Programming

[xela]

I am not a great computer programmer. Many of my friends are great programmers, and including some who are world class. This has occasionally made me feel like I'm a crappy programmer, and if I go long enough without talking to anyone outside the MIT community about technical stuff, I can get to where I feel downright stupid.

A few months ago a friend, who's a working programmer but not one of my superhacker friends, asked me to look over some code they were failing to find a bug in.

I'm really not a programmer, you know....
Just look. Fresh pair of eyes and all that.
What's this language? I've never seen it
Special purpose language for this thing....
Hm. This variable — you're not testing for greater than foo.
Can't happen.
[After I spend a few minutes looking over the rest of the program, tracing the logic.]
I'm not convinced. Try just printing an error message if it's greater than foo...

It turned out that the "can't happen" case was happening. And I remembered that I don't actually suck at this stuff. I may not be a genius at it, but I'm not hopeless either.

This in turn encouraged me to think about maybe trying to improve my skills. About a month ago, I came across Project Euler

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

The motivation for starting Project Euler, and its continuation, is to provide a platform for the inquiring mind to delve into unfamiliar areas and learn new concepts in a fun and recreational context.

What's not clear from that is that there's an extent to which it's structured like a game. Today, I finished level zero.

Bravo, xela! Now that you have solved 25 problems you have achieved what 79.71% of members have failed to do and have advanced to level 1. Good luck as you continue.

Comments

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

Hmm. From a game design perspective, I think they need to do some more play-testing of the game if only 20% of players get past level 0. I mean, for SF0, you just have to do one task to get to level 1.

[hlinspjalda.livejournal.com]

Rock on! Good for you.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Well done! It's easy to compare yourself only with the world-class people in your field and to forget that you're actually rather good.

[danj17.livejournal.com]

ok, i could see that site being really addictive....

[danj17.livejournal.com]

oh, and that's one of the nice things (and one of the bad things) about being in consulting. i routinely get reminded that there are people out there that are, well, not in the MIT community. :-)

you still jobhunting?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

... there are people out there that are, well, not in the MIT community....

It's not even that. Six or seven years ago, when Tibbetts still worked for me (he was just promoted to CTO at his company last month, BTW), I made a comment one day about how I sucked as a coder. "You don't actually suck — you're about average for MIT people. It's just that your idea of normal is skewed. Look at who you hang out with: Robby, Eichin, me....

you still jobhunting?

Rather desperately at this point.