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hoboy
January 30th, 2012, 07:05 PM
Are you the best if so how did you do it ????

I am a frustrated man, not that I have huge expereinced, but I do java and .Net.
My problem is no matter how good I think I am I always find somebody in the projects I am working on better then me.
How do you surmount this problem ?
I want to learn more how can I be the best ???
practice ?
Read more ?
tks

trent.josephsen
January 30th, 2012, 07:52 PM
I am teh best and I got this way by reading on the interwebs!!!!11 lol j/k

("teh" was actually completely unintentional, but I decided it deserved to stay)

Congratulations, you have discovered a fundamental fact of life: The more you know, the more you realize that you don't know very much. (The sooner you come to grips with this fact, the better.) It takes 10 years or more to achieve mastery in a given subject; in a sense, the only way to become the best is to keep practicing until you outlive everyone else.

That said, I'd be remiss in a thread about how to become the best at programming if I neglected to name TAOCP, the seminal work on computer science; perhaps others have their own favorite get-better-at-programming books, but I haven't read those either, so that just goes to show what I know ;)

Barrucadu
January 30th, 2012, 08:06 PM
SICP is probably better than TAOCP for self-improvement, every time I read TAOCP it just depresses me how little of it I can understand :P

In fact, amongst myself and my housemates, "I need to look at Knuth" is used to mean "I think I understand this fully".

MG&TL
January 30th, 2012, 08:17 PM
I just grit my teeth, then volunteer for something hard, for me, anyways. That way I learn what they're learning.

I tend to not worry about the whole pride issue, and just stumble along randomly until somebody shouts at me for unitialised variables or whatever, and I blush and learn some more.

IDK, I know what you mean though.

simeon87
January 30th, 2012, 08:46 PM
In any area of life, there will always be someone better than you (unless you hold a world record). This is just a fact of life :)

GeneralZod
January 30th, 2012, 08:52 PM
I want to learn more how can I be the best ???
practice ?
Read more ?


Yep :)

juancarlospaco
January 30th, 2012, 09:13 PM
" More i learn, more i notice that i dont know anything "

drmrgd
January 30th, 2012, 09:26 PM
While I'm not a programmer (far from it!), I do want to weigh in. First, consider yourself lucky when you encounter someone who is better than you at something or knows more than you do. That's the best learning opportunity you can have...hands on with someone who knows something you don't.

Second, what does it mean to be the best, and why is that important? Being the best is really irrelevant. Being able to do what you need to do at any given time, solve any challenge that you need to solve, and understand the fundamentals of what you're doing fully is much more important and will definitely get you further. I think MG&TL has the best outlook, personally.

mörgæs
January 30th, 2012, 09:40 PM
Interesting thread, but not really programming talk. Moved to the cafe.

As for your fellow programmers: How exactly are they better than you?

My experience is that one is not born to be a good programmer because of high IQ. Being a good programmer is something one learns and there is nothing that hinders the average Joe to be first-class, if he is determined.

I could talk for ages about this, but I guess it is better to point you to for example Steve McConnell: Code Complete, second edition.

johnb820
January 31st, 2012, 12:45 AM
I am convinced there are a handful of people who simply have a better grasp at programming and can conceptualize things beyond my ability. They hold knowledge and experience of programming certain things that might not necessarily be understood by or even shared with others. Anyone can be a programmer, but not everyone can be a good one.

lisati
January 31st, 2012, 01:12 AM
I'm fine for the basic stuff if the program is to be record driven, e.g. read a record, do something with it, put the result somewhere, repeat until you reach the end of the file. For event driven stuff or something with more of an OOP feel, it's more like "what? ask someone else please!" :D

TheLions
January 31st, 2012, 02:13 AM
if you can code something more then HelloWorld! in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain****

then probably you are gifted! :D

When you learn every aspect of some chosen programming language, and even know all it shortcommings, then you can call your self a good programmer. The best programmer is probably a men or team who invented that language, and its compiler/intepreter.

JDShu
January 31st, 2012, 04:27 AM
I am in the same boat as you and am probably a worse programmer than you are, but I have been thinking about this a lot over the past year, so here are my two cents.

There has been a lot of discussion about this in programmer circles. I think the best advice I've seen, and the one I subscribe to most is to change the questions from "how do I become a great programmer" to "how do I become a better programmer than I was yesterday?". And ask yourself every day, of course.

The past you should be the only person you compete against :)

That said there are many things you can do to improve. Some pointers in the links below:

http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming-achievements-how-to-level-up-as-a-developer/
http://avdi.org/devblog/2011/08/19/letter-to-a-young-developer/

dazman19
January 31st, 2012, 08:14 AM
its probably a good thing, knowing that you have always got some way of challenging yourself.

