[aklug] Re: AKLUG and others

Shane Spencer said, on 03/05/2010 07:22 AM:
> On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 11:23 PM, Christopher Howard <choward@indicium.us> wrote:
>> I'd go so far to say: if you took just about any energetic,
>> self-motivated young programmer, put him in a house with an Internet
>> connection, and gave him the financial means to do nothing but study
>> programming on his own for four years, he would become a programming
>> genius and make any UAF CS graduate look like a drop-out script-kiddie.
>> And heck, I wouldn't mind trying that myself, but unfortunately I have
>> not yet found a backer. So I learn what I can in my spare time (a.k.a.,
>> breaks from my regular homework.)

I've seen the code generated by self-taught "programming geniuses" who
have spent years coding without realizing that programming is for human
readability, that cleverness is the enemy of maintainability, and that
the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Give somebody an interesting problem to solve (or help them to think of
one of their own. Ground them in some basic best practices.
Occasionally point out ways to make the code more clear or more efficient.

But don't grow them in a vacuum. Even the ones with native clue will
waste a lot of time reinventing many, many wheels. A little "doing it
the hard way" is educational, and writing Yet Another Templating Enging
for PHP may also teach you a few things ... but a little initial
guidance and some true mentoring can really jump-start someone's
programmer-fu enlightenment.

Some of that homework is trying to tell you this. While some of it does
a better job than others, it's like finding out at 25 that your dad is
smarter than you thought he was when you were 15. :-)

Don't get me wrong; some CS can be bad, especially in the hands of bad
instructors. But there are also some giants on whose shoulders you can
stand if you can peer through the occasional curriculum cruft to
recognize the opportunity when you see it.

Royce
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Received on Fri Mar 5 07:35:38 2010