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Its always said that more you program, the better you become. Sounds good and true.
But I was wondering if there is a proven route to becoming a better programmer.
Something like:
Learn a
Learn b
Learn c > 'Now you are good to burn the engines'
Try stuff around based on your learning.
The answer might be similar to a CS course roadmap, but I want to hear from successful programmers who might want to pitch in with something notable.
Thanks
It's not true that practice makes perfect.
It's perfect practice that makes perfect.
If all you do is keep repeating the same bad practices again and again, you'll only make it possible to create bad code faster.
By all means keep coding. But at the same time be critical of everything you do. Always have a jaundiced eye that looks for ways to do things better. Read widely to get new ideas. Talk to others about how they do things. Look at other people's code, good and bad.
There's no "sure" way to learn anything that I know of. If there was, anyone could master this.
All questions are rhetorical and meant to stimulate thought.
Technical parts:
Design Patterns - There are probably some specific to a domain but generally these are useful ways of starting parts of an application. Do you know MVC or MVP?
Basic algorithm starting points - Divide and conquer, dynamic programming, recursion, creating special data types like a heap, being greedy, etc.
Problem solving skills - How easily can you jump in and find where a bug is? Can you think of multiple solutions to the problem?
Abstract modelling - How well can you picture things in your head in terms of code or classes when someone is describing a problem?
High level versus low level - How well do you understand when one wants something high or low? This is just something I'd toss out there as these terms get through around a lot, like a high level view of something or a low level language.
Process parts:
Agile - Do you know Scrum, XP, and other new approaches to managing software projects? How about principles like YAGNI, DRY and KISS? Or principles like SOLID? Ideas like Broken Windows?
Developer Environment - How well do you know the IDE you use? Source Control? Continuous Integration? Do you know the bottle necks on your machine in terms of being productive?
xDD - Do you know of TDD, BDD, and other developments driven from a paradigm?
Refactoring - Do you go back over your old code and make it better or do you tend to write once and then abandon your code?
Soft skills:
Emotional Intelligence - Can be useful for presentations and working with others mostly.
Passions/Motivation - Do you know what gets your juices flowing and just kick butt in terms of being productive? Do you know what you would like to do for many many years?
My main piece of advice would be: don't be afraid to rewrite your own code. Look at stuff you wrote even a month ago and you will see flaws and want to rewrite stuff.
Make sure that you understand some fundamentals: collections, equality, hashcodes etc. These are useful across pretty much all modern languages.
Depending on the language you use - use lint and metric tools and run them over your code. Not all their suggestions will be applicable but learning which are important and which are not is important. E.g FindBugs, PMD etc for Java.
Above all refine and keep refining your work. Don't treat your work as abandonware!
Learn your 1st programming language a new programming paradigm or a
find a mentor you can learn from
Apply what you've learnt in a real world project
Learn from your mistakes and successes and goto step one
The trick is knowing what to learn first:
Programming languages - this is the place to start bcause you cannot write software without knowing at least one of these. After you've mastered one language try learning another.
Programming paradigm - i.e. object oriented, dynamic/functional programming etc. Try to learn a new one with each new language.
Design concepts - S.O.L.I.D, design patterns as well as architectural concepts.
People skills - learn to communicate your ideas.
Team leadership - learn how to sweep others and how to become a team or technological lead.
After that the sky is the limit.
I would look at improving roughly in this order, in iterations with each building on the previous one:
Programming concepts. Understand things like memory management, pointers, stacks, variable scope, etc.
Languages. Work on mastering several modern languages.
Design concepts. Learn about design patterns. Practice using them.
Communication. Often-overlooked. You can only become a highly valued Software Engineer if you can communicate effectively with non-tech people. Learn to listen and understand the needs that people are expressing, translate that into a set of requirements and a technical design, but then explain what you understood (and designed) back to them, in terms they can understand, for validation before you code. This is not an easy one to master, but it is essential.
Architectural concepts. Learn to understand the big picture of large, complex systems.
Learning a programming language is in many ways similar to learning a spoken language. The only way to get good at it is to do it as often as possible. In other works
Practice, practice, read and then practice more
Take time to learn about all sorts of coding techniques, tools and programming wisdom. This I have found to be crucial to my development. It's to easy to just code away and feel productive. What about what could be if you just had some more knowledge / weaponry under your belt to bang out that next widget.
Knowledge/know how is our real currency. The more we know the more we can make a better decision about how something should be done and do it faster.
For example, learn about:
•Development Practices, Software Design, Estimation, Methodologies Business Analysis Database Design (there are a lot of great books out there and online resources)
•Read Code - Open Source Projects are a good place for this. Read
Programming blogs
•Try to participate on Open Source
Projects.
•Look for programming user groups in
your town and/or someone who can mentor you.
And yes, as mentioned practice. Don't just read, do and watch how you will improve. :)
Practice, practice, practice.
Once you're over the basic hump of being able to program, you can also read useful books (i.e. Code Complete, Effective Java or equivalents, etc.) for ideas on how to improve your code.
First and foremost write code. Write as much as you can. Tackle hard problems. If you want to be a really good programmer you need to get into the guts of what you are doing. Spend a lot of time in debuggers looking at how things work. If you want to be a good programmer who really understands what is going on you need to get down to the metal and write highly async code, learn about how processors work and why SSE is so awesome. Understand threading primitives and be able to write them as well as describe what is actually happening in the processor. I could keep going here but you get the idea.
Second find someone who knows a lot more than you and learn. This relationship will work better if you are already deeply immersed in writing lots of code.
Third, spend some time in a large high quality open source code base. I learned a ton from the Quake I and Quake II code. Helped me be a better programmer.
Fourth take on hard problems. Push your limits. Build things that you thought were impossible. Right now I am writing a specialized compiler. I have learned so much just working on this for the last couple of months.
Sure, strictly speaking, the more you practice programming, the better you become at solving those sorts of problems. But is that what you really want?
