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Re: Second rate programmers and my confession

by webfiend (Vicar)
on Jun 06, 2002 at 07:01 UTC ( [id://172088]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Second rate programmers and my confession

Definitely ++ on this and most of the followup comments!

Most of my programming jobs have been of the "lone coder" variety, where somebody handed me a task and left me alone except for weekly checkins ("Looks cool! Does it parse Japanese and Chinese yet?"). Good for the ego, but poison for learning more than the occasional tidbit.

I've had exactly one development job where I worked daily on the same project as another programmer. In the 6 months there, I became comfortable with CPAN, references, OO Perl, HTML::Template, CGI.pm, use strict, and the -w flag. I also learned a lot of non-Perl things: Apache configuration, code reviews, and the technique of swearing loudly at the computer as a stress release mechanism. Mind you, this was my first full-time development position, but I suspect that the learning rate would be similar in another job working in a close team.

I am very happy to note that Perlmonks is a comparable environment. Every day I come in and see people doing things in Perl that never even occurred to me. And it doesn't stop at Perl, either. Reading tilly's old comments sparked an interest in LISP, which I've started playing with today - mostly to take a break from re-reading Programming Perl :-).

Anyways - I'm definitely "aspiring", and it's nice to be around others who are aspiring or already there.


"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."-- Mark Twain

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Re: Re: Second rate programmers and my confession
by TGI (Parson) on Jun 09, 2002 at 22:39 UTC

    I'm in the lone coder role now. Perlmonks is a great resource for taking up the slack left by the absence of other programmers.

    I also recommend checking out code that's available online. Even crap can teach you. Once, I found an idiom I used often in a piece of frighteningly bad CGI off the net--this discovery caused me to carefully analyze what I was doing in that code, and I found that it could generate some obscure errors. Other code has been education for the complete opposite reason.

    I have also been addressing the issue by training a few of my coworkers. This has helped me by forcing me to clarify my understanding of various bits of 'elementary' perl. One of my proteges has matured into a programmer capable of using OO Perl. We need to start doing code reviews for each other. I've got two more pupils coming along, with another person expressing interest. One of them looks like he may surpass my level of ability fairly quickly. It will be good to have someone on hand to bug with questions.


    TGI says moo

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