Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 12:14 PM, Billwrote: > > I'll write for the possible benefit of any beginners who may be reading. > I guess by definition, if one still has a "bug" it's because one doesn't > quite understand what the code is doing. And I would say you should lose > your license if you "fix something", and don't understand why it works > (within reason of course--some mystery's of library functions should > probably remain so forever). So ADT (Any Damn Thing--I just made that up > that acronym) you can do to understand your code better is fair game! : ) > In fact, in my experience, the sooner you start getting a little bit > angry, the sooner you'll get to the heart of matter. Usually, what looks > like a long route, isn't, in the end. Don't be afraid to write *really > descriptive* output statements, and do so even though you "don't need to". > Besides for making you more productive, it will help soothe you : ) > Beginners almost never need to... I think that getting out of the > beginner phase requires developing a certain amount of humility. Just wait > 5 or 10 years, any look back, and see if what I've written isn't more true > than false. > > The only part I am unsure of is whether you are supposed to get a little > big angry or not (YMMV). I find 2 cups of coffee about right. That is, 2 > before and 2 after lunch. Of course, that does not include "meetings". > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > Reminds me of a bug I had to chase down recently. I've been working on the front-end of this web application for a while. It's an SPA built with Vuejs. The bug arose in the login workflow. Basically, it went like this: client loads login screen -> user enters credentials into form and submits -> client sends credentials to server -> server verifies credentials -> server sends back auth token -> client receives auth token and stores it -> client redirects user to home screen -> home screen makes get request for some data Now, this worked perfectly fine everywhere except for Safari 9.1 on OSX. A user could login just fine on Safari 9.1, but after that, no requests would complete. Safari's dev tools were no help because they were not showing any errors or any failed requests. I checked the server logs and found that no requests were even sent. It took me 2 days to figure out this bug. I tracked it down to the function that injected the authorization header into all requests if the user was logged in. Based on troubleshooting, I knew it couldn't be anything else. That said, I was still confused because this worked on literally every other browser(even IE 9). After searching for people with similar problems and coming up with nothing I got to thinking about the asynchronous nature of JS. So, out of sheer frustration I moved the line of code that stored the auth token from one function to another, booted up my testing environment, and it worked. So, the bug was basically because Safari was waiting for a specific function call to complete before it committed the token to local storage even though the line of code that did so was within said function. So, two days worth of work to move a single line of code from one function to another. You can only imagine the tirade of curse words directed at apple during the above calamity. Had I simply written a console log for every function down the chain, I may have been able to find the cause of the bug more quickly. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Bill wrote: Don't be afraid to write *really descriptive* output statements, and do so even though you "don't need to". Yeah, often when I'm writing something tricky I'll proactively put in some code to print intermediate state to reassure myself that things are on track. Being more verbose with them than I think necessary can save a few trips around the debug cycle. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Steve D'Aprano wrote: (1) I know there's a bug in a specific chunk of code, but I'm having trouble working out where. When everything else fails, if I perturb the code a bit (reorder lines, calculate things in a different order, rename variables, etc) it may change the nature of the bug enough for me to understand what's happening. > Its an experiment, but not really "carefully designed". I think it's more carefully designed than you give it credit for. You still need to understand quite a lot about the program to know what changes are likely to yield useful information, and how to interpret the results. Its more like "what happens if we hit this bit with a hammer?" In biology it's called a "shotgun experiment". "If we blast this bit of DNA with radiation, what part of the organism does it mess up?" (2) I hate off by one errors, and similar finicky errors that mean your code is *almost* right. I especially hate them when I'm not sure which direction I'm off by one. If you have unit tests that are failing, sometimes its quicker and easier to randomly perturb the specific piece of code until you get the right answer, rather than trying to analyse it. With off-by-one errors it's still pretty specific -- start the loop at 1 instead of 0, etc. But in cases like that I prefer to rewrite the code so that it's obvious where it should start and finish. The complexity of code increases faster than our ability to manage that complexity. And then there's "If you write the code as cleverly as you can, you won't be smart enough to debug it!" -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 5:14 AM, Billwrote: > I'll write for the possible benefit of any beginners who may be reading. I > guess by definition, if one still has a "bug" it's because one doesn't quite > understand what the code is doing. And I would say you should lose your > license if you "fix something", and don't understand why it works (within > reason of course--some mystery's of library functions should probably remain > so forever). My programmer's license comes from MIT and it can't be lost. https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT Kappa ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 2:42 AM, Steve D'Apranowrote: > Oh, and I'd like to make a (moderate) defense of a kind of "bug fixing by > random > perturbation". Obviously making unrelated, arbitrary changes to code is bad. > But making non-arbitrary but not fully understood changes to relevant code > sections can be useful in (at least) two scenarios. > > (1) I know there's a bug in a specific chunk of code, but I'm having trouble > working out where. When everything else fails, if I perturb the code a bit > (reorder lines, calculate things in a different order, rename variables, etc) > it may change the nature of the bug enough for me to understand what's > happening. > > That's not *random* or *arbitrary* changes, but they are changes not directed > at > any specific outcome other than "make the code a bit different, and see if the > error changes". I'd like to say it is the debugging technique of last resort, > except its perhaps not quite as *last* resort as I'd like, especially in code > I'm not familiar with. > > Its an experiment, but not really "carefully designed". Its more like "what > happens if we hit this bit with a hammer?" except that programmers, unlike > engineers, have the luxury of an Undo switch :-) Sometimes, when I'm debugging something with one of my students, I'll say something like "Let's do something stupid". That prefaces a suggested change that is, perhaps: * logging something that, by all sane logic, cannot possibly be wrong; * altering the form of a piece of code in a way that shouldn't affect anything; * changing something that logically should break the code worse, not fix it; * or worse. They're still not "random" changes, but when you exhaust all the logical and sane things to try, sometimes you do something stupid and it reveals the bug. I wouldn't EVER tell someone to assume that they've hit a language or library bug - but if you make a meaningless change and now it works, maybe that's what you've hit. It does happen. "Why does my program crash when it talks to THIS server, but it's fine talking to THAT server?" ... half an hour of debugging later ... "Okay, so THIS server supports elliptic curve cryptography, but THAT one doesn't. Great. That still doesn't explain the crash." ... two hours of debugging later ... "Huh. Maybe this library has a bug with ECC?" That's pretty close to what happened to me today, with the exception that I spent less time on it (because I had the library's source code handy). But in any case, it's a good reason to occasionally try something stupid. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:34 pm, D'Arcy Cain wrote: > On 09/29/2017 03:15 AM, Steve D'Aprano wrote: >> "Carefully-designed experiments" -- yeah, that is so totally how the coders >> I've worked with operate *wink* >> >> I think that's an awfully optimistic description of how the average >> programmer works :-) > > Better not hire average programmers then. Okay. Can I consider the top 10% of programmers, or must I only consider only those in the top 1%? If I'm on a budget and the code isn't that critical, can I consider those in the top 20% for junior roles? > I do "Carefully-designed > experiments" to find non-obvious bugs so I guess I am not average. Okay. By the way, *in context* (before you deleted the original text) there was no mention about "non-obvious bugs". Greg Ewing and Chris Angelico were talking about the general difference between the process used by novices and that used by experts and how beginners often attempt to fix bugs by making random changes, while experts don't. I've certainly seen beginners make arbitrary changes to unrelated parts of their code trying to fix a bug. Often many different changes all at once. So that's another difference between beginners and experts: - experts have the self-control to make only one change at a time, when it matters; beginners don't know when it matters. Oh, and I'd like to make a (moderate) defense of a kind of "bug fixing by random perturbation". Obviously making unrelated, arbitrary changes to code is bad. But making non-arbitrary but not fully understood changes to relevant code sections can be useful in (at least) two scenarios. (1) I know there's a bug in a specific chunk of code, but I'm having trouble working out where. When everything else fails, if I perturb the code a bit (reorder lines, calculate things in a different order, rename variables, etc) it may change the nature of the bug enough for me to understand what's happening. That's not *random* or *arbitrary* changes, but they are changes not directed at any specific outcome other than "make the code a bit different, and see if the error changes". I'd like to say it is the debugging technique of last resort, except its perhaps not quite as *last* resort as I'd like, especially in code I'm not familiar with. Its an experiment, but not really "carefully designed". Its more like "what happens if we hit this bit with a hammer?" except that programmers, unlike engineers, have the luxury of an Undo switch :-) (2) I hate off by one errors, and similar finicky errors that mean your code is *almost* right. I especially hate them when I'm not sure which direction I'm off by one. If you have unit tests that are failing, sometimes its quicker and easier to randomly perturb the specific piece of code until you get the right answer, rather than trying to analyse it. "Should I add one here? Maybe subtract one? Start at zero or one? Ah bugger it, I'll try them all and see which one works." This is only effective when you have exhaustive tests that exercise all the relevant cases and can tell you when you've hit the right solution. On the other hand, sometimes the bug isn't as clear cut as you thought, and you really do need to analyse the