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How to be a Programmer
Martin L. Smith writes "Rob Read has posted his magnum opus, "How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive and Personal Summary" to Samizdat Press where it can be scarfed by the masses. Rob's book is a forty-page tour through the million-and-one things he thinks a programmer ought to know as he sets out into deep water. One of the reasons he posted this was to get some feedback, so tell him what you think. Samizdat Press is maintained by the Colorado School of Mines to provide a distribution point for free (mostly earth-sciences related) texts."
You cannot choose or learn to be a programmer, you are born with it or you should get the hell out. No amount of school or instruction or determination can change you into a programmer.
The script reads like a collections of untruths, half-truths, whinings, myths and philosophical twaddle. The person writing it does not have the experience to write it, nor the insightfulness to realise they should just put up and get back to work. Clearly written after too long a session in front of the glowing tube.
The Glossary is outright wrong; maybe it's the footnote from some SNL show on educational tom-foolery?
This rambling, ill-thought out work would be a terrible handicap to some junior scholar thinking they could read this and jump into the big pot we call IT.
I guess if it gets published the author can collect their royalties. My advice to those that ask me, and many do, will be to avoid this like the plague.
Well, I guess I just sank my Karma!
Actually I think it is a good use of language. His overarching goal for the text is to get you to think outside your normal conceptualizations about programmers. In this case by simply using the female pronoun he causes you to think about a) the stereo type of programmers as nerdy males and b) the way the language we use inherently supports a.
Thinking about how language choice effects function IS something programmers should consider and he elegantly brings this out in the text.
If you happen to work with Java, there are quite a few good commercial profilers around that are really easy to setup and use (such as JProfiler or Optimizeit). Try working with one of these for some time and observe how your way of programming changes for the better. Most importantly, you learn not to pre-emptively "improve" performance - one of the deadliest sins of programming which is responsible for a lot of bad and unreadable code.
Like any profession you're born with some inate abilities to do things which schooling can then direct and improve towards being skills you can use to make a living.
Some people are born to be athletic but without the proper training those people will never reach their full potential and make a living out of it.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
haha nice troll. :)
I have yet to meet someone that could not be taught to program. And if they are teachable they can become skilled if they are motivated. Sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but your skills aren't 1337. I could teach anyone with algebra skills to program.
me karma am bad
I was talking more about implementing features in a new project just because you can, not because you're trying to fill a need. In a production environment, there is no place for casual experimentation
Ideally yes, but in reality many poeple use buzzware techniques to keep their resume/references "up to date". Thus, they will FIND a way to use OO-XML-Web-Services no matter what, and make up some hairball justification like, "It increases the absraction layers in order to protect us from changes in the implementation of the transport mechanism of business dynamism....", and the PHB will just say, "Well, whatever, Okay".
Table-ized A.I.
What you're talking about is Refactoring - please read the book from Martin Fowler, it will open your eyes.
Revolution = Evolution
I just really like the people I work with. I also really like Extreme Programming, and we use it at Hire.com.
One of the two reasons I used "she" is to try to make the reader's visualization of the person being talked about a little more vivid.