Programming is a human activity more than a technological one, at its heart. It's easy to improve your computer skills, not so hard to improve your interpersonal skills.
Read "Journey of the Software Professional" by Hohmann. One of the concepts the concepts Hohmann describes is the "cognitive library," which includes both programming skills and non-programming skills. Expand your cognitive library, and your programming skill will improve too.
Read a lot of non-programming books too, and observe the world around you. Creating useful metaphors is an essential skill for the successful programmer. Why do restaurants do things how they do? What trade-offs is the garbage department making when they pick up the garbage every few days instead of every day? How does scaling affect how a grocery store does business? Be an inquisitive human to be a better programmer.
For me, there has to be a reason to learn something new... that is, unless I have a project in mind or some problem I need to solve, there's no hope. If that prerequisite is met, then I usually try to get "Hello, world" working, and after that the sky's the limit. So much of development these days is just learning new APIs. Occasionally there's some kind of paradigm shift that blows your mind, but that's not as common as people like to think, IMHO.
Find a program that intrigues you, one that solves a problem, or one that would simplify many of your tasks. Try to write something similar. You'll get up to speed very quickly and have fun doing it at the same time.
You can try learning one thing really well and then expanding out to programming areas that are associated with the things that you have learnt, so that you can offer complete solutions to customers.
At the same time, devote part of your time to explore things outside your comfort zone.
One you have learned something, try to learn something a little harder. Read and practice a lot about things that seem confusing at first time (lambda functins, threading, array manipulation, etc). It will take its time, but once you have practiced enough, what seemed confusing at first, will be familiar and easy.
In addition to the rest of the great advice already given here, don't be afraid to read about coding and good practice, but also take everything with a grain of salt and see what works best for you. A lot of advice is opinion.
Good sites to read:
-thedailywtf.com
-joelonsoftware.com
-codinghorror.com
-blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing
A great place to get practice is programming competition websites. Those will help you learn how to write good algorithms, not necessarily maintainable code, but they're still a good place to start for learning.
The one I used to use (back when I had time) was:
http://uva.onlinejudge.org/
Learn more than one language. One at a time, definitely, but ultimately you should be fluent in a couple. This will give you a better perspective I think, and help you to become an expert at programming, rather than being an expert at a certain language.
Learn the ins and outs of computers at all levels, hardware, os, etc. Ideally you should be able to build your own system, install multiple operating systems on it, and diagnose just about every problem that can arise. I know many programmers who are not "computer tech people" and their failure to understand what is happening at every level becomes a major hindrance in diagnosing and fixing unusual bugs or performance issues.
As well as looking at 'last weeks code', talk to users of your work after delivery - be one yourself if possible.
Its not my bag, but some of the best coders I know have spent time supporting applications. The experience improved their product I'm sure.
eat breath dream the programming language your using (no seriously, it helps)
There are two kinds of learning -
1. Informal (like how you learned how to function in society- through interaction with peers and family)
2. Formal (like your high school training- through planned instruction)
If you want an entry-level programming job, formal training via an undergrad Computer Science/Engineering degree is the way to go. However, if you want to become a rock-star developer, it is best done by informal training- make unintentional mistakes and have senior developers curse at you, learn a design pattern because an app you are updating uses it, almost cry because a bad developer wrote a huge messy program lacking documentation and best practices and now you have to do several updates to it ASAP; thing of these nature.
It is hard for anyone to give you a list of all you need to know. It varies per area (e.g. a web developer vs. to a desktop developer) and it varies per company (e.g. Microsoft that sells software vs. General Motors that mainly just use it in their cars.) Informal traiing and being engaged in trying to learn to do your job better and get promoted is your best bet in my opinion.
To prove my point, everyone here has great answers but they all differ. Ask a rock-star developer how he learned something or when, why; they may not know- things just happen.
Practice, individually and collectively
Keep an open mind, always learn new things, don't limit yourself to what's familiar. Not solely from a tech perspective, ui design, people skills, ... Don't be afraid of what's new
Peer review, talk to people about your code, let people talk to you about their code, everyone has a unique way of looking at a problem and you will learn a great deal from peers
Love coding. If you love what you're doing, putting in alot of time seems effortless. Every coder needs the drive!
One small addition to these good answers. When I work on someone else's code, usually I pick up something new. If you have the opportunity to work with someone else that is of equal or greater skill, noticing their programming style can teach you tons.
For example, in C++ & Javascript I no longer use if() statements without braces. The reason is that it's just too easy to mistakenly put:
while (true) {
if (a > b)
print a
print b
}
This is an obvious typo, but very easy to introduce, especially if you're editing existing code. I just call it defensive programming in my mind, but little tricks like this are valuable at making you better.
So, find a peer or mentor, and work on their code.
I am not sure if the OP was looking for general advice on how to be a good programmer, but rather something more specific.
I know I am reviving this thread, but I found it because I was trying to see if anyone asked this question already.
What I had in mind was, can we come up with a "knowledge-map" of programming concepts similar to the map that Khan Academy uses.
As a programmer, I want to be able to visualize the dependencies and relationships between different ideas, so that I can understand what skill level I am currently at; what I need to know before tackling a challenging subject; and be able to visualize my progress.
The very belief in the roadmap's existence blocks the road to perfection.
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The amount of available programming languages is both a bless and a curse, I think.
I know a lot of programming languages already, some at syntax-level only and some good enough to do actual coding (Python, C, C++, Haskell, Perl, BASH, PHP, and lots of others). I have been programming for almost as long as I've been intensivly using computers (6 years), in almost every paradigm (functional, imperative, object oriented), but I don't feel prepared for the software industry.
I've been writing a lot of bigger programs in a lot of different languages, mostly network based, including large multithreaded server/clients, and I still don't feel prepared!
Currently I'm obsessed with my "3-tier" plan, which includes a high level language like Haskell, an interpreted language like Python and a low level language like C, yet I don't feel good enough!
I know how to work in teams, and how to work along given guidelines, but I'm unsure.
Am I prepared?
