In order to become proficient at any activity, a person needs four things: aptitude interest knowledge skills To some extent, you should be able to judge a person’s proficiency by measuring each of the four attributes. The first of these is the only one that a person has no control over. If you don’t have… Read More »
Code Complete Steve McConnell Microsoft Press, 2004 Ever since I learned that a new edition of Code Complete was to be released, I have been looking forward to it. The first edition has been one of the most comprehensive books on the actual practice of writing code. We see a large number of books on… Read More »
Contrary to expectations, many programmers do not solve problems through logic. This should not be surprising, as the same is true of humans in general. But many programmers I’ve known whole-heartedly disagree with that comment. I’ve noticed that many really good programmers are extremely good at pattern recognition and solve many problems through a creative… Read More »
What is it about programmers that cause them to latch onto one approach and try to apply it to every problem? Maybe it’s a characteristic of people in general. Each new paradigm, methodology, or even language seems to grab hold of many programmers and make them forget anything they ever knew. They seem to develop… Read More »
Recently, I stumbled across Mental State Called Flow and was reminded of an idea I had about flow and Miller’s Magic Number. When in the state of flow, I’ve sometimes had the experience that the problem I was working on was much easier to understand than it seemed to be when I was not in… Read More »
Like any natural language, most programming languages support idioms. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, an idiom is A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on. A… Read More »
Programming Pearls, Second Edition Jon Bentley ACM Press, Addison-Wesley, 2000 One of my favorite programming books of all time now has a second edition. I’ve got to say it’s as good as the original. Many years ago, I stumbled across Jon Bentley’s Programming Pearls. It is a great book on programming. It did not focus… Read More »