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Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Out As a Programmer?
snydeq writes: Most of us gave little thought to the "career" aspect of programming when starting out, but here we are, battle-hardened by hard-learned lessons, slouching our way through decades at the console, wishing perhaps that we had recognized the long road ahead when we started. What advice might we give to our younger self, or to younger selves coming to programming just now? Andrew C. Oliver offers several insights he gave little thought to when first coding: "Back then, I simply loved to code and could have cared less about my 'career' or about playing well with others. I could have saved myself a ton of trouble if I'd just followed a few simple practices." What are yours?
I think the main thing I'd change is I wish I had started becoming active in the open source community around the tools I commonly use. I spent the first 10 years of my career mostly working on my own, or with a few people on the job and was not connected at all with the greater community. I think if I had done so earlier I'd be a better programmer today
Peace, or Not?
On my CS track, you start with C++, learn data structures and algorithms, and then learn assembly on a 68k.
I can't think of a better way to discourage someone from learning how to code.
I wish I had known to pick a different trade instead of programming. Programming isn't a profession like law or medicine. It's a skilled trade like plumbing, masonry, or electrical work. But unlike plumbers and electricians, programmers aren't smart enough to unionize, and so they get fucked in the ass by management. If you have to live in the United States, don't become a programmer. There are better ways to earn a living.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I would have studied more about the history of computers and computer science. It would have kept me from re-making so many mistakes and re-inventing so many wheels.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
Write like someone smarter than you will have to fix it ("Who wrote this crap? At least I can tell why he or she did that."), and like someone dumber than you will be adding features ("Bless him or her for making this easy."). You'll be both eventually.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
I wish I had known how uninteresting and boring coding could be when working for a corporation. It was the ability to be creative and imaginative that made me fall in love with coding in the early eighties. Although I still work in IT, I generally don't code for companies anymore. And somehow coding has miraculously become very interesting once again!
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
When I first started programming the 6502, back in 1981, I was still in school, and I was manually entering hex opcodes for every machine language program I wanted to create... I was doing this for about 6 months before somebody pointed out that I could use an assembler. I honestly didn't understand what they were talking about until I used one to type in a program that I saw in Nibble magazine. I never looked back. An assembler would have saved me *loads* of time if I had known about it at the beginning.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Though I inevitably unconsciously think about work code during non-work time, I will never consciously spend time thinking about or working on work code during non-work time.
They are paying for my brain, they can pay me to sit and think for a while. The actual typing of code is not what programming is.
I would have teached him grit. Oh god, how many unfinished little projects I had. Learn to concentrate on one thing and finish it properly. Just keep grinding on it.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
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put every god damn penny you can into a 401k.
Oh, you mean programming wise?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1. A copy of the "Mythical Man Month" by Fredrick Brooks and being told to read it.
2. A set of closing prices for every stock on the NY exchange for the next 20 years with the advice to become an investment banker..
If #2 isn't possible, then sitting down with somebody who could explain that you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve, so don't settle for what you get.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You can ignore them, in which case you've volunteered for the role of "victim".
You can make them your full-time job, in which case you're no longer a developer.
You should find a good defensive middle ground. At least, some situational awareness. Put your head up and look around. And listen.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I learned C++ first and just kind of learned various languages and technologies as the need arose, and now I know several languages and my projects have been widely varied. But I noticed that most of my peers who specialized were much more in demand, and therefore pretty much had their pick of jobs, made more money, and had better working conditions. The kind of specialization I'm referring to is learning something that less than ~5% of programmers know, but is still in some demand, and likely to be in demand in ten or twenty years. Or if you pick something that many programmers already know, learn the shit out of that one thing so that there aren't many others that have your level of knowledge in that one thing. In an interview, impressive knowledge of something specific is always better than just adequate knowledge of many things.
Also, learn how to be interviewed. It is a very valuable skill.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
I wish I had learned to balance real life with coding life sooner. I used to do the same zillion hour marathons everyone else did at one point or another in their coding careers. I loved the challenge and being the one producing the results. But then, eventually, I realized there's really a LOT more out there than that tiny little challenge/reward cycle. Biking, hiking, sports with friends, whatever. You can easily burn through 10-15 years of your YOUNG life living the code only to realize later when you're not so young any more that there were TONS of things you would have enjoyed doing more. You can make up some of that, but not nearly all.
I'd argue that while it's a nice table, there's one critical flaw with it: it doesn't matter this much if you don't know everything listed, provided that you can learn it on the spot in a fairly short period of time. For instance, I remember having read about red-black trees or how to treat hashmap collisions and I've already programmed in prolog and so on, but do I remember all those things so well that I could immediately, without looking at a reference, know how to implement/work with them? Hell no. There's way too much to learn in computer science to ever hope knowing everything at once, and claiming that this should be the case (or even, that it is achievable) only serves to demoralize and misguide people.
In my mind, there are two core qualities in computer science (and really, in science in general): being adept at solving problems, and being able to learn new things all the time. The former lets you break down any specific problem in a set of more generic problems for which solutions can be found or designed. The latter means you're able to learn new solutions to problems you may be unfamiliar with.
OK, I'll bite. :)
In a Perfect World, tabs would indeed be superior to spaces. No question.
But in the Real World, tabs and spaces inevitably get mixed together as multiple people touch a project, and then indentation gets messed up.
Standardizing on spaces helps mitigate this, as everyone sees the exact same thing regardless of editor (whereas tab spacing typically depends on local editor settings). And any editor should be able to "use spaces for tabs" so there is no actual impact on developer effort.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Your outdated "value-adding" "service provding" skills are so 20th century. 21st century careerism is about networking. Networking. Networking. Netowrking.
Look at item number one on TFAs list.
Network! Impress people! Dress right! Booze people up! This is how successful companies are made. You will not attract the rright venture capital with your simple abilities. Most companies won't even use those anyway.
See! Look at this! The people this guy is writing for don't even know how to solve problems. They just code stuff nobody really needs -- and they're still successful! You think your ability to analyse and abstract is something all the cool kids will pay for? Think again. Your geek/nerd/hipster/bro-grammer cred wil matter far more.
Profession? You think programming is a profession. Get back on that hamster wheel and like it code monkey. And get some hair dye. First sign of a grey hair or stress line from yellow packs like you and we sack you and hire a fresh young grad to suck into a husk.
Translation: "You can either join the fed-money, app-cloud bullshit wagon, or you can learn to love foodstamp lines. Either way, it'll still be a superior outcome to any science-fiction fantasy you imagined programmers were capable of making in a rational universe. The Market wants fart-buttons, not robots, so drink the kool-aid or join the lowest caste of contract workers you, you, you..... Loser."
No wonder so many programmers go into management.
May the Maths Be with you!