Slashdot Mirror
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 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
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.
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 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.
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