Imagine you were the best in the world. Would you just sit back, and think well since i am the best, I wont bother to learn anything.

Self Development is an ongoing process, doesnt matter if it is Comp Sci, Sports, Cooking, Business, or just anything recreational you enjoy.

You only have to look at the story of Einstein to know how much you don't know. Many years on. His mpst prized work's theory remains steadfast.

Paqman
January 31st, 2012, 11:17 AM
My problem is no matter how good I think I am I always find somebody in the projects I am working on better then me.


You'll find this in every part of life, no matter what you do. And if you ever start to think otherwise, it's worth reminding yourself occasionally that no matter how skilled/smart/good looking you are, there's always someone who's more 1337/braney/hot than you.

Perspective and/or humility are positive traits. Just do your best and don't worry about it. Working with people more skilled than yourself is a great way to learn if you're open to it.

doobrie
January 31st, 2012, 12:56 PM
In any area of life, there will always be someone better than you (unless you hold a world record). This is just a fact of life :)

This is one of the key areas of programming (and life). You will always find someone better than you, but if you can learn from them, your knowledge will increase and you'll get better at programming.

If you stay working on the same thing with no new challenges and no new people, then I think it gets harder to get better.

To get better, you need to push yourself and learn from those better than your self.

When you're finally at the top though, there's no one to learn from :wink:

Paqman
January 31st, 2012, 01:41 PM
When you're finally at the top though, there's no one to learn from :wink:

That would be a really boring position to be in.

I guess the solution would be to concentrate on teaching. No matter how much you think you know something, a novice will always teach you new things about it (if only how to mess it up in ways you'd never imagined!)

doobrie
January 31st, 2012, 01:56 PM
That would be a really boring position to be in.

I guess the solution would be to concentrate on teaching. No matter how much you think you know something, a novice will always teach you new things about it (if only how to mess it up in ways you'd never imagined!)

You're correct - it would be boring.

Learning new technologies and new techniques is what makes programming interesting.

forrestcupp
January 31st, 2012, 03:20 PM
Are you the best if so how did you do it ????

I am a frustrated man, not that I have huge expereinced, but I do java and .Net.
My problem is no matter how good I think I am I always find somebody in the projects I am working on better then me.
How do you surmount this problem ?

It doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are at any subject. There will always be at least two people right beside you that can run circles around you and make you look like an idiot. And it won't matter how much you study and learn; there will always be people that put you to shame. It's something we can't change.

The way I surmount this problem is to work on my own closed source projects, so nobody can make fun of my programming techniques. :)

And a side note: The whole point of this thread is to ask how one can learn to be a better programmer. How does that not qualify as "programming talk"?

CptPicard
January 31st, 2012, 08:19 PM
Are you the best if so how did you do it ????


Yes, I am most certainly the best.

... or perhaps not. :)

It's a long road and most of the time you'll just have to suck it up and strive to get better. And even then the end result is mostly a somewhat comfortable sense of your competence in the sense that you're able to colleagially work as equals with other programmers, who still most probably will beat you in their specific areas of interest.

Personally I find that the most valuable thing is to try to gain is a very broad-based synthesis of everything that goes into computable things. This includes both a more theoretical understanding of algorithmics and a more hands-on approach to "problem structure in terms of actual symbolic expression" in terms of programming languages -- where higher-level languages generally yield more insight than the lower-level ones.

mörgæs
January 31st, 2012, 09:45 PM
And a side note: The whole point of this thread is to ask how one can learn to be a better programmer. How does that not qualify as "programming talk"?

Programming Talk is for questions related to a particular piece of code or for discussion of programming languages. This thread is about personal development and learning in general.

Not less relevant, just another field.

Gremlinzzz
February 1st, 2012, 02:25 AM
Learn speed reading:popcorn:

hoboy
February 1st, 2012, 02:17 PM
Thanks guy for your input you have been very helpful.

forrestcupp
February 1st, 2012, 06:35 PM
Thanks guy for your input you have been very helpful.

That's because we're the best. :D

Simian Man
February 1st, 2012, 06:54 PM
This video (http://www.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusProgrammer.html) from Google I/O is relevant. Especially to the following quote:


It doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are at any subject. There will always be at least two people right beside you that can run circles around you and make you look like an idiot. And it won't matter how much you study and learn; there will always be people that put you to shame. It's something we can't change.

The way I surmount this problem is to work on my own closed source projects, so nobody can make fun of my programming techniques. :)