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How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

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Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#81

Post by tP5n »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #36
yen223 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?

OT: > "it's rather the exception than the norm" > "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved." How does one learn to use idioms like a native?

irc, or whatever people use these days. i've also always google'd tech related questions in english, never thought much about it just seemed to make sense.

movies and tv help in general, but live group communication with native speakers teaches you a lot about idioms and nuances in languages.

mind you, it'll also teach you a lot of bad grammar, as a non native speaker i would've never thought of eg. 'should of / should have' .

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#82

Post by psykovsky »

mattmanser wrote: post #61
rdeboo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country (Netherlands) people speak English quite well. My entire (CS) master was in English. So that means literature, class, assignments, exams, everything. I must say it did feel kind of awkward sometimes if you sit in a class where every single student and the teacher is native Dutch speaker, and still the course has to be done in English. But I think in the end it is worth it, because you learn all the term…

Hehe, slight understatement. The Dutch learn English from 8 is it? Being Dutch, I guess you can't really relate to any of the other foreigners in the thread. The Dutch all speak English so well you can move there and never bother learning Dutch. And unlike the French, who will fake not understanding, they seem positively delighted to get a chance to use English. In fact, I've had other English people complain to me t…

I spent 4 years and some in NL(Den Haag) and I never got past the numbers and greetings in Dutch... By speaking English everywhere and with almost everyone made me never try and learn it.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#83

Post by psykovsky »

skore wrote: post #17
sanxiyn wrote: post #3

This is very true, but it's a bit more complicated than that. "I'd come to understand that the answer was out there, somewhere." The answer is out there, but so is the wrong answer. Recognizing the right answer is the hard part. I also must point out that the answer is out there if you know English . Knowing English is a strong privilege. Success rate plummets if you Google programming questions in a language other t…

> Recognizing the right answer is the hard part. Very true, but even further than that: There are very few clearly right or clearly wrong answers. There are actually very few wrong answers - but there is a stupendous amount of right answers that are bad answers. Especially: bad answers for you . Recognizing a wrong answer is the easy part. Taking a dozen or so "right" answers and selecting and condensing them into th…

Isn't that said using fancy words on ALL of the software licenses, that it "works, but could explode any minute"? I could swear that was the definition of software. ;)

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#84

Post by untothebreach »

tanto wrote: post #76
laichzeit0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.

I am curious. What exactly is wrong with "some few words"? In german it would make total sense.

I'm not sure if it is "wrong," per se, but not idiomatic. Here (in the midwestern part of the US, at least) you would pick one or the other, so "some words" or "a few words."

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#85

Post by WBrentWilliams »

This was fun to read. What I saw was someone say that they were panicking because they needed time to understand how all the things that go into learning to be a researcher goes into learning how to be a professional programmer. I'm quite sure his mind will be blown once he realizes that creating things, while incredibly rewarding, is only half the work. The other half is getting someone else to use your widget. Also (bad at math joke), there's an extra 50% involved in getting attribution.

My take? I'm biased because I was educated as a researcher. I can name-drop three famous professors at my alma mater (and yes, I did study under all three), but what really pushed me was getting a job, on campus, writing software to support PhD candidates in another discipline. I quickly made the jump from researcher to practicum precisely because I was trained as a researcher, then applied those skills to understanding what my customers needed.

Seems to me this guy found his own "push". And yet, he's still a researcher.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#86

Post by orbifold »

eru wrote: post #21
grecy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I have a Software Engineering degree (certified Engineer), so I already have a superiority complex anyway ;)

Just wait until you meet mathematicians.

Or physicists, everyone not a physicist is a lesser mortal, maybe except mathematicians :).

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#87

Post by paublyrne »

tanto wrote: post #76
laichzeit0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.

I am curious. What exactly is wrong with "some few words"? In german it would make total sense.

It's just not common in an idiomatic way, really. Technically, it is 'incorrect' because 'few' is the object of the sentence, not 'words'.

But there are plenty of examples of phrases in English which are acceptable but which break grammar rules.

In short, you would say "a few words".

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#88

Post by Energy1 »

Tehnix wrote: post #11

Except for maybe Haskell[0] and Lisp[0], I've begun to feel like there isn't any language that I can't quickly learn with how I'm able to google at the moment. For example, I'm currently helping some fellow students with their F# assignments, even though I don't do F# at all. I just know what to google, because I know the concepts that I need translated to the specific syntax. [0] Maybe Lisp, but Haskell is way too d…

I have an opposite sort of experience: I can't learn things fast enough if they aren't mathematical in nature. I used to think programming was disgusting because of Python(heard Java is even worse) till I came across Clojure. I immediately appreciated how the latter imitates pure math so well :) Never going back to Python. Once in a math mindset, learning anything imperative is painful.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#89

Post by cushychicken »

fhadley wrote: post #67

I found that one particular phrase,"technically privileged", both hilarious and utterly horrifying. Hilarious because I suppose I never paused to consider that the folks in my major who were both curious and motivated enough to be involved in the field outside of class to be particularly "privileged". I suppose I should have given greater thought to how unfair it was that read API documents and I didn't! Like I said…

What an uncharitable response to someone who had a legitimate revelation and used it as a catalyst for personal growth! Software development is intimidating to outsiders - of course it's a privilege to be on the inside. (Or at least it appears that way.) This isn't a complaint about an unlevel playing field - it's an awakening on how to get better at doing something you love.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#90

Post by pessimizer »

fhadley wrote: post #67

I found that one particular phrase,"technically privileged", both hilarious and utterly horrifying. Hilarious because I suppose I never paused to consider that the folks in my major who were both curious and motivated enough to be involved in the field outside of class to be particularly "privileged". I suppose I should have given greater thought to how unfair it was that read API documents and I didn't! Like I said…

Having had a bit of empathy during my college years, I spent a lot of time complaining about how my instructors and my program leaned heavily on the fact that a large percentage of students would be hobbyists, and used that as an excuse to not teach.

I'm sure it would have been easier to lean on the fact that I'm the son of two computer programmers, always had a computer (and various manuals) in the house, and started learning C when I was 10 - and to look at the plight of people who were less fortunate than me as a "first world problem", as education and employment are normally rarely described.

>But still, we should all take a moment to recognize the plight of the comfortable, generally satisfactory lives of those among us struggling silently with the burden of "technical un-privilege."

Because everybody who goes to college must come from comfortable, generally satisfactory lives - they all must have grown up with the internet, owned computers, went to good schools, and couldn't have come from crushing poverty or from the third world. They must have all been exactly like you, except lazy.

I must be misunderstanding your post, because it seems exceptionally cruel, in an cocky, stupid way.

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