Please, kind people of stackoverflow, help me out of this mess! :(
Thanks for all the answers, I wish I could chose more answers as THE answer :)
Sounds like you know an awful lot about programming, but you don't mention anything else. Being a software developer requires more than just programming as a technical skill. Brush up on topics such as source code control, unit testing/test-driven development, continuous integration, etc. Hopefully you'll land in a job where at least one of those is in use. Try and learn as many useful time-savers as you can with your tools; try to become as flexible and efficient with your IDE as possible.
Elsewhere, don't forget to develop the more personal skills; attitude and work ethic, and more related to your field, issues such as eliciting requirements, documenting issues and describing problems and solutions. Don't worry too much about these if you're going in afresh, because you're not expected to have a huge knowledge of them, but if you're at least aware of them and trying to improve, then you have a greater chance of doing so.
Try to appraise yourself of general software development issues that aren't directly coding, if you haven't already - general attitudes to security-oriented development (and testing), good design and similar best practices.
Don't sweat too much about being perfect right off the bat. If you've got no room for improvement, you aren't going to enjoy your career very long, and burning out as a programmer ain't much fun.
You know enough - there is a minimum threshold of knowledge required in the industry (which is above what some developers have), but it sounds like you are already there.
For anyone with the aptitude, new programming languages, techniques, etc, are easy to learn. A good company to work for will hire you based on your abilities, not knowledge (which can go stale very quickly).
If you want to stand out as a software developer, ensure you have rock solid communication skills for reports, e-mail, telephone, meetings, etc. That is a rarer gift in the software field, and although it is not necessary more valuable at the junior levels, it pays off in the long run.
The single most important thing I can think of to be successful in the industry is to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to change.
I recently took a programming test which I thought was a good and fair test. I passed it without a great deal of effort. I was told that 50% of the people (these are all people with programmer on the resume) don't even know where to start. Your earnestness and desire will most likely put you in the top third of most places to start with.
Knowning languages is not all you can do.
If you can, a placement/internship will do wonders. Anyone can program. Real world experience will teach you more than any tutorials, self learning or schooling will.
Naturally, gaining an internship requires some experience, so it's very much catch twenty two.
If going for an internship is not possible, get involved with an open source project. You'll find you'll learn loads by working with people smarter than you.
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
Socrates some smart dude
I think this is pretty common among developers. Imo it´s a way better sign then if you would come to the conclusion that you were fully trained.
The only way to know for sure if you're prepared is to try. Sometimes being thrown in the deep end actually helps and you'll find you learn more in that first real world job than you did in all the books/etc that you read in the years before. Also, knowing multiple languages helps you understand underlying semantics of programming in general, but in a real job you'll likely be sticking to one or two languages day to day, so don't get hung up on knowing every language out there.
It's better to try & fail than to spend your life wondering if you're ready.
Go to dice or monster or whatever your favorite job site is and see what people are looking for. It's not Haskell, it's C++. Learn that well and you're ready to go. Once you're out in the real world, you'll learn quickly enough the things that are important. These are mostly the soft skills that school doesn't teach you. Things like how to get along with the clueless, how to present your ideas so they'll actually be considered, and how to see the forest even though you're stuck under a rock.
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Have you ever tried learning a language while on a project? I have, and from my personal experience I can say that it takes courage, effort, time, thinking, lots of caffeine and no sleep. Sometimes this has to be done without choice, other times you choose to do it; if you are working on a personal project for example.
What I normally do in this kind of situation, and I believe everyone does, is "build" on top of my current knowledge of languages, structures, syntax and logic. What I find difficult to cope with, is the difference of integrity in some cases. Some languages offer a good background for future learning and "language study", they pose as a good source of information or a frame of reference and can give a "firm" grasp of what's to come. Other languages form or introduce a new way of thinking and are harder to get used to.
Sometimes you unintentionally think in a specific language and when introduced to a new way of thinking, a new language, can cause confusion or make you get lost between the "borders" of your new and your current knowledge of languages.
What can be a good solution in this case? What should be used to broaden the knowledge of the new language, a new way of thinking, and maintain or incorporate the current knowledge of other languages inside the "borders" of the new language?
I find I need to do a project to properly learn a language, but those can be personal projects. When I learned Python on the job, I first expected (and found) a significant slowdown in my productivity for a while. I read the standard tutorials, coding standards and I lurked on the Python list for a while, which gave me a much better idea of the best practices of the language.
Doing things like coding dojos and stuff when learning a language can help you get a feel for things. I just recently changed jobs and went back to Java, and I spent some time working on toy programs just to get back in the feel for things (I'm also reading Effective Java, 2nd edition as my previous major experience had been with Java 1.4).
I think, in some respects no matter what the impetus for learning the language, you have to start by imitating good patterns in the new language. Whether that means finding a good book, with excellent code examples, good on-line tutorials, or following the lead of a more experienced developer, you have to absorb what it means to write good code in a particular language first. Once you have developed a level of comfort, you can start branching out and and experimenting with alternatives to the patterns that you've learned, looking for ways to apply things you've learned from other languages, but keeping within the "rules" of the language. Eventually, you'll get to the point where you know you can 'break the rules" that you learned earlier because you have enough experience to know when they do/don't apply.
My personal preference, even when forced to learn a new language, is to start with some throw away code. Even starting from good tutorials, you'll undoubtedly write code that later you will look back on and not understand how stupid you could have been. I prefer, if possible, to write as my first foray into a language code that will be thrown away and not come back to haunt me later. The alternative is to spend a lot of time refactoring as you learn more and more. Eventually, you'll end up doing this, too.
I would like to mention ALT.NET here
Self-organizing, ad-hoc community of developers bound by a desire to improve ourselves, challenge assumptions, and help each other pursue excellence in the practice of software development.
So in the spirit of ALT.NET, it is challenging but useful to reach out of your comfort zone to learn new languages. Some things that really helped me are as follows:
Understand the history behind a language or script. Knowing evolution helps a lot.
