Like all those involved with the .NET ecosystem I’ve been slowly digesting the recent news on the whole thing going open source and cross platform. I’ve been jogging down a few notes in light of a future blog post, but then Jeremy Miller came out with his own Some Thoughts on the New .NET which is almost exactly the post I wanted to write. So when he writes: I’ve started to associate ....
Robert C.Martin, of Clean Code fame, has something to say on the role of we programmers in today’s society. We rule the world. We don’t quite understand this yet. More importantly, the world doesn’t quite understand it yet. Our civilization doesn’t quite realize how dependent it has become on software — on us. He goes as far as suggesting a programmer’s code of conduct of sorts. Food for thought I guess, although I suspect we’re too much of a wild and scattered bunch for something like that to really stick....
This originally appeared on Quora and is well worth reading. Becoming a good programmer is incredibly difficult and it doesn’t happen quickly. We can’t expect to plant some trees and have 2000-year-old redwoods grow overnight, regardless of the demand for them. via Why Don’t More People Work As Programmers? – Forbes.
When Ballmer famously said, “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches,” it was fair to characterize Microsoft’s approach to open source as hostile. But over time, forces within Microsoft pushed to change this attitude. Many groups inside of Microsoft continue to see the customer and business value in fostering, rather than fighting, OSS. via Microsoft’s New Running Shoes.
git is a fantastic choice for tracking the evolution of your code base and to collaborate efficiently with your peers. But what happens when the repository you want to track is really huge? via How to handle big repositories with git – Atlassian Blogs.
Python’s simple, easy-to-learn syntax can mislead Python developers – especially those who are newer to the language – into missing some of its subtleties and underestimating the power of the language. With that in mind, this article presents a “top 10” list of somewhat subtle, harder-to-catch mistakes that can bite even the most advanced Python developer in the rear. via 10 Most Common Python Mistakes.
Software development is mostly horseshit. We’re busy trying to build things, trying to estimate when things are done, trying to work with other humans to make sure you don’t break anything when you launch. All of these things can go horribly, horribly wrong without much malice or without much intention. It’s still very difficult. via Why doesn’t GitHub talk about their product roadmap?
But here’s the rub. Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice with any technology or language is useful as a means of learning tools and techniques, but it will not make you a substantially better programmer. via How to be a sane programmer
It’s been a very long time since I judged any programmer based on their commit history and I believe if you think you can judge a programmer’s ability by reading his/her code YOU ARE WRONG. via Never judge a programmer by their commit history
This is the problem with emphasizing computer science over learning to code. Without an understanding of what’s happening at a low level, my peers ran into issues […] and had no idea what to do to debug them. This is a problem that stems from teaching people computer science but not teaching them how to code. Learning to code isn’t just teaching people how to spell – it’s teaching people the meaning behind the words....