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I learned to program by reading code others had written. This was way before college. By the time I got to college, I had years of experience reading Perl scrip
by wooster 17y ago
I learned to program by reading code others had written. This was way before college. By the time I got to college, I had years of experience reading Perl scripts and very complex C networking programs.
If there's one thing I would fix in CS curricula, it would be to make students read more code. When I was at Apple, I wrote a lot of software to make it easier for Apple employees to read code that other people in the company had written. That software has since been called "the most important thing to happen to software engineering at Apple, ever" by someone who is very high up in the org. chart.
I have written a lot of code, and that has made me a good programmer. Reading a lot of code, however, has been even more important.
- pmjordan 17y agoWhen I was at Apple, I wrote a lot of software to make it easier for Apple employees to read code that other people in the company had written. This idea of improving the reading/understanding experience with software is something I've tinkered with, without much success, so your story intrigues me. If you can say & don't mind, what sort of approach does/did that software take?
- mechanical_fish 17y agoIt makes sense. Writing prose works the same way. Learning to write is all about reading. One thing I've noticed is that I like to reread. I get through a lot fewer classic books than many of my obsessive-reader friends because I take time to revisit books over and over. And it occurs to me that this, too, is a key activity in writing: One must read sentences and paragraphs again and again to refine them.