Pick the right book. Research StackOverflow and Amazon.com to find the right book to help you ease the growing pains.
OOP is fairly common in most of the mature languages, so you can skip many of the chapters related to OOP in many books. Syntax learning will be a gradual process. I commonly bookmark some quick handy guides for that.
Read as many community forums as possible to understand the common pitfalls of the new language.
Attend some local meetups to interact with the community and share your pains.
Take one pitch at a time by building small not so complicated applications and thereby gaining momentum.
Make sure you create a reference frame for what you need to learn. Things like how security, logging, multithreading are handled.
Be Open minded, you can be critical, but if you hate something then do not learn that language.
Finally, I think it is worthwhile to learn one strong languages like C# or Java, one functional language and one scripting language like ruby or python.
These things helped me tremendously and I think will help all software engineers and architects to really gear for any development environment.
I learned PHP after I was hired to be the project lead on the Zend Framework project.
It helped that I had 20 years of professional programming background, and good knowledge of C, Java, Perl, JavaScript, SQL, etc. I've also gravitated towards dynamic scripting languages for most of my career. I've written applications in awk, frameworks in shell, macro packages in troff, I even wrote a forum using only sed.
Things to help learn a language on the job:
Reading code and documentation.
Listening to mailing lists and blogs of the community.
Talking to experts in the language, fortunately several of whom were my immediate teammates.
Writing practice code, and asked for code reviews and coaching.(Zend_Console_Getopt was my first significant PHP contribution).
Learning the tools that go along with the language. PHPUnit, Xdebug, phpDoc, phing, etc.
Of course I did apply what I knew from other programming languages. Many computer science concepts are language-universal. The differences of a given language are often simply idiomatic, a way of stating something that can be done another way in another language. This is especially true for languages like Perl or PHP, which both borrow a lot of idioms from earlier languages.
It also helped that I took courses in Compiler Design in college. Having a good foundation in how languages are constructed makes it easier to pick up new languages. At some level, they're all just ways of abstracting runtime stacks and object references.
If you're a junior member of the team and don't know the language, this is not necessarily an issue at all. As long as there is some code review and supervision, you can be a productive.
Language syntax is one issue, but architectural differences are a more important concern. Many languages are also development platforms, and if you don't have experience with the platform, you don't know how to create a viable solution architecture. So if you're the project lead or working solo, you'd better have some experience on the platform before you do your design work.
For example, I would say an experienced C# coder with no VB experience would probably survive a VB.NET project just fine. In fact, it would be more difficult for a developer who only had experience in C#/ASP.NET to complete a C# WPF project than a VB ASP.NET project. An experienced PHP developer might hesitate a bit on a ColdFusion project, but they probably won't make any serious blunders because they are familiar with a script based web development architecture.
Many concepts, such as object modelling and database query strategies, translate just fine between languages. But there is always a learning curve for a new platform, and sometimes it can be quite nasty. The worst case is that the project must be thrown out because the architure is too wrong to refactor.
I like to learn a new language while working on a project, because a real project will usually force me to learn aspects of the language that I might otherwise skip. One of the first things I like to to is read code in that language, and jump in. I find resources (such as books and various internet sites) to help as I go along.
Then, after I've been working on it for a while, I like to read (or re-read) books or other resources on the language. By this time I have some knowledge, so this will help solidify some things and also point out areas where I am flat-out wrong in my understanding. For instance, I can see that I was making incorrect assumptions about similarities between languages.
This also applies to tools -- after using a tool for a while and learning the basics, reading (or skimming) the documentation can teach me a lot.
In my opinion, you should try to avoid that. I know, most of the times you can't but in any case try not to mix the new language with the old one, and never add to the mixture old habits, practices and patterns.
Always try to find resources that will help you get through the new language in the way the language works, not in the way other languages do; that will never have a happy ending, and if it does it will be very hard to modify it to the right way.
Cheers.
Yes I have.
I mean, is there another way? The only language I ever learned that was not on a project was ABC basic, which was what you used on my first computer.
I would recommend if you start with a certain language, stick with it. I only say that because many times in the past I tried more and more different ones, and the one I started out with was the best :D
Everytime I have/want to learn a new language, I force myself to find something to code.
But to be sure I did it well, I always want to be able to check my code and what it ouputs.
To do so, I just try to do the same kind of stuff with languages I know and to compare the outputs. For that, I created a little project (hosted on Github) with an exercise sheet and the correction for every language I learnt. It's a good way to learn in my opinion because it gives you a real little project.
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As stated, have you any tips to help grok / understand / get-your-head-around declarative programming languages?
Or is it simply a case that you’ve to immerse yourself in the language and it’s syntax, until it seeps in, until you get that golden moment where you Get It. This isn’t really an option as I can no longer lock myself in a room for days on end, poring over half a dozen different books on the subject matter (responsibilities being what they are and all)
So, any tips or tricks that helped you when you tackled declarative languages, any insights to pass on?
P.S. I’ll personally upvote the first answer that says “Shutup and put in the work”.
Background
I was 13 years old I when I first started wring code (basic, on my sisters Oric-1).
Since then I’ve worked with many new concepts and many different languages, taking all in my stride, me taking the upper hand quickly enough. Object Orientation? Not a bother. Event driven paradigms? Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.
Owl, Mfc, ActiveX, Vb3, 4, 5 & 6, VB.Net, Pascal, Delphi, C, C++ & C#. None have stood in my way, at least not for very long.
However recently my perfect score has taken a bit of a battering.
A couple of weeks ago I threw myself into Xaml, and folks, I’m more sinking than swimming.
I think my main problem is that it’s declarative. All my other programming skills are procedural. I’ve hit this block before with MSBuild, I can copy examples of how to get MSBuild things working, but would be lost putting something together from scratch.
Back to Xaml, currently I’m going insane trying to wire triggers to properties and get the effect’s I need.
I may post my specific Xaml question here soon enough. For now I’m asking this general “declarative programming” question.
