A subject that comes up regularly is whether or not a formal Computer Science education makes better developers. I’ve worked with people with various levels of education/training Overall, I have seen no strong correlation between programming ability and level of formal CS education. Honestly, I haven’t seen a strong correlation between any of the different… Read More »
If you aren’t learning, you are falling behind The field is constantly moving. New languages, new tools, new processes. You don’t need to learn all of them, but keeping up with what changes is useful. Work on code in your free time The best programmers I know have spent a lot of free time working… Read More »
I’ve spent a fair portion of my career teaching and mentoring other programmers. Some of this training involves covering basic programming and design concepts that they may not have learned previously. When covering a fundamental concept, I often defer to books written by people much smarter than I am rather than explain the concept myself.… Read More »
I began this series on Least Common Denominator Code (LCDC) with The Myth of Code Anyone Can Read. In the posts that followed I attempted to show how this kind of code is not actually possible in a real development shop. I’ve shown how different code should be written for different audiences, and how real… Read More »
In The Myth of Code Anyone Can Read, I introduced the idea that least common denominator code (LCDC) is not a good approach to writing software. One reason for this problem is caused by the knowledge base of your average programmer. Different Programmers Have Different Backgrounds Programming is still a relatively new field. It’s also… Read More »
It’s not a big surprise that most programmers feel that the most important result of writing code is the code itself. Other people might argue that while the code is important, other things are more important: Results of the execution of the code Money made by selling the program Business value realized by running the… Read More »
There are a few reasons that Best Practices get specified in a profession. Provide standards for judging proposed solutions. Provide cover for unforeseen circumstances. Provide a starting point for discussions to improve the state of the art even more. Help more junior people make better decisions before they fully understand the field. Applied to software,… Read More »
At the beginning of last year, I wrote Programming for/by Kids talking about my experience getting my young son programming using the Scratch language. Shortly after I wrote that piece, he lost interest and stopped. As usual, something else caught his attention and he was off working on that. When I noticed that he wasn’t… Read More »
This week, there was an interesting post on Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror blog. This essay was on Shuffling. Shuffling is an application of random numbers, which is a particular interest of mine. I will write more on that subject in an upcoming essay. One of the comments caught my eye because it echoed a sentiment… Read More »
A couple of years ago, I wrote in The IP Goose about some effects that too strict an IP policy can have on developers. In the intervening two years, I’ve had some other insights that I believe are important. First of all, I stand by my original essay. Companies should be able to protect the… Read More »