What does it takes to become a good programmer ?

[NordComputer]

Definitely education is not the most important point - many (if not most) programmers creating innovative and fancy applications (at least ones that we know) either have a degree in something other than CS, or haven't finished college at all. No, I am not trying to say CS education is worthless; I am trying to say it's not necessary - of course, it teaches you some nifty algorythms and how you can use them, but if you're a programmer at heart, that can be learnt by yourself, on per-need basis.

What a programmer needs is patience. Many things work right away, but most of them don't. Most of them don't work right even after you spent whole day trying to figure out why the heck the particular chunk of code does -almost- what you wanted, but not -exactly- what it is supposed to do.

Another important thing is dedication. You cannot write code if you're not focused and dedicated. You can write code if you're distracted, and that code may even work, but it will not be beautiful.

And probably the most important programmer's "feature" is stamina. Let me explain what I mean. It is often nice and interesting to make something that works, but when you get to the fine tuning, brushing up, and wrapping of the basic functionality you just did, it often gets plain boring. I know plenty of programmers who stop at that point, drop the project and let it collect dust in hopes he'll have the guts to finish it "sometime". The most sad thing, though, is that "sometime" never happens. These folks are bright, and their ideas are amazing, but they gave up when they faced the tedious part of the project. There are no projects that are not boring at some point - yet if you know how to defeat yourself and force the work, you'll succeed. If you don't want to try, you will not.

And a few words on the last thing, which I don't know if it is good or bad - perfectionism. If you're a perfectionist, your project is all shiny, bright, and you keep licking it up until you're totally satisfied with it. But there's a great chance you'll get tired licking it up, and end up dropping the project being unsatisfied. On the other hand, if you don't care about quality of your product at all, probably nobody will care about the product as well. So I guess the important part there is balance between being a perfectionist and being not. In the other words, brush up your project until it feels acceptable, then release it, or there's a great chance you'll never do.

Overall, for me, being a programmer is fun. But I guess that's what most of people will tell me - it is fun being a professional in any field.

[simiking]

In addition to the above excellent article, you need to have


1.) Good people skills to get along with your colleagues and managers and all the political minefield

2.) You need good communication skills to present the value in the work you are doing

3.) You also need good problem solving skills.


You should refer to this additional article to get more insite on what programming is like: "Learn The Advantages/Disadvantages of a programming career: at <b> it-career-coach.com/blogs/programmers/archive/2006/10/18/Learn-the-Pros-and-Cons-of-Computer-Programming-First-If-You-Aspire-To-a-Career-in-Programming.aspx </b>

[harry]

Also, a good programmer should be a good listener; he should understand the need of the client and should be polite enough to answer the queries.
He should be well acquainted with the software he is using and should be able to point out pros and cons of the product to his client.

[kev woodman]

...and lazy. Laziness is a good quality in a programmer. Code re-use, good organisation, not re-inventing the wheel, all good behaviours and all attributable to laziness.

I'd say that Nord is probably right about CS degrees not being necessary but I'd argue that most programmers are graduates of some sort and what a CS degree does give you is a wider grounding in the industry. Most CS degrees do not concentrate on programming per se but cover things like design patterns, systems analysis and design etc, all of which are difficult to pick up as you go along. And of course having a CS degree helps you get a programming job if that's what you want to do. In the UK there are a lot of companies that are now complaining about the lack of CS graduates.

[Rodney]

Good tips for those who are interested in programming.
I do think that apart from proper CS degree there should be a lot of awareness generated among the young lads to develop their interest in the field of programming.

[kev woodman]

What about young lasses?

[chris]

I think Rod forgot them but he’ll definitely have an answer for this.

[sanderson]

Originally Posted by kev woodman

What about young lasses?

Interested in lasses What is so special about them?

[kev woodman]

Well shouldn't we be encouraging young lasses to program as well?

[ouahabix]

I would like to add also a simple quote:
Look at the FREELANCERS then at THE PROFESSIONAL PRGRAMMERS (Graduated)

Look at "microsoft.com and then at " sourceforge.net "

Look at Kevin Mitnick and at ...... UNIVERSITY Graduated.

You decide who's better and who's more successful

As I said always : A programmer is a gifted guy not a certificated one and Life is great.

_____________________________
I got nothing from the university but from the net I've learnt a lot

[kev woodman]

Kevin Mitnick is not a good programmer. He became notorious for being a hacker and a lot of the stuff that has been said about him is nonsense.

Freelancers are not the opposite of professional programmers. Many freelancers are professional programmers (in the sense that you use the word). In fact you are more likely to find work as a freelancer if you have qualifications than if you don't.

On what basis would you want to compare Sourceforge and Microsoft. If you are talking about the Web sites then I woudl say that neither are particularly great examples. If you're really talking about the open source movement vs closed-source software then I'd say that closed-source still largely wins out. I'm all for free software but Open Office just does not compare to MS Office 2007 and the Gimp is light years behind Photoshop CS3. Plus many of the open source developers will of course be university graduates.