P.S. No, I'm not actually this cocky. Yes, I stumbled like hell the first time I hit OO and the first time I'd to write an event driven UI (VB3 on Windows 3.11).
Edit
It's starting to sink in, the tenacity that got me this far in this field is paying off, it just takes so much fracking time!
. . . I think I'm getting too old for this stuff . . . :)
I had to teach XSL (or XSLT, as you wish) a bunch at the beginning of the century :), and it's a different world, really. That, however, is the basis for the paradigm-shift: you have to realize that declarative languages really are different. The most important advice I have is to keep studying other people's solutions, put the work in, and really try to stop thinking in FLOW. The worst thing is that, in XSL, there is an "if" and an "else," but usually there's another way to do things.
Unlike learning OO, in XSL (or any declarative language, I suppose) you will not manage to do what you're trying to do unless you do it declaratively.
So the answer is in part, "shut up and do the work" as you suggest, but the more important point is to realize that a lot of the work is getting your head around the paradigm shift. So the real answer is, "keep your eyes peeled for the paradigm shift." You have to stop thinking in flow and start thinking in terms of rules that can fire in any order... if they're done right, it doesn't matter when they fire. When you are finally thinking in rules instead of WHEN stuff happens, you're beginning to grok the shift.
Find some examples, with explanations of the "why", from someone who really knows the language. It's learning the patterns and idioms that makes a difference.
I suspect you're trying to do imperative things in declarative land, which means you think in terms of steps. Write the dataflow down in terms of required inputs + stateless function of those inputs and see if that helps.
Try a functional or functionalesqe language like ML or Scheme.
I don't know what your specific problems with Xaml are (and I haven't used it myself) , but I've found that when using XML based technologies like XSLT, a little LISP or Scheme experience can go a long way. You might want to look at playing with the excellent scheme system available free from http://www.plt-scheme.org.
I can see where this may be blowing your mind. All those languages you list are indeed quite similar (procedural).
Once you get this down, I highly encourage you to learn a functional language as well. You may also find it tough going, but learning it will help your general coding skills greatly. You'll have a whole new bag of tricks (even in procedural languages), and you will never be afraid of recursion again.
Consider your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve. The first code snippet is obviously procedural. In the second snippet you make a declarative statement that for the percentage to be valid it has to be between 0 and 100.
So i'd guess you'll have no trouble grokking declarative programming languages as long as you work on it hard enough... there is no royal road to geometry
Like Binary Worrier, I had a long history with things like C, C++, MFC, etc and have been coming up to speed on XAML, WPF, and C#. I had a side trip through HTML, Javascript, and XSLT which I think helped a great deal in preparing me for XAML.
The basic idea behind XAML is fairly straightforward - it's all about what you show, not what you do. The hard part with XAML is that there is just a ton of implementation details to learn and you wind up learning them all at the same time in order to be able to get much of anything done.
I could probably be more helpful if the question was more specific.
"Programming is about giving a computer a sequence of instructions."
Most programmers react with equanimity to this statement. It's almost like... "duh?"
But the belief in this statement is what causes people to have trouble understanding other programming paradigms. It's not true, and hasn't been for a very long time. To arrive at a better understanding of programming, many may benefit from thinking on why this statement is false.
Even if you programmed in pure assembly, modern processors would rearrange your instructions, perform branch prediction, and attempt to execute multiple potentially codependent instructions at the same time. In this way they think in terms of logical dependencies, not sequences. The sequence metaphor is the false notion that an instruction logically depends on everything that preceded it. If this were true, the best way to reason about programs would be to examine the control flow. But it is not true.
It's not just declarative programming that doesn't fit with this metaphor, but also parallel and asynchronous programming.
I find the easiest way to "grok" a language is simply to start using it exclusively for all your coding. With a completely new language I would say for me the learning curve is approximately 2 weeks of coding about 4-5 hours a day. After that point it suddenly "clicks" and you can start relying less on manuals and docs.
I took a class in college (Programming Languages). It pretty much felt like I was repeatedly slamming my head against a brick wall, but about 3/4 of the way through the class, I realized the wall wasn't there anymore; I had been beating my head against nothing for a few weeks. It was a pretty surreal feeling.
I think any other way won't have the same charm. Read Godel, Escher, Bach; listen to a lot of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and Kaikhosru Sorabji; smoke some ganja, and put in the time.
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I've been programming for several years now and since then I have learned several concepts and techniques that have made me a better programmer (i.e. OOP, MVC, regex, hashing, etc). I feel too that by been able to learn several languages (basic, pascal, C/C++, lisp, prolog, python) I have widen my horizons in a very possitive way. But since some time ago I feel like I'm not learning any new good "trick". Can you suggest some interesting concept/technique/trick that could make me retake the learning flow?
A good paradigm shift always allows you to see things differently and become a better developer. I would suggest you read up on functional programming and maybe learn a functional language like Haskell or Scheme.
YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) and DTSTTCPW (Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work)
It's easy to spend a lot of time thinking about edge cases, and find that you've implemented something that's completely useless. I believe that a far better approach is to knock out a simple prototype, and then poke and prod it until you understand the domain well enough to create production code.
Recognize, however, that your prototype is going to evolve into production code whether you like it or not. So write it with that in mind.
Learning how to use your IDE and tools. This to me resulted in a far greater productivity increase.
For examples:
learning how to use a source level debugger
using tools like purify/boundschecker
fxcop
etc. I realize I am dating myself, but those were big steps. There are many more.
Any time you can change the way you think about a problem or solve a problem without having to undo previous work is HUGE gain. Process, tools, etc all can help with that. Don't limit yourself to finding silver bullet techniques for productivity gains.
Watching productive people work and getting them to tell you what they are doing and why is also invaluable.
If I'm honest, using, and learning a great framework like .NET has really increased my productivity.
I'm often amazed what people are willing to reinvent due to their ignorance that the very same function already exists in the framework.
AGILE and especially Test Driven Development. Best thing to happen to software development since the invention of Object Oriented Design.
