I have to say that I agree with the article on 'screwing the algorithms and data structures'. Sure, if you want to be a good, successful programmer, you need t

I have to say that I agree with the article on 'screwing the algorithms and data structures'. Sure, if you want to be a good, successful programmer, you need to know your algorithms and data structures, inside out, back to front, whilst underwater being surrounded by sharks. This is far more important than being up-to-date with language X or framework Y. However (and this is a big however), the letter is targeted at people who are thinking about learning to program, in which case it's important for them to actually achieve something quickly, so that they will be encouraged to continue. When I started to program (at the grand age of 3), I wrote absolutely terrible programs in BBC-Basic. For years I wrote lines and lines of code without a single function, procedure or subroutine. Even Arrays, lists and such were beyond me. I didn't care though. I had written stuff that worked. I had created text based adventure games that the computer would play with me. To a young kid, that feeling of power, creativity and success was like a drug, and I was addicted. If instead, I'd spent ages reading books to work out whether I should be using quicksort or radixsort, or whether my Hashmap would scale well enough, I'd have gotten bored and never written anything, and probably become an accountant.