I take issue with the whole 'programmers are gifted' idea that you see floated around. It suggests that programmers are somehow born being able to program when it's actually an engineering discipline that takes hard work and dedication.

[ouahabix]

Originally Posted by kev woodman

Kevin Mitnick is not a good programmer. He became notorious for being a hacker and a lot of the stuff that has been said about him is nonsense.

Freelancers are not the opposite of professional programmers. Many freelancers are professional programmers (in the sense that you use the word). In fact you are more likely to find work as a freelancer if you have qualifications than if you don't.

On what basis would you want to compare Sourceforge and Microsoft. If you are talking about the Web sites then I woudl say that neither are particularly great examples. If you're really talking about the open source movement vs closed-source software then I'd say that closed-source still largely wins out. I'm all for free software but Open Office just does not compare to MS Office 2007 and the Gimp is light years behind Photoshop CS3. Plus many of the open source developers will of course be university graduates.

I take issue with the whole 'programmers are gifted' idea that you see floated around. It suggests that programmers are somehow born being able to program when it's actually an engineering discipline that takes hard work and dedication.

How are you doing Kev, I think we should go back to the meaning of a Hacker and you can reffer to Richard Stallman defintion (The Father of GNU) to be a hacker you must be a skillful programmer who knows more then the others, may be kevin was specialized in electronics stuffs but don't forget the period that he spent with STEVE JOBS at apples what proves he was.

And yeah the FREELANCERS can be PROFESSIONAL GRDUATED programmers from Colleges and Universities but the fact is that the most of them are not, and the most skillfull were the gifted ones , take for example LINUS TORVALDS in his 2nd year , he has written the first Linux Kernel and publish it for the rest of the world, did any Pro change the world as Linus did?

Mentioning MicroSoft and SourceForge was about the content , who's serving the world better?
And speaking about Softwares you have another sight then mine, you've mentioned PhotoShop that I don't give that attention to as I do toward my system I'm using and the security I'm holding on my Apps, of course Gimp is just Like MS Paint but don't say XP is Like Debian!!!
Or comparing IIS with Apache2
GCC/MingW/G++ with VisualStudio
ASP/C# with Java/PHP/PERL/PYTHON

If the close source still winning what pushed the ruling company VMWARE to open a lot of there sources and allowing free downloads of its products?
Why MicroSoft start creating an OpenSource Community and offering for the first time some pieces of their source codes?
It's just a matter of time , and it won't take a while for sure.

Going back to the gifted one , Linus Torvalds ,Bill Gates (Even that I don't consider him really skillfull),Steve Jobs , those three had really moved and changed the world , so I don't think that the Pros did.

Have a nice day sir

[kev woodman]

Again I think you're confusing open source with unqualified. I don't accept your claim that most freelance programmers are untrained - unless you have some figures to back that up.

As you pointed out yourself Linus Torvalds was studying a degree program when he started to develop Linux. That puts him in the qualified box I'm afraid.

I don't understand how you can compare Microsoft.com and Sourceforge based on content. They have entirely different purposes.

I'm aware of the original definition of the word hacker - Mitnick describes himslef as a hacker.

I'd also argue that maybe Linux hasn't quite changed the world as much as you woudl like to think - certainly not as much as Windows - and it is very doubtful whether it ever will.

However I'm not arguing about whether open source is better. I'll happily use the best tool for the job. The original arguement was concerning qualified programmers vs unqualified and whether software is open source or not has nothing to do with that - someone who is donating their time to an o-s project is just as likely to be qualified (if not more so) than someone who is not.

As for your gifted programmers - Steve Jobs isn't a programmer, he was a not very good engineer at Atari, Bill Gates certainly was a programmer and is unqualified, and Linus has a CS degree. So that's one out of three. And you can't hold up the odd individual and say that they can represent a whole industry, there are certainly some brilliant software engineers who just have a natural ability but there are far more that have studied and worked hard to learn their craft.

[ouahabix]

Good morning again
Don't get it personal sir, we all know that the 1st year at the university is just to prepare you for computer science and to deliver the fundamentals of its basics , so do you think a couple of months at the second year could help in written a million line source code!
And yeah it did change the world! Windows were just imitating by entering the net's world by buying the socket's API from UNIX just to defeat linux and they create their WinSock that made unforgiveable bugs in Win98 that made people paid a high sum!
So ok just take it easy and cool, gifted programmers are a wrong theory , but I live among a lot of them and I know a lot of them too where the skillfull teachers were astonished to there questions.

Nice to meet man, Saluations

[kev woodman]

Linus didn't write a million lines of code - he based his original kernel on Minix and then released it to the community. I did some OS history in my first year at Uni