Concerning coding, I'd say design patterns and architecture patterns are always nice to look at and can help you write cleaner/better code.
For methodology I would advice Agile development that is great. There are a numerous number of techniques and methods (I'm personally fan of extreme programming) and reading that can keep you busy and improve your general approach.
Finally I'd say learn new languages like Ruby
Design patterns
SCRUM process
DiSC assessment (and understanding of how it applies to collaborative s/w development)
StackOverflow.com (of course!)
Google
... other stuff too, I'm sure
Design Patterns. Learning how to break dependence upon implementation and inheritance, and depending on interfaces (contracts) instead changed the way I think about programming.
Debugging. Once I figured out how to actually step through the code and go line-by-line, examining the underlying state, it revolutionized how I troubleshoot code.
Practice, practice practice: I didn't realize how important it is to keep working on my skills apart from work until a relatively short time ago. Mistakes and solutions I make at home make me a better programmer at work, and vice a versa. Learning should never stop if you want to be good at something, and programming isn't an exception.
If I had to pick just one, I'd say Test-Driven Design, aka TDD: write unit tests (and check that they fail) before you incrementally add features.
Try to learn to see things from the user's standpoint.
For example:
learn how to write meaningful error messages
learn how to produce usable applications
learn some basic speed-optimization techniques
Remember that the user sees your application, not your code.
VIM Quick Reference Card. After I started using advanced vim (macros, plugins) I have stopped doing any repetitive actions during coding manually.
Apart from that, Scrum and working at night, when noone interrupts You gave me the highest benefit.
If you want to expand your experience into web programming, you should try and get a good handle on the HTTP Request/Response paradigm. This will make creating web apps much easier on you because you understand the underlying framework.
(http)://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol
I would look at some of the newer languages that combine OO and functional elements, like C# or Scala.
Learning Smalltalk has helped me become more productive. It is an easy language to learn and things can be built extremely quickly. For a stunning productivity aid check out Seaside, it's a framework for building web applications. Moreover, if you have only been used to curly brace languages Smalltalk will also make you smile!
I was helped by the following paradigms in this order:
1) bottom-up programming
2) top-down programming (C, Pascal)
3) object-oriented programming (Smalltalk, Java)
4) functional programming (lisp, Mathematica)
with some logic programming thrown in (prolog).
nHibernate hands down. The fact that I dont need to write database functionality for my business objects is very useful and time saving.
High level understanding, creating good abstractions with proper dependencies, is what pays off in long term. For example, Law of Demeter is an important guideline. I recommend also reading Eric Evan's Domain Driven Design
Code generators. They're the best thing in software engineering.
Would you like to write all your projects in asm? Nope, let's generate it from C++. Or from something sat above the JVM which diligently generates the necessary machine code.
Duplicating the same source code all over the place, but stuck with a language that insists on the line noise? Use macros.
Want to use lambdas in a language that doesn't have them? Work out how to fake the anonymous name and variable scoping required then generate the boilerplate.
None of the readily available languages quite fit your pattern of thought, desired syntax or even semantics? Write a compiler for a new one.
Better languages are nice. Better design patterns are nice. Emacs is awesome. But compilers are where all the power lies in our field. I suspect the only reason they aren't mentioned in any of the other answers is that we can't imagine programming without any.
Copy/paste technique
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Just want to ask for some opinions here. How do you feel about using a language (and/or framework) that isn't widely used in your location to write software for a company? For instance, I live in an area dominated by .NET, with the occasional PHP job. Let's say that I'm learning Python and decide to use it to write software for my job (I'm a "Team of One" so I can pretty much use anything I want).
Now their software is written in a language that pretty much nobody in the area uses or knows; if I were to leave the company, they'd basically have nobody to maintain/add to it unless they retain on me as a consultant. While that's really good for me, it seems a bit "crooked" - granted, that's how the business world works.
What are your thoughts?
I should mention that this is a very small company and I'm the only IT person, so I have full reign to choose our development platform. I'm not specifically using Python, but chose it as an example since my area is almost entirely .NET based; I don't care for .NET anymore though, which is why I don't want to consider using it. Also, the company is.. how shall we say... extremely frugal and wouldn't purchase the required resources for .NET (e.g. server licenses, SQL licenses, Visual Studio, components). I personally have an MSDN subscription but I can't use that for them.
Also FWIW there are people in the area who use the language I'm considering using (Ruby on Rails), but nowhere near as many people as .NET developers. It's not like I'm using something that only I know.
You may think that this approach is good for you. But in fact all this does is paint you in to a corner. The best way to get promotion - within an organisation is to make yourself unnecessary in your current position. That might seem like nonsense, but it is in fact true. Think of it like this, if it is essential to the company that you continue to maintain the python code you wrote for them, and they can't go to anyone else to get that skill, then they will continue to pay (maybe a little above market rates) to maintain that code.
If however, you write that code in .net where there is a plentiful supply in your area, then as the company expands and the code you've written proves successful, you will be able to hire people to maintain that code and you can move on to designing other systems. Or moving in to managing a team of .net coders - if that's your want.
Even if you want to leave, the best thing for your career is going to be to get the best possible reference. To do that, write them some code that is easy to maintain. Help them hire someone to replace you to maintain it. They will be grateful and recommend you as a consultant to their friends.
Code in something esoteric - for which there is little support in your area - and they will be saying to their friends on the golf course "no don't hire that guy, he wrote this system for us which does the job, but no one else can maintain it. We're stuck with him forever and now he's too busy to look after us properly!"
Do what's best for the business, not what might be of most interest to you - or appear that way on the face of it. You'll win out in the long run.
I think that you're responsible to decide on the language that's best suited for the job. That includes an objective evaluation of the merits of the language and framework, it includes your own personal skill with the language (since you're the one doing the work) and it includes maintainability by others. Only you and your company can decide how much importance to place on each of those.
For your own personal development, if your area is dominated by .net, why don't you want to get up to speed in that instead of Python?
From an ethical standpoint, I would not write something that could not easily be maintained by someone else.