situation carefully. > I get the impression that many people here are above average too. > > Personally I think you are being pessimistic about "average" > programmers. Perhaps you just know the sloppy kind. One needs to only look at the quality of software, whether open source or commercial closed source, to feel pessimistic about the ability of even excellent programmers to write good, secure, bug-free code. The complexity of code increases faster than our ability to manage that complexity. -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 10:52 AM, justin walterswrote: > > I got through writing all of the above without realizing that you meant you > wanted to build a > desktop application and not a web application. Though, I think the advice > is still helpful. > > Yes and no. Seriously thanks! I am at first targeting a desktop app just to be simpler and to push me to learn Tkinter. However, it's more likely to end up a simple web app once I learn enough Bottle/Flask to make it work. Or I may just skip Tkinter for the nonce and see if I can do it with web forms. Leam -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 2:57 AM, Leam Hallwrote: > On 09/27/2017 10:33 PM, Stefan Ram wrote: > >Some areas of knowledge follow, a programmer should not be >>ignorant in all of them: >> > > --- > > Stefan, this is list AWESOME! > > I have started mapping skills I have to the list and ways to build skills > I don't have. Last night I started working on a project that has been on my > mind for over a year; taking a CSV list of game characters and putting them > into a MongoDB datastore. Now I need to figure out how to build an > interface for CRUD operations using Python, pymongo, and maybe Tk. > > I appreciate the structure your list provides. Thank you! > > Leam > > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > Python web backends just happen to be my specialty. I do mostly Django, but it doesn't mesh well with MongoDB. Well, it does if you still use an RDBMS forsome things. I can recommend the following: - Flask: http://flask.pocoo.org/ Small and light But not tiny. Not really fast, not really slow. Not a ton of batteries included. Tons of third-party extensions. - ApiStar: https://github.com/encode/apistar New kid on the block. Specializes in APIS. No template integrations. Best for serving JSON through a RESTful interface. Fairly quick, but not blazing fast. Has the upside that any web API can be exposed as a CLI API. Not a ton of third party extensions available. Would be a good choice if you don't want to build a desktop application instead of a web application as it will help design the API that something like Tkinter will sit on top of. - Sanic: https://github.com/channelcat/sanic Another new kid. Python 3.5+ only. Uses the new async capabilities quite heavilly. Based on falcon. Blazing fast. No batteries included. Small number of fairly high quality third-party extensions. - Django: https://www.djangoproject.com/ The old workhorse. Mature and proven. Best choice for reliability. Not fast, not slow. Huge collection of third party extensions ranging in quality. Though, it is pretty heavilly integrated with it's relational Db backends. If you decide on this, you would need to use postgres/sqlite/mysql to store all of Django's built in model classes(tables). I got through writing all of the above without realizing that you meant you wanted to build a desktop application and not a web application. Though, I think the advice is still helpful. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 8:34 PM, D'Arcy Cainwrote: > On 09/29/2017 03:15 AM, Steve D'Aprano wrote: >> >> "Carefully-designed experiments" -- yeah, that is so totally how the >> coders I've >> worked with operate *wink* >> >> I think that's an awfully optimistic description of how the average >> programmer >> works :-) > > > Better not hire average programmers then. I do "Carefully-designed > experiments" to find non-obvious bugs so I guess I am not average. I get > the impression that many people here are above average too. > > Personally I think you are being pessimistic about "average" programmers. > Perhaps you just know the sloppy kind. Based on any mathematical definition of "average", yes, I am pretty pessimistic about the average programmer :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 09/29/2017 03:15 AM, Steve D'Aprano wrote: "Carefully-designed experiments" -- yeah, that is so totally how the coders I've worked with operate *wink* I think that's an awfully optimistic description of how the average programmer works :-) Better not hire average programmers then. I do "Carefully-designed experiments" to find non-obvious bugs so I guess I am not average. I get the impression that many people here are above average too. Personally I think you are being pessimistic about "average" programmers. Perhaps you just know the sloppy kind. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain Vybe Networks Inc. http://www.VybeNetworks.com/ IM:da...@vex.net VoIP: sip:da...@vybenetworks.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Steve D'Aprano wrote: (say). Reading error messages is a skill that must be learned, even in Python. Let alone (say) gcc error messages, which are baroque to an extreme. The other day I was getting an error like: /tmp/ccchKJVU.o: In function `__static_initialization_and_destruction_0(int, int)': foo.cpp:(.text+0x7c): undefined reference to `std::ios_base::Init::Init()' foo.cpp:(.text+0x91): undefined reference to `std::ios_base::Init::~Init()' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status Yes, that's the sort of character-building that I was referring to (that a beginner needs to learn!)They have to learn that if it "breaks", then there must be a simpler way to break it! Hopefully one which will satisfy Log_2 (n).: ) -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 03:28 pm, Gregory Ewing wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> finding the bug is basically searching >> through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause >> this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right >> solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other >> things and only get to the true cause after a long time. > > What I think is more important than how *long* it takes is > *how* they go about finding the bug. > > A novice will make wild guesses about what might be wrong > and make random changes to the program in the hope of > making it work. An experienced programmer will conduct > a series of carefully-designed experiments to narrow > down the cause. "Carefully-designed experiments" -- yeah, that is so totally how the coders I've worked with operate *wink* I think that's an awfully optimistic description of how the average programmer works :-) > A result of this is that a true expert will never have > to try a thousand possibilities. He will be able to > search a space of N possible causes in O(log N) operations. I don't think that, *in general*, possible causes of a bug can be neatly sorted in such a way that we can do a binary search over the space of all possible causes. I also think it is unlikely that even the best programmer enumerates all the possible causes before working on them. If you don't enumerate all the causes first, how to you sort them? In my experience, even good coders are likely to say "there's only three possible things that could be causing this bug", and later on report it was actually the fifth thing. More likely, the experienced programmer is better at eliminating irrelevancies and narrowing in on the space of likely candidates, or at least narrowing down on the region of code that is relevant, while less experienced programmers waste more time looking at things which couldn't possibly be the cause[1]. More likely, the experienced programmer makes better use of his or her tools. While the novice is still messing about trying to guess the problem by pure logical reasoning, the expert is using a few useful print calls, or a debugger, to narrow down to where the problem actually is. And experts are likely to be better at extrapolating "well, since that's not the problem... maybe its this?". And you learn that not by pure logic, but by being bitten by nasty bugs: "I can't see any possibly way that this could be involved, but I came across a similar situation once before and this was the solution... [confirms hypothesis and fixes bug] oh of course, that's how the bug occurs! Its obvious in hindsight." More experienced programmers are confident enough to know when to walk away from a problem and let their subconscious work on it. Or when to go and explain it to the cleaning lady[2]. Or when to admit defeat and hand over to a fresh pair of eyes who won't be stuck in the same mindset. Even just getting to the point of being able to reason *where to start* requires a fair amount of experience. A true beginner to programming altogether won't even know how to read a stack trace to identify the line where the bug occurs, let alone understand why it happened. I wish I had a dollar for every time some beginner says something like: "I get a syntax error. What's wrong with my code?" and eventually after much arm-twisting is convinced to post the last line of the traceback, which turns out not to be a syntax error at all: "TypeError: object of type 'int' has no len()" (say). Reading error messages is a skill that must be learned, even in Python. Let alone (say) gcc error messages, which are baroque to an extreme. The other day I was getting an error like: /tmp/ccchKJVU.o: In function `__static_initialization_and_destruction_0(int, int)': foo.cpp:(.text+0x7c): undefined reference to `std::ios_base::Init::Init()' foo.cpp:(.text+0x91): undefined reference to `std::ios_base::Init::~Init()' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status Of course, its obvious that the problem here is that I needed to install g++ as well as gcc, right? :-) > This doesn't necessarily translate into time, because > in some situations the experiments can be very time- > consuming to perform. But other things being equal, > the expert's bug-finding algorithm is faster than the > novice's. [1] Although, the *really* experienced programmer knows that in sufficiently baroque and highly-coupled code, a bug could be caused by *anything* *anywhere*. (This is one reason why global variables are bad.) I still haven't gotten over hearing about a bug in the Internet Explorer routines for handling WMF files, which lead to being unable to copy and paste plain text in any application. [2] The place I worked had a cuddly penguin toy called Mr Snuggles, and the programmers would go and explain the problem to him. It never[3] failed. [3] Well, hardly ever. -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up,
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Gregory Ewingwrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> finding the bug is basically searching >> through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause >> this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right >> solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other >> things and only get to the true cause after a long time. > > > What I think is more important than how *long* it takes is > *how* they go about finding the bug. > > A novice will make wild guesses about what might be wrong > and make random changes to the program in the hope of > making it work. An experienced programmer will conduct > a series of carefully-designed experiments to narrow > down the cause. > > A result of this is that a true expert will never have > to try a thousand possibilities. He will be able to > search a space of N possible causes in O(log N) operations. > > This doesn't necessarily translate into time, because > in some situations the experiments can be very time- > consuming to perform. But other things being equal, > the expert's bug-finding algorithm is faster than the > novice's. This is very true, which is part of why I said that in programming, it takes one to know one - to observe a candidate and determine his/her experimental technique, you basically need to yourself be a programmer. