5 ms·

I read five or six of those boxes and then just snorted in disgust. It looks like a great slide to show suckers if you're a productivity consultant. A sane char

I read five or six of those boxes and then just snorted in disgust. It looks like a great slide to show suckers if you're a productivity consultant. A sane chart would be less verbose, and more depressing. You can code your whole life, and still have struggles with pointers, threads, algorithms, new languages, etc. The majority of coders wouldn't even rank in the first column. I'm not a complete dummy but it took me a year before I could instinctively avoid "off-by-one" errors in loops, and almost ten years just to learn to name variables in a relatively self-documenting fashion.

circlefavshape 12y ago
Haha - the older I get the more I agree with the catchphrase about variable naming being one of the hard problems of programming. Get that right and so many other problems never even arise
- collyw 12y ago
  I would agree with you if you are talking about halfway decent programmers. I have seen some really poor code that naming conventions wouldn't save.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
hitchhiker999 12y ago
I remember I figured out 'interfaces' about 5 years after starting to deal with them. I'm not proud of that. I had no books, so... still. I also occasionally double-take on an 'off-by-one', and happily will spend 2 hours tracking down a rookie mistake I've made. Half the crap they ask you at an interview (thankfully haven't had to do one in 15 years) I wouldn't recognise, but would have probably done IRL about 1000 times. Cliche as it is - the better you get, the more you realise how little you know.
- charlesism 12y ago
  I paused before I wrote "instinctively avoid" actually, because I didn't want to imply that I never get caught out anymore. But I was thinking back to my early days - I vividly remember complaining to myself "why didn't they make the first element 1!" Hey, maybe I was right, I don't have the perspective anymore. Like all of you, I've internalized counting up from 0 to the point where it seems like the only sane thing to do.
  - hitchhiker999 12y ago
    Yes, I never thought of that way. I remember once feeling a moment of confusion IRL: "Please go to window 2 sir.." -> "*but there's only 2 .. ahh ..ok.." - just that ever so slight moment of brain fail. It was similar to the feeling of needing to weave left and right when you walk down the street after playing 20 hours of games that have a good sniper class.

circlefavshape 12y ago

Haha - the older I get the more I agree with the catchphrase about variable naming being one of the hard problems of programming. Get that right and so many other problems never even arise

collyw 12y ago
I would agree with you if you are talking about halfway decent programmers. I have seen some really poor code that naming conventions wouldn't save.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

hitchhiker999 12y ago

I remember I figured out 'interfaces' about 5 years after starting to deal with them. I'm not proud of that. I had no books, so... still. I also occasionally double-take on an 'off-by-one', and happily will spend 2 hours tracking down a rookie mistake I've made. Half the crap they ask you at an interview (thankfully haven't had to do one in 15 years) I wouldn't recognise, but would have probably done IRL about 1000 times. Cliche as it is - the better you get, the more you realise how little you know.

charlesism 12y ago
I paused before I wrote "instinctively avoid" actually, because I didn't want to imply that I never get caught out anymore. But I was thinking back to my early days - I vividly remember complaining to myself "why didn't they make the first element 1!" Hey, maybe I was right, I don't have the perspective anymore. Like all of you, I've internalized counting up from 0 to the point where it seems like the only sane thing to do.
- hitchhiker999 12y ago
  Yes, I never thought of that way. I remember once feeling a moment of confusion IRL: "Please go to window 2 sir.." -> "*but there's only 2 .. ahh ..ok.." - just that ever so slight moment of brain fail. It was similar to the feeling of needing to weave left and right when you walk down the street after playing 20 hours of games that have a good sniper class.