by dclaysmith on 3/7/13, 11:41 PM with 1 comments
by david_shaw on 3/8/13, 12:01 AM
When people ask me how to become a better programmer, I answer with two very simple tasks: read code, and write code.
It sounds obvious to those of us who have experience programming, but new developers are sometimes left totally in the dark on this one.
"Read code?" they reply, bewildered. "How am I supposed to read code if I don't understand it yet?"
It's somewhat of a chicken-and-egg problem, since in order to write code (well) you need to be able to read code, and to be able to read code you need to be able to understand what it's doing. While total expertise in a given language is often unnecessary, you need to find clear examples of concise, well-documented code.
It looks like this subreddit provides excactly that, and I'll be happy to recommend it to neophyte programmers from now on. I think I'll get a lot higher adoption rates than "well, check out Github or Sourceforge!"