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Chris Angelico wrote: finding the bug is basically searching through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other things and only get to the true cause after a long time. What I think is more important than how *long* it takes is *how* they go about finding the bug. A novice will make wild guesses about what might be wrong and make random changes to the program in the hope of making it work. An experienced programmer will conduct a series of carefully-designed experiments to narrow down the cause. A result of this is that a true expert will never have to try a thousand possibilities. He will be able to search a space of N possible causes in O(log N) operations. This doesn't necessarily translate into time, because in some situations the experiments can be very time- consuming to perform. But other things being equal, the expert's bug-finding algorithm is faster than the novice's. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 5:08 PM, Chris Angelicowrote: > Yep. Pick anyone on this list that you believe is an expert, and ask > him/her for a story of a long debug session that ended up finding a > tiny problem. I can pretty much guarantee that every expert programmer > will have multiple such experiences, and it's just a matter of > remembering one with enough detail to share the story. The software development process can be summed up thusly: I can’t fix this Crisis of confidence Questions career Questions life Oh it was a typo, cool -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Billwrote: > I won't claim to be any sort of "expert". But one memorable problem, for > me, was ultimately accounted for by the "inherent problem" of the floating > point variables x0 and xo coexisting in the same module. It's sort of funny > if you think about it just right. FWIW, my job was to fix the problem, I > didn't create it! Today I helped one of my students debug an issue that was exacerbated by a flawed shuffle function that, while capable of returning any permutation of the input, had a bit of a tendency to leave things early if they started early - it was about 8% more likely to pick the first element than the last. Doesn't sound like much, but it increased the chances of a collision pretty significantly. Now THAT was fun to debug. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 6:59 AM, Billwrote: Chris Angelico wrote: Be careful with this one. For anything other than trivial errors (and even for some trivial errors), finding the bug is basically searching through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other things and only get to the true cause after a long time. some "expert"! ; ) Yep. Pick anyone on this list that you believe is an expert, and ask him/her for a story of a long debug session that ended up finding a tiny problem. I can pretty much guarantee that every expert programmer will have multiple such experiences, and it's just a matter of remembering one with enough detail to share the story. ChrisA I won't claim to be any sort of "expert". But one memorable problem, for me, was ultimately accounted for by the "inherent problem" of the floating point variables x0 and xo coexisting in the same module. It's sort of funny if you think about it just right. FWIW, my job was to fix the problem, I didn't create it! Bill -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 6:59 AM, Billwrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> Be careful with this one. For anything other than trivial errors (and >> even for some trivial errors), finding the bug is basically searching >> through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause >> this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right >> solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other >> things and only get to the true cause after a long time. > > some "expert"! ; ) > Yep. Pick anyone on this list that you believe is an expert, and ask him/her for a story of a long debug session that ended up finding a tiny problem. I can pretty much guarantee that every expert programmer will have multiple such experiences, and it's just a matter of remembering one with enough detail to share the story. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Chris Angelico wrote: On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 5:45 AM, Billwrote: Paul Moore wrote: On 27 September 2017 at 17:41, leam hall wrote: Hehe...I've been trying to figure out how to phrase a question. Knowing I'm not the only one who gets frustrated really helps. I'm trying to learn to be a programmer. I can look at a book and read basic code in a few languages but it would be unfair to hire myself out as a programmer. I'm just not yet worth what it costs to pay my bills. You're already ahead of the game in wanting to be useful, rather than just knowing the jargon :-) However, I've always found that the biggest asset a programmer can have is the simple willingness to learn. I basically agree with what has been posted. I just wanted to mention a couple things that separates beginners and non-beginners. One is "how long it takes to identify and fix an error"--even a syntax error. And that is a skill which is acquired with some practice, maybe more "some" than anyone likes. Be careful with this one. For anything other than trivial errors (and even for some trivial errors), finding the bug is basically searching through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other things and only get to the true cause after a long time. some "expert"! ; ) So while you're partly correct in saying "how long", you can't just put someone on the clock and say "if you find the bug in less than five minutes, you're hired". Ultimately, the only person who can truly evaluate a programmer's skill is another programmer, usually by watching the candidate go through this sort of debugging work. But yeah, broadly speaking, an experienced programmer can usually debug something more quickly than a novice can. On average. