for a while now, and there's some great stuff buried in there. I don't think I would have stumbled upon it just hacking away on toy Lisps on my own.
There might be other places to find some of these things, like other compiler texts or the actual source of some Lisp compilers and runtimes, but books are often laid out in a nice pedagogical way. Reading the SBCL or Racket source would be a steep way to get to some of these ideas.
I would amend your recommendation to say, pick the massive textbooks you read carefully. Don't suffer through big, poorly written books.
Re: How to improve your programming skills
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the way, I can't recommend going out and reading massive textbooks. That might be useful in a vacuum, but in reality you only have so much time. Programming should always be number one on this list; followed by: -building something completely different than your used to (either in scope, by features, or by language) -looking at code from open source projects The main thing: always challenge yourself. When your at…
Some things are better found in books though. I've been reading Lisp in Small Pieces for a while now, and there's some great stuff buried in there. I don't think I would have stumbled upon it just hacking away on toy Lisps on my own. There might be other places to find some of these things, like other compiler texts or the actual source of some Lisp compilers and runtimes, but books are often laid out in a nice pedag…
thats a good point.