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Discussion on: What would you like people to know about programming?

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thomasjunkos profile image
Thomas Junkツ • Edited

Just a few points:

  • you are spending the least of your time actually coding

  • writing good code requires a lot of practice

  • reading code requires a lot more practice

  • code isn't done, when the problem is solved

  • sometimes it is more productive to delete lines of code instead of adding

  • beware of "this is draft code which will be changed later" - later easily becomes "never"

  • being new to a codebase introduce new paradigms and technologies carefully - perhaps the guy before you did and the guy before that did and that is the reason for the mess looking at you and giving you the urge of "having to clean up"

  • every line of code has a reason why it is like it is - although the reason was that the one who wrote it, did not knew better at the moment

  • do not be afraid to google - everybody does; but the experts use smarter queries

  • every programming language sucks

  • every programming language is dead - some are dead for decades

  • do not read »Why I left x for y« posts. They are only prequels to »Why I left y and came back to x - new sides of an old love«

  • do not read posts about »Why x is faster than y« because most people suck at benchmarking - unless you are Brendan Gregg or read a post from Brendan Gregg about benchmarking

  • stop writing to-do-list-apps in your sparetime unless you are doing a todo list on all the languages you want to write a todo-list-app in

  • learn languages you love - you will be good at it!

  • resist job offers for languages you do not love - it will suck and good payment doesn't help

  • be lazy - automate the hell out of your workflow. Machines have no bad days.

  • try to write as less code as possible to make lazy readers happy and bugs having a hard time to hide. Remember: »If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.« Edsger Dijkstra.

  • Do not outsmart yourself: »Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?« Brian Kernighan

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

I'm good a benchmarking and profiling. I tell all my interview candidates to stop worrying about optimization. I tell my colleagues they're measuring wrong. It's hard. Sounds like a good chapter on its own.

Ah yes, the love affair with todo lists.

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thomasjunkos profile image
Thomas Junkツ

Depending on the language, the JIT (-Compiler) optimizes the code anyway - until it doesn't :D

It's hard

Yes. I tell people to write decent code - the compiler does the rest.