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I agree most programmers are too quick to write before they read, but I'm not sure why it has to be "for fun". Reading code takes effort, just like understandin

I agree most programmers are too quick to write before they read, but I'm not sure why it has to be "for fun". Reading code takes effort, just like understanding any new complex thing. The primary virtue here is patience. It's a lot like debugging actually: the goal is to understand. Setting aside the "for fun", of course I read my co-workers' code, but also I read my dependencies' code quite often. In particular when you have something that is meant to be extended, the docs never completely cover all the use cases, and the quickest way can be to start reading. Some examples from my own recent work are reading code from the Ruby gems devise, devise_token_auth, and spree, and also reading Django class-based views (all things meant to be extended). One trick I've learned in Ruby is `cd $(bundle show spree_core)`. From there you can grep, find, read, even add your own `puts` or whatever. Actually I have been reading some code for fun: Postgres! I have an extension that adds temporal foreign keys, and I'm slowing porting it from plpgsql to C. Reading the code for standard foreign keys is very helpful. Same thing for a lot of other extensions I've written in the last few years. It has helped me a ton to read others' extensions and the core code.

Kagerjay 9y ago
This is what I've been working on for the past few months. I've been writing a lot of spaghetti code in the past and come back to find how poorly I organized it. I'm suppressing the urge to immediately write code, but rather, look at the big picture first, digesting the information, even if it means prolonging writing anything for a day or several hours. I usually write pseudocode first before doing anything now. Either on paper, as code comments, or as a list. Sometimes I find myself writing tests on paper as well, it helps out a lot too. A programming language is just a means to an end, what they all have in common is a set of logic to follow. Then I debug. I just fork the code, comment things out, add a little bit of functionality, etc. When I have a grasp on it write some TDD I find the easiest codebase that I refer a lot is the todomvc, or any similar ones that have different implementations (differnet languages) for the same general solution. All the core logic between languages is mostly the same, so its easy to dig through and understand a different programming language / how its generally organized. One thing I remember learning about from experience polyglot programmers. Its extremely helpful to have an existing codebase you've written (such as todoMVC), and using that same example / porting it over in a different language to learn that languages nuances.

Kagerjay 9y ago

This is what I've been working on for the past few months. I've been writing a lot of spaghetti code in the past and come back to find how poorly I organized it. I'm suppressing the urge to immediately write code, but rather, look at the big picture first, digesting the information, even if it means prolonging writing anything for a day or several hours. I usually write pseudocode first before doing anything now. Either on paper, as code comments, or as a list. Sometimes I find myself writing tests on paper as well, it helps out a lot too. A programming language is just a means to an end, what they all have in common is a set of logic to follow. Then I debug. I just fork the code, comment things out, add a little bit of functionality, etc. When I have a grasp on it write some TDD I find the easiest codebase that I refer a lot is the todomvc, or any similar ones that have different implementations (differnet languages) for the same general solution. All the core logic between languages is mostly the same, so its easy to dig through and understand a different programming language / how its generally organized. One thing I remember learning about from experience polyglot programmers. Its extremely helpful to have an existing codebase you've written (such as todoMVC), and using that same example / porting it over in a different language to learn that languages nuances.