A lot of responses seem to be a poor fit for the question. We're not talking about using an unapproved language in an environment with existing standards. We're talking about a situation where the poster is the entire IT and development department for his company.
It's certainly important to keep in mind availability of talent, but Ruby is hardly a fringe language these days. In an environment where there's only one developer, productivity is also a very important consideration. Being able to build and maintain software quickly and easily without a large team requires tools with different characteristics than a large team might require.
I think what's more important than whether to use Ruby or (something else) is to try to pick something as general-purpose as practical and use it for everything unless there's a really good reason to use something else. If you go with Ruby, stick with Ruby for your utility scripts, cron jobs and that little GUI app the boss wanted to automatically SMS the intern when he takes more than five minutes to bring him his coffee.
I think using python would be the right thing to do if it would meet the clients requirements, and save them money over the alternative. Whether or not there is a wide assortment of characters to work on the application down the road is irrelevant, unless they've specified this as a non-functional requirement.
As usual, using the best tool for the job at hand will serve you well.
It indeed is a bit crooked IF you use it only for that purpose.
However, if you use it because it IS the best solution, youre in the clear.
Also, they can just hire someone else who knows python.
My work ethics dont allow me to do something like this just to keep me in business.
My personal opinion is you should try where possible to respect the working practices of wherever you are - whether that's indentation style, naming convention, testing procedure or programming language.
If you feel strongly that a different language would be better suited for a certain task, then lobby to have it accepted (with the required re-training of others).
Purposefully leaving an app that no one else can maintain is very bad professional conduct, IMO.
We recently had a bad hire at my shop and he decided out of the blue he was going to use Perl instead of any version of .NET to do some simple reporting stuff (That could have just as easily been done in .NET). It was atrocious. I would suggest using the platform as specified and clearing any deviation with the people who run the joint...
Plenty of answers have touched on this, but here's my take based on production application support.
My company had a startup phase where code hustlers whipped up solutions in whatever the personal preference or flavor of the week was. Bad for maintainability and supportability.
Making a change is ok, though, as long as it's consistent. If Python is going to pave the way to the future, then go for it. Don't forget that the legacy .NET and PHP code still needs to be supported until end of life. Building yourself a hodge podge of platforms and frameworks will just create more difficulty for you on the job and the company when you're no longer around.
If you feel in your heart you are acting dishonestly, then you probably are.
No one likes a dishonest person. That can't be good for your reputation.
Do your best to choose based on what is actually best, not what satisfies some underhanded motives.
It depends. I did some of what would normally just be a bash script, in Java instead at one place. Why? Because they're all Java programmers and frequently have interns/coops coming through that may or may not know anything else (and may or may not even be all that great with Java).
Other places though tend to have more experienced programmers and I expect that they'll be able to figure out another language without too much effort. So, I would go with what's "best" for the project.
I agree with what mquander says above, but you may also have to be prepared to justify why you want to use this other language to your development manager. If he/she then agrees, perhaps the language could become more widely adopted within the company.
Think of it in terms of business benefit you bring to the company, now and in the mid-term.
If you can deliver something much faster using a different technology, and it still achieves the goals, I'd go for it - but I'd still let some other people know and respect the company's final decision. If however, it's purely for yourself, then I'd probably be a litte more careful.
I think it's a really bad idea. For you, it means there's no back up in case you want to have a day (or week) off. For them, there's no one else if you leave or are taking a day off. It's a well known ploy, and, honestly, might be reason to not keep you around.
However, this could also be a chance to introduce Python into the environment. You could teach others about it, and explain to management while it's a good third language to have at the group's disposal.
I used to think that you should always pick the right language for the job at work. I'm reversing my opinion though.
The problem arises when some other guy picks a language you don't want to learn. I am concerned that I might be the guy who picks the language no one else wants to learn. Just because I think that Erlang might be the right choice for something doesn't mean that everyone else will want to learn Erlang or respect my decision for using Erlang.
"if I were to leave the company, they'd basically have nobody to maintain/add to it unless they retain on me as a consultant."
Are you saying no one else can learn Python? I find that hard to believe.
New technology is often introduced in small projects by knowledgeable people and diffused through the organization because the small projects were successful.
Use Python. Be successful. Make your case based on your successes.
I had this same problem very often. Coincidentally, it was with those two languages you mention: .NET forced on me, when I preferred to use Python (among others). Could be the opposite, I don't judge.
I refrained to use Python, because of the reasons already mentioned in other answers. I did what I thought was best for the company. Using IronPython won't make your python code any more maintainable for an unexperienced Python programmer.
However, I left the company and now I work in something more in line with my tastes. I'm much happier. In this economy you may not have this option... but it will pass. Do the right thing.
Cheers.
There is a large difference between 'prototype' or 'one-shot' code and production code. For prototyping I use whatever works fastest, but I'm very clear about its status. Production code is written in one of the approved and supported environments.
The ethics is to use the best tool for the job. If there is a tool that takes you only 20% of the time to code vs other choices, and next to no maintenance, and easy to re-factor, you have a duty to pick that tool, assuming it's extensible as you may need in the business.
If you do a good job, hiring future people and training them in terms of HOW your workplace does business should be the practice of any growing business. They will be able to learn the code if they're the right person for the business.
In your case I'm not sure if you want to use Python, unless it has native .NET support to allow your .NET world to interact with it.
Other posters have made some good points, but here's one I've not seen: Communicate the situation to management and let them decide. In other words, talk with your boss and tell him or her that there currently are more .NET developers in your area, so that if you're hit by a bus tomorrow it would easier to find someone else to maintain your code; however, there are tools you need to do your job more efficiently and they cost money (and tell them how much). Alternatively, you could do this in Python or RoR (or whatever) and use free tools, but from what you know, there aren't currently that many people in the area who know those languages. I've used "currently" a couple times here because this may change over time.
Before having this conversation, it might be good to see if you can find user groups for the alternative technology in your area, and how large they are. You could also ask on listserves if there are people who know the alternatives in your area.
