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That’s… interesting. Stephen King advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot. I’s say same goes for developers. Even if you read a lousy code you can at least
by rimliu 8y ago
That’s… interesting. Stephen King advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot. I’s say same goes for developers. Even if you read a lousy code you can at least anslyse what makes it lousy and how can it be improved. Reading good code will reinforce the understanding what good code is and might give some ideas for the future.
Hating reading other’s code is a sign if the still novice programmer. Imho, of course.
- alexhutcheson 8y agoReading code I perceive as "lousy" and sometimes stepping through it with a debugger has often been a great learning experience for me. Sometimes I even realize that I'm wrong, and "lousy" design decisions were actually chosen to solve some tricky problem. More often it was just written in a hurry, or written before more modern libraries were available, but reading it still helps me improve my brain's "pattern-matching engine" for next time I see something similar.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoTo expand on that, I really like this quote by William Faulkner, and I think it really extends nicely to coding as well: “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”