How do I become a super programmer?

DavidNohejl

peterchen wrote:

Code Complete, 2nd edition

Hey that's xmas present I gave to myself. :cool:

"Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. " - Morpheus

Lost User

Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:

Is it really worth it?

Yeah, when I type code it just feels so good, its hard to describe.

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David Wulff

Hello Nnamdi, you've been quite a stranger recently. How are things?

Ðavid Wulff What kind of music should programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

peterchen

Captain See SharpIt looks fun and easy to read.

It looks like, but that attitude will certainly not make you an excellent programmer :) It takes years and is hard work. Code Complete is a good guidebook, but you still need to find your way through the jungle yourself. But this isn't to discourage you - just so you take your plan serious enough to make it.

Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Velopers, Develprs, Developers!
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
Linkify!|Fold With Us!

peterchen

excellent choice ;) I'm reading it with a pencil because I sometimes disagree strngly, but it's "cstructive disagreement".

Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Velopers, Develprs, Developers!
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
Linkify!|Fold With Us!

David Wulff

In that case you really need to supplement typing code with other hobbies. I'm not being rude, but you really don't want it to develop as an addiction. Experience is the only thing that will help you, and the only way you can get that is through varied exposure to programming. Do you have a job as a developer? If not then finding one where you can work on varied tasks with huge amounts of pressure should give you the rewards you seek without becoming too overbearing, and the opportunities for advancement should fall at your feet. That said, at some point you will need to specialise. No one wants a jack of all trades and no one offering the sort of rewards you want will offer it to one. Specialising within your own area will be considerably more rewarding and open a lot more doors for you.

Ðavid Wulff What kind of music should programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

Lost User

peterchen wrote:

It looks like, but that attitude will certainly not make you an excellent programmer

But it is, its a more relaxing and enlightening that the super nittygritty hard core books.

peterchen wrote:

It takes years and is hard work. Code Complete is a good guidebook, but you still need to find your way through the jungle yourself. But this isn't to discourage you - just so you take your plan serious enough to make it.

I've been programming for about 7 years now. I have never been really serious about it until a couple years ago, no one can discourage me from programming. I have even tried to learn x86 assembler but that was much to much for me.

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Ray Kinsella

:troll:

Regards Ray "Je Suis Mort De Rire" Blogging @ Keratoconus Watch

Lost User

David Wulff wrote:

In that case you really need to supplement typing code with other hobbies. I'm not being rude, but you really don't want it to develop as an addiction.

Why? :|

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Lost User

Ray Kinsella wrote:

:troll:

There is no such smiley.

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Nnamdi Onyeyiri

Things are good, just been doing the whole uni thing, tended to be doing less stuff with computers (other than courseworks) recently, busy with other things. What have I missed here? dropped by the other day to find somebody leaving and posting guidelines about, although they seem to have been removed :suss: Its coming up to exam time now, so obviously im finding any and all means of not doing work, and am here.

website //profile Another Post by NnamdiOnyeyiri

alex barylski

Hmmm...KISS??? Usually I find the simplest designs as the most excellent example of a super programmer... If I can go in and begin understanding code immediately (better yet the architecture) I consider that something super!!! Cheers :)

It's frustrating being a genius and living the life of a moron!!!

Lost User

Hockey wrote:

KISS???

What? How about a high five instead?

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Christian Graus

If you want super powers, buy comic books. If you want to improve yourself, focus on what you can do better today, instead of some far off and mystical goal that you can't possibly achieve at this point. The trick, IMO, is to always try to do things as well as you can, and to look for ways to do things better. Code Complete is a great suggestion, whoever made it. But, it's a book. It's not going to make you better, YOU will make you better by both reading and applying it. And, that's just one book, although it's a good one. Look for any opportunity to be the best you can, if it's through books, through things you read in forums, or whatever. The end result won't be what you described, but it will mean that you will be improving yourself, and if you know you're doing the best that you could, because you worked at it, then you should be happy with that.

Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog

Christian Graus

Stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog

Christian Graus

Hockey wrote:

KISS

I listen to KISS sometimes, I don't find it improves my code :P

Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog

Matt Gullett

Some of the responses you have received seem a little harsh in my mind. Shooting for the stars and having dreams is rarely a bad thing. It sounds like you have a passion for programming and truly desire to be "great" at it. Some more established programmers may feel that your dream is unreasonable and unattainable (a fantasy) partly due to their personal experiences. I for one don't think that at all. There are a few truly super programmers out there, but most of us are merely good at what we do, and some are just abysmal. There are many reasons for this, but few of them are technical. The reason people become "super" at anything has to do with something inside them, not necessarily inherent in what they do. Jim Collins has written several excellent books on what causes some companies to succeed (Good to Great, Built to Last, Level 5 Leaders, etc). The things that make companies succeed has allot to do with what makes succesful people. A personal drive for excellence, an unwaivering belief in ones goals (not necessarily the path to those goals), and many more things affect this. My advice to you is to first reallize that a super programmer is more than a coder. (This is an assumption about you based on my experience with many other programmers. It may not be true, but your enthusiasm reminds me of this.) A super programmer is someone who not only understand how to read (yes read) and write code, but someone who knows what code to read and what code to write. This is the truly tricky part. Also, communicating your ideas to others is critical to becoming "super". There are litteraly tens of thousands of algorithms, tens of thousands of techniques, etc. None of them matter until you understand what it is you are supposed to be doing in the first place. After you make the leap from coder to full time "listener, problem solver, communicator, constant student, strategizer", and part-time "coder", your journey will be on the right path. From there, it takes years of experience, preferably the help of a mentor, lots of mistakes and mis-steps and no doubt many other major setbacks. Over time, you will inperceptibly improve until one day you will wake up and remember your desire long ago to become "a super programmer", and will realize that your desire was not a destination, but a direction and you are moving in the right one. That's my 2 cents. Good luck with your dream.

Chris Losinger

1-800-the-devl

image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging

Raj Lal

Marc Clifton wrote:

By starting off being a mediocre one, and programming, programming, programming!

This is the only way :)

Marc Clifton wrote:

And then one day waking up and realizing that the trick to writing the most complex systems imaginable is to make them out of the most simplest pieces possible.

you can say that again. this is the best answer anyone can get

Omit Needless Words - Strunk, William, Jr.

Mairaaj Khan

Marc Clifton wrote:

I for one know a couple people that definitely meet the criteria of being able to rapidly think up an elegant design to a highly complex problem. These people are geniuses, and I'm amazed at how quickly they can reduce a problem down to essential issues, think of the problem from numerous angles simultaneously, and see how it affects the current architecture and usability, and all so fast they can't hardly articulate their thoughts. So no, I don't think what he's asking is impossible.

Agreed *****

________________________________ Success is not something to wait for, its something to work for.