Of course, the boss may tell you to keep using .NET without any tools, but in that case it's their decision to shoot themselves in the foot. (And yours to decide if you want to find a new job.)
Regarding the question as asked, I see nothing unethical about it, provided that:
It is a freely-available language. Although I am something of a FOSS partisan, that's not the point of this criterion. It needs to be freely-available (not necessarily FOSS) so that it doesn't impose costs on the company and so that others will have the opportunity to learn it if you ever need to be replaced (or if they want to compete with you for your job).
You are changing languages for solid reasons and not for the sake of creating vendor lock-in (or, if you prefer to think of it as such, "job security"). Ethics aside, you really don't want to have a job where they hate you, but are stuck with you because you're the only one who can maintain the mess you've created anyhow.
In the particular case you've described, I would suggest that switching to RoR may be the more ethical choice, as it would be decidedly unethical (not to mention illegal) to use .NET if there are required resources which are for-pay only and your employer is too cheap frugal to purchase proper licenses for them.
When in Rome... do as the Romans.
You might not be the one who as to maintain this code in the long term and not everyone wants to learn a "fringe language" to make bugfixes or enhancements.
I migrated some VBA stuff over to Perl for processing at a previous job and increased the efficiency by several orders of magnitude, but ultimately no-one else there was willing to learn Perl so I got stuck with that task longer than I wanted it.
I did that, it was Delphi in my case. I think Delphi was used often however when i was looking for a job .... i saw 3 delphi job offers in my whole life. i also saw more java/j2ee/php offers that i can remember. i think its bad idea, with the time i wasted in learning advance delphi programming i could get better with j2ee and start in better company and maybe make now more money.
If they cant find somebody to maintain the app you will always do it and when you quit they will have to re-write it. i think consultant thing is not used often.
I used to be in the "use the best tool for the job" school, but I've changed my mind. It's not enough to just ask "how can I do this job the fastest." If you think you're the only one who will ever need to look at some code, there's a good chance you're mistaken. The total cost of introducing a new language into an environment is higher than you might imagine at first.
If you just need to produce a result, not a program, then you can use whatever you want. Say you need a report or you need to munge some files. If the output is really all that matters, say it's something you could have chosen to do by hand, you can practice using any language you want.
With the release of the MVC Framework I too have been in a similar ethical delema. Use WebForms or switch over to MVC Framework for everything. The answer really is you have to do the right thing and use whatever the standard of the company is. If you deviate from the standard it creates a lot of problems for people.
Think how you would feel if you were dumped a project on VB6 when all you have been doing for years is .Net. So these are the two solutions I have come up with.
Use your fun languages for consulting contracts you do on the side. Make sure the client knows what you are doing and if they agree go for it.
Try and convince your current company to migrate over to this great new language you are working with.
If you follow these routes you will learn your language and not piss anyone off in the process.
Ruby on Rails is certainly not a fringe language. If the company is too cheap to pony up for the appropriate licensing for Microsoft's tools, then you would have no choice but to find an alternative. RoR certainly would be a reasonable choice and if helps move your career along as well, then it's win-win for both of you!
You can develop .NET adequately with free tools; cost is not a good reason to avoid that platform. Ruby on Rails is becoming reasonably mainstream for building data-driven internet websites. You haven't even told us if thats the sort of software you are building though.
There is really no way with the information that you have provided that anyone can give you a single correct answer.
If you are asking is it ethical to do your work in such a way that the company is dependent upon you, of course the answer is no. If you are asking is it ethical to develop in RoR then the answer is "we don't know" - but my opinion is that probably it would be fine if its the right tool for the job.
Don't underestimate the ability of someone else to support your work or replace you though - if you do your work reasonably well once the solution is in place any programmer worth their pay should be able to learn the platform well enough to maintain it. I've debugged, migrated and supported a few PHP applications for example without ever hardly learning the first thing about PHP. I'd be lost building a new PHP app from scratch and would never even try but its no problem to support one. I think the same would be true of the languages you mention as well - they've got the critical mass that means there is plenty of books and forums etc. Of course if its written badly enough in any language then it may be difficult to support regardless of anyone's skill in the language...
So much discussion for such a clear-cut situation...
It's not up to you, it's up to them. If they're not technical enough to make the call, as it seems, then you have to make it for them in good faith. Anything less is dishonest, and I'm fairly sure that's not in your job description ;)
You've muddied the waters with all the wandering about in the thickets of personal motivations. The answer to that one is that your personal motivations are irrelevant unless and until you've formulated the business case for the possible decisions. If you've done that and the answer still isn't clear-cut, then sure, choosing the answer you like the best is one of the nice things about being in a position to make technical decisions in the first place.
As far as the actual question goes, to my mind if the most technically apt choice is also one that very few people work with, one of two things is happening: a) It's a good choice, and the number of people working with it is going to be exploding over the next 18-24 months (e.g. Django), or b) There's something wrong with my analysis. Technologies may be on the fringe because people are slow to adopt them, but that's generally not why they stay on the fringe.
If you find yourself thinking "I can't choose technology X, that'll make it easier for them to replace me!" you're in the wrong line of work. In almost any enterprise that's not actually failing, the IT guy who makes himself easy to replace tends to move up to harder and more interesting and more lucrative work.
I would not bring a new language/framework/whatever into the place unless they understood that's what I was doing, and that if I left/was fired/was hit by a bus, they'd have to find/train someone to work with it.
I have some experience in a contractor pulling in things just because he felt like it. In some cases they were the best tool for the job (in other cases they were not), but in all cases they were not the best tool for the team that had to maintain the code. In my case the contractor was a serious jerk who didn't really give a darn about anyone else and I believe WAS trying to make himself harder to replace.
In your case, talk to your bosses. If they really don't want to spend the needed money on .NET framework tools/libs, then switching to something else may well BE the right thing to do for them, long term.
And, as someone who has spent his career walking into the middle projects that others have already started - thank you for thinking before you add a new tool to the mix.