Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
michaelbromley.co.uk
Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
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Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#2AFAIK this is actually normal -- you learn the basics from tutorials, then the things that you need to make more complicated projects easier seem unnecessary, then you attempt a large project without them, and then you see why they're necessary.
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#3AFAIK this is actually normal -- you learn the basics from tutorials, then the things that you need to make more complicated projects easier seem unnecessary, then you attempt a large project without them, and then you see why they're necessary.
It's normal but can be really, really scary if you don't have a mentor or someone to help you out or point out some of the pitfalls on the way.
Even something as fundamental as version control is, I think, passed up by a lot of beginning/intermediate programmers because "it's complicated" and "I don't need it now because I'm the only one working on this." But a mentor can help push you into that earlier and walk you through some of the more common stuff in a more accessible, interactive way than an article or a forum, which goes a long way.
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#4I've actually been down this route when I was a kid experimenting with making programs. I did not understand what was the point of functions - why not just copy/paste blocks of logic?
It wasn't something important to me for a long time since I did other stuff instead, but coming back to programming in an effort to make a career out of it, a lot of that stuff became instantly obvious & I felt foolish for not recognizing it in the first place.
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#5I've actually been down this route when I was a kid experimenting with making programs. I did not understand what was the point of functions - why not just copy/paste blocks of logic? It wasn't something important to me for a long time since I did other stuff instead, but coming back to programming in an effort to make a career out of it, a lot of that stuff became instantly obvious & I felt foolish for not recognizi…
It's funny, as a kid I can remember thinking: "Right, everything has to go in the main function unless absolutely necessary, it will just be easier to read that way."
Nowadays, it's the exact opposite!
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#6I've actually been down this route when I was a kid experimenting with making programs. I did not understand what was the point of functions - why not just copy/paste blocks of logic? It wasn't something important to me for a long time since I did other stuff instead, but coming back to programming in an effort to make a career out of it, a lot of that stuff became instantly obvious & I felt foolish for not recognizi…
It's funny, as a kid I can remember thinking: "Right, everything has to go in the main function unless absolutely necessary, it will just be easier to read that way." Nowadays, it's the exact opposite!
As a kid I wrote a few games using QBasic. I apparently didn't have a firm grasp on control flow because every call to a sub routine ended with a call to another subroutine; sometimes to a sub routine that was already called earlier in the stack. You win the game by beating it before crashing with a stack overflow.
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#7I've actually been down this route when I was a kid experimenting with making programs. I did not understand what was the point of functions - why not just copy/paste blocks of logic? It wasn't something important to me for a long time since I did other stuff instead, but coming back to programming in an effort to make a career out of it, a lot of that stuff became instantly obvious & I felt foolish for not recognizi…
It's funny, as a kid I can remember thinking: "Right, everything has to go in the main function unless absolutely necessary, it will just be easier to read that way." Nowadays, it's the exact opposite!
My code changed in a similar way, however I recently devolved.
I've mostly worked with higher level languages, and recently delved back into C. I had forgotten what a complete pain in the ass it is to pass complex data structures around between functions.
I'm a bit ashamed to admit my functions got pretty damn beefy real quick.
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny, as a kid I can remember thinking: "Right, everything has to go in the main function unless absolutely necessary, it will just be easier to read that way." Nowadays, it's the exact opposite!
As a kid I wrote a few games using QBasic. I apparently didn't have a firm grasp on control flow because every call to a sub routine ended with a call to another subroutine; sometimes to a sub routine that was already called earlier in the stack. You win the game by beating it before crashing with a stack overflow.
Nah you just invented continuation passing style. You just needed tail recursion too, and you would be good to go ;)
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#9AFAIK this is actually normal -- you learn the basics from tutorials, then the things that you need to make more complicated projects easier seem unnecessary, then you attempt a large project without them, and then you see why they're necessary.
It's normal but can be really, really scary if you don't have a mentor or someone to help you out or point out some of the pitfalls on the way. Even something as fundamental as version control is, I think, passed up by a lot of beginning/intermediate programmers because "it's complicated" and "I don't need it now because I'm the only one working on this." But a mentor can help push you into that earlier and walk you…
Version control is one of those areas that is very difficult for a lone programmer to understand the need for (I was one). After all, I have backups, right? So why would I need it? Then I hit a snag, where something that worked before somehow didn't work now. And it was a lot harder tracking that down by going through backups, vs doing a git bisect and git revert. Eventually I ended up restoring every backup, and checking them into git.
Re: Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny, as a kid I can remember thinking: "Right, everything has to go in the main function unless absolutely necessary, it will just be easier to read that way." Nowadays, it's the exact opposite!
My code changed in a similar way, however I recently devolved. I've mostly worked with higher level languages, and recently delved back into C. I had forgotten what a complete pain in the ass it is to pass complex data structures around between functions. I'm a bit ashamed to admit my functions got pretty damn beefy real quick.
&structure ... ?