Showing posts with label Self-Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self-Development. Show all posts

Sunday, 5 July 2015

How often do you deliberately read code?

I am currently reading the book 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and I come across again to the most obvious but less followed advice ever.
You should read more code!
I like reading technical books and this is not the first time I see this advice.

Are you deliberately reading other people code?

I personally read snippets of code in books, in online videos and of course I read and review code written by my colleagues at work.

Is it enough?

I don't think so.

Code in books or online courses are just snippets so they can helps you to learn a specific technology or best practise but they do not help in teaching you how to read an entire code base or quickly jump into a new project.

Code at work is surely a source of learning but often you just read the code related to the task at hand instead of learning the overall project.
Programmers are writers. 
Great writers read books. 
Great programmers read code.
To make things harder, there are no books on the market teaching you how to read code, how to learn a code base from scratch and be productive quickly. This is a question I asked often and I rarely found an answer. 

Why some people are so good in jumping in on a new project?

They surely know the language and the technologies but more importantly they are used to read code, they can read and understand code quickly!

This is something you need to learn by doing.

There is no alternative. 

Saturday, 3 May 2014

Becoming an Outlier: Reprogramming the Developer Mind

I finished to watch an awesome course on Pluralsight from Cory House
This course is not intended for everyone but only for the people who really love their work and want to become the best they can be.

Cory created a website to lunch a movement of developers who don't want to be average!

The manifesto contains three simple statements:
  • I’m not interested in being average. I’m out to be exceptional. 
  • I’m not waiting to be picked. I’m actively creating opportunities. 
  • I’m commanding my time so I can own my trajectory and maximize my impact.
I really like the quotation he used to describe himself.
"If it’s work, we try to do less. If it’s art, we try to do more." - Seth Godin
Software is my art. 
He really inspired me. Are you?