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This is the lifestyle to which I aspire. Can you provide your “most helpful tip” that got you to this place?

redleggedfrog 4y ago
comfypotato, sorry for the delay in replying, I only read Hacker News morning and evening. Hmm, a single "most helpful tip" - that's tricky. Okay, how about, "read a lot of code and write a lot of code". Thing is, I really like programming, and would do it even if I wasn't paid. Early on, way back in the DOS days, I wrote most of the programs I used - contact manager, calendar, compy automation and so on, in C, then C++. Then when Windows came along I wrote the same things in Borland Delphi. When I want to learn something, I spent a fair amount of time studying up front, but I learn way faster just starting to write something. Walking through with a debugger tells you a lot more than docs. Professionally it has been much the same. I work on a lot of legacy systems. I learn the code, usually by debugging, and then when asked to do something, I usually refactor to be more modern and reusable, and then do that reuse when possible. I'm not really a neophile so if I have a bunch of services I've used for 5 years that work great I'll just keep using them. Everything gets done with an eye for re-usability. I love solid code I can depend on. Also, I keep really, really, stringent coding standards for myself, and the Dev team is mostly the same. We've agreed to these as a group, so we code review everything for SOLID, KISS, and conformity to our code review guidelines. It makes reading code a lot easier. I hope that helps.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Thank you very much for this thoughtful reply. I can very much relate to enjoying programming; it's a hobby. It would be nice if everyone could make a living off of their hobby like I do (guitar playing, for example), but I'll be content with my lot on this. Seems like I could break your "tip" down into "write a lot of code" with an honorable mention to "coding standards help".

comfypotato, sorry for the delay in replying, I only read Hacker News morning and evening. Hmm, a single "most helpful tip" - that's tricky. Okay, how about, "read a lot of code and write a lot of code". Thing is, I really like programming, and would do it even if I wasn't paid. Early on, way back in the DOS days, I wrote most of the programs I used - contact manager, calendar, compy automation and so on, in C, then C++. Then when Windows came along I wrote the same things in Borland Delphi. When I want to learn something, I spent a fair amount of time studying up front, but I learn way faster just starting to write something. Walking through with a debugger tells you a lot more than docs. Professionally it has been much the same. I work on a lot of legacy systems. I learn the code, usually by debugging, and then when asked to do something, I usually refactor to be more modern and reusable, and then do that reuse when possible. I'm not really a neophile so if I have a bunch of services I've used for 5 years that work great I'll just keep using them. Everything gets done with an eye for re-usability. I love solid code I can depend on. Also, I keep really, really, stringent coding standards for myself, and the Dev team is mostly the same. We've agreed to these as a group, so we code review everything for SOLID, KISS, and conformity to our code review guidelines. It makes reading code a lot easier. I hope that helps.

comfypotato 4y ago
Thank you very much for this thoughtful reply. I can very much relate to enjoying programming; it's a hobby. It would be nice if everyone could make a living off of their hobby like I do (guitar playing, for example), but I'll be content with my lot on this. Seems like I could break your "tip" down into "write a lot of code" with an honorable mention to "coding standards help".