- Readability is the path to more interesting projects within a career.
- Readability is the path to knowing what you wrote 5 years ago, and makes code reuse actually viable
- Readability is the path to acquiring protégées that can learn from your style.
- Readability that is understandable by others allows people to appreciate your code at a level of architecture, not just functional.
- Readability is the path of lease resistance when you have a bug in your code.
- Readability is the how you put ideas into understandable text and syntax, much like writing a paragraph in natural language.
- Readability is somehow not a priority for most other developers, however it’s probably pretty important to your development director, if you work for one.
- Readability is more important than most believe. With moore’s law, it’s even more important to focus on readability than pre-mature optimization.
Here’s more:
- Most schools and colleges teach computer science like trade school skills. How to fix a car. How to be a dental assistant. How to be an admin.
- Most schools and colleges don’t realize there’s a difference between Computer Science and Programming. These are different.
- Most of the people applying for job in California are Programmers, when the job actually requires a Computer Scientist.
- Most people only know one or three programming languages. I personally believe you need to know between 7–8 of them to really master the idea of programming.
Psychology wise?
- Most programmers are very insecure about their programming skills and end up in bandwagon debates over which programming language is better.
- Following that, most don’t realize that each programming language is just a tool that’s better at something while other is better at something else… Like speaking Spanish while in Spain, or knowing Chinese in the middle of China down. Right tools for the job.
- Most programmers are habituated to just google everything, that’s how they were taught.
- Most insecure programmers rave about how “compact” their code is. Which serves very little purpose on compiled languages.
- Most insecure programmers focus on hyper tuning a few lines of code. Good programmers focus on delivering functional and useable software.
Habits….
- Most programmers follow the syntax and structure of the style they were taught. Very few question the style they were taught. Examples are {’s on the if-statement line, or on the next line vertically aligned with the }.
- Most programmers don’t make diagrams before they begin experimenting. Many just copy some existing example and start their modifications from there (which runs the risk of adopting bugs from existing examples).
- Most programmers don’t unit test. They believe they are better than that, or they are lazy.
- Most programmers read xkcd.
- Programmers that are computer scientists are better at computational problems.
What most don’t realize about computer science (as opposed to only programming.)
- You can merge sort your socks.
- You can apply scalability methods of algorithms to work labor level processes to improve business efficiency.
- You can learn other fields and industries because CS is a catalyze for industries like physics, chemistry, rendering, etc…
- You can apply CS methods to accounting, management, logistics, market trends, human resource management, workflow processing engineering, etc…
- Computer science has philosophies within it that can change your mode of thinking.
Lots and lots. It’s amazing what you can do if you pay attention to the computer science bit, rather than only how to program software.
Computer science includes:
- Hardware
- Software
- Programming
- Algorithms
- Problem solving
- Efficiency measurement methods
- Stability methods
- Integration concepts
- Computer architecture
And most importantly….
- Computer Science History
You learn to appreciate these things when you take in CS and listen in beyond only the programming trade skill.
Either you are a viable employee… Or you’re an amazing one that could hold a position of technical leadership.
Take your time to comment on this article.
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