Right on!
My #1 tip is anytime you find yourself designing something creative, clever, strangely too simple, or just plain different from anything you’ve written before, run it by a peer you respect first. I don’t know how many times a peer and I have come up with something better together than either of us could have done separately.
this rockstar stuff is nonsense. I read the book; great read! But that title demeans our industry.
It takes both.
And whenever I see a job description saying We want a rockstar programmer, forget it. I know what I’m dealing with…bunch of egoistical assholes.
I know that when I’ve read good code and recognized it as such, my own programming style picked it up fairly quickly. While I’ve been programming for 10 or 15 years and been decently self-critical, sometimes it just takes another person’s style or perspective to notice how my own routine can improve (especially with things like commenting).
To give a clear example, the art of commenting is something that’s so hard to learn how to do right until you read someone else’s code that’s well-commented (and realize what you appreciate about it). In that sense, I know I’ve seen the value of reading other people’s code, but I still partly agree with Jeff in that the value is only realized when one writes one’s own code.
I totally agree. It’s like trying to learn a language by reading textbooks. Reading can help, but there’s no substitute for doing.