Master
Programming Faster
Do you want to become a great coder? Do
you have a passion for computers but not a
thorough understanding of them? If so, this
post is for you.
Saying #1: 10,000 Hours
There is a saying that it takes 10,000 hours
of doing something to master it.
So, to master programming, it might take
you 10,000 hours of being actively coding
or thinking about coding. That translates to
a consistent effort spread out over a
number of years.
Saying #2: No Speed Limit
There is another saying that I just read ,
which inspired me to write this, that says
“there is no speed limit”.
In that post, Derek Sivers claims that a
talented and generous guy named Kimo
Williams taught him 2 years worth of music
theory in five lessons. I have been learning
to program for 2 years, and despite the fact
that I’ve made great progress, my process
has been slow and inefficient.
I did not have a Kimo Williams. But now
that I know a bit, I’ll try and emulate him
and help you learn faster by sharing my top
12 lessons.
I’ll provide the tips first, then if you’re
curious, a little bit more history about my
own process.
The 12 Tips
1. Get started. Do not feel bad that you
are not an expert programmer yet. In
10,000 hours, you will be. All you need
to do is start. Dedicate some time
each day or week to checking things
off this list. You can take as long as
you want or move as fast as you want.
If you’ve decided to become a great
programmer, youve already
accomplished the hardest part:
planting the seed. Now you just have
to add time and your skills will
blossom. If you need any help with any
of these steps, feel free to email me
and Ill do my best to help.
2. Dont worry. Do not be intimated by
how much you dont understand.
Computers are still largely magic even
to me. We all know that computers are
fundamentally about 1s and 0s, but
what the hell does that really mean? It
took me a long time to figure it out–it
has something to do with voltages and
transistors. There are endless topics in
computer science and endless terms
that you won’t understand. But if you
stick with it, eventually almost
everything will be demystified. So don’t
waste time or get stressed worrying
about what you don’t know. It will
come, trust me. Remember, every great
programmer at one time had NO IDEA
what assembly was, or a compiler, or a
pointer, or a class, or a closure, or a
transistor. Many of them still dont!
That’s part of the fun of this subject–
you’ll always be learning.
3. Silicon Valley . Simply by moving to
Silicon Valley, you have at least: 10x
as many programmers to talk to, 10x
as many programming job
opportunities, 10x as many
programming meetups, and so on. You
don’t have to do this, but it will make
you move much faster. The first year of
my programming career was in
Boston. The second year was in San
Francisco. I have learned at a much
faster pace my second year.
4. Read books . In December of 2007 I
spent a few hundred dollars on
programming books. I bought like 20
of them because I had no idea where
to begin. I felt guilty spending so much
money on books back then. Looking
back, it was worth it hundreds of times
over. You will read and learn more
from a good $30 paperback book than
dozens of free blogs. I could probably
explain why, but its not even worth it.
The data is so very clear from my
experience that trying to explain why it
is that way is like trying to explain why
pizza tastes better than broccoli: Im
sure there are reasons but just try
pizza and you’ll agree with me.
5. Get mentors . I used to create websites
for small businesses. Sometimes my
clients would want something I didnt
know how to do, simple things back
then like forms. I used to search
Google for the answers, and if I
couldnt find them, I’d panic! Dont do
that. When you get in over your head,
ping mentors. They dont mind, trust
me. Something that youll spend 5
hours panicking to learn will take them
2 minutes to explain to you. If you
dont know any good coders, feel free to
use me as your first mentor.
6. Object Oriented . This is the “language”
the world codes in. Just as
businessmen communicate primarily in
English, coders communicate primarily
in Object Oriented terms. Terms like
classes and instances and inheritance.
They were completely, completely,
completely foreign and scary to me.
Theyd make me sick to my stomach.
Then I read a good book(Object
Oriented PHP, Peter Lavin), and slowly
practiced the techniques, and now I
totally get it. Now I can communicate
and work with other programmers.
7. Publish code . If you keep a private
journal and write the sentence The car
green is, you may keep writing that
hundreds of times without realizing its
bad grammar, until you happen to
come upon the correct way of doing
things. If you write that in an email,
someone will instantly correctly you
and you probably won’t make the
mistake again. You can speed up your
learning 1-2 orders of magnitude by
sharing your work with others. Its
embarrassing to make mistakes, but
the only way to become great is to
trudge through foul smelling swamp of
embarrassment.
8. Use github. The term version control
used to scare the hell out of me. Heck,
it still can be pretty cryptic. But
version control is crucial to becoming
a great programmer. Every other
developer uses it, and you can’t
become a great programmer by coding
alone, so you’ll have to start using it.
Luckily, you’re learning during an ideal
time. Github has made learning and
using version control much easier.
Also, Dropbox is a great tool that your
mom could use and yet that has some
of the powerful sharing and version
control features of something like git.
9. Treat yourself . Build things you think
are cool. Build stuff you want to use.
Its more fun to work on something you
are interested in. Programming is like
cooking, you don’t know if what you
make is good until you taste it. If
something you cook tastes like dog
food, how will you know unless you
taste it? Build things you are going to
consume yourself and you’ll be more
interested in making it taste not like
dog food.
10. Write English . Code is surprisingly
more like English than like math. Great
code is easy to read. In great code
functions, files, classes and variables
are named well. Comments, when
needed, are concise and helpful. In
great code the language and
vocabulary is not elitist: it is easy for
the layman to understand.
11. Be prolific. You dont paint the Mona
Lisa by spending 5 years working on 1
piece. You create the Mona Lisa by
painting 1000 different works, one of
them eventually happens to be the
Mona Lisa. Write web apps, iPhone
apps, Javascript apps, desktop apps,
command line tools: as many things
as you want. Start a small new project
every week or even every day. You
eventually have to strike a balance
between quantity and quality, but
when you are young the goal should
be quantity. Quality will come in time.
12. Learn Linux. The command line is not
user friendly. It will take time and lots
of repetition to learn it. But again, its
what the world uses, you’ll need at
least a basic grasp of the command
line to become a great programmer.
When you get good at the command
line, its actually pretty damn cool.
Youll appreciate how much of what we
depend on today was written over the
course of a few decades. And youll be
amazed at how much you can do from
the command line. If you use Windows,
get CYGWIN! I just found it a few
months ago, and it is much easier and
faster than running virtualized Linux
instances.
That’s it, go get started!
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