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 5:45 AM, Billwrote: > Paul Moore wrote: >> >> On 27 September 2017 at 17:41, leam hall wrote: >>> >>> Hehe...I've been trying to figure out how to phrase a question. Knowing >>> I'm >>> not the only one who gets frustrated really helps. >>> >>> I'm trying to learn to be a programmer. I can look at a book and read >>> basic >>> code in a few languages but it would be unfair to hire myself out as a >>> programmer. I'm just not yet worth what it costs to pay my bills. >> >> You're already ahead of the game in wanting to be useful, rather than >> just knowing the jargon :-) However, I've always found that the >> biggest asset a programmer can have is the simple willingness to >> learn. > > > I basically agree with what has been posted. I just wanted to mention a > couple things that separates beginners and non-beginners. One is "how long > it takes to identify and fix an error"--even a syntax error. And that is a > skill which is acquired with some practice, maybe more "some" than anyone > likes. Be careful with this one. For anything other than trivial errors (and even for some trivial errors), finding the bug is basically searching through a problem space of all things that could potentially cause this symptom. A novice could accidentally stumble onto the right solution to a tricky bug, or an expert could search a thousand other things and only get to the true cause after a long time. So while you're partly correct in saying "how long", you can't just put someone on the clock and say "if you find the bug in less than five minutes, you're hired". Ultimately, the only person who can truly evaluate a programmer's skill is another programmer, usually by watching the candidate go through this sort of debugging work. But yeah, broadly speaking, an experienced programmer can usually debug something more quickly than a novice can. On average. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
Paul Moore wrote: On 27 September 2017 at 17:41, leam hallwrote: Hehe...I've been trying to figure out how to phrase a question. Knowing I'm not the only one who gets frustrated really helps. I'm trying to learn to be a programmer. I can look at a book and read basic code in a few languages but it would be unfair to hire myself out as a programmer. I'm just not yet worth what it costs to pay my bills. You're already ahead of the game in wanting to be useful, rather than just knowing the jargon :-) However, I've always found that the biggest asset a programmer can have is the simple willingness to learn. I basically agree with what has been posted. I just wanted to mention a couple things that separates beginners and non-beginners. One is "how long it takes to identify and fix an error"--even a syntax error. And that is a skill which is acquired with some practice, maybe more "some" than anyone likes. Another critical skill is the ability to write good documentation--from program requirements, on down. Another is to know what is means to "test". Another is to have some familiarity with the UML. Skills in 3 of these 4 area might be assisted by reading about software engineering. So after you have those skills, then, perhaps, you can think about "interviewing"--of course a degree will help. As always, your mileage may vary... It IS True that you don't have to wait until you "know everything"--most of use will never get there. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 09/28/2017 04:15 AM, Paul Moore wrote: With Python, I'd say that an appreciation of the available libraries is key - both what's in the stdlib, and what's available from PyPI. That's not to say you should memorise the standard library, but rather cultivate an approach of "hmm, I'm pretty sure I remember there being a library for that" and going to look. The best way of getting this is to actually work with code - you can start with doing coding projects of your own (it's *always* a good exercise to have a problem that interests you, and work on coding it - no matter what it is, you'll learn more about understanding requirements, testing, bug fixing, and practical programming by working on a project you care about than you'll ever get reading books) and/or you can look at existing open source projects that you're interested in, and offer help (there's always a bug tracker, and typically some simpler items - and you'll learn a lot from interacting with a larger project). When I first started in Unix/Linux there was a group called SAGE. They had a list of tasks a system admin was expected to be able to do and they sorted the list by "Junior", "Senior", or somesuch. I started at the bottom of the list and worked my way up. One useful thing was to make a sorted list of commands in /usr/bin, /bin, /usr/sbin, and /sbin, and then read the first bit of the man page that showed what the command did. Fun stuff. Leam -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 09/28/2017 07:35 AM, Stefan Ram wrote: But remember that paid programmers usually do not "code", in the sense of "write a program from scratch". Most of the work is maintenance programming, where an important part of the job is to read and understand a piece of code. Coding from scratch also happens, it just less common. (So that would be a reasonable interview test: Being able to understand a piece of given code and do some requested modification to it.) Another Perl story. I used to love Perl and then got to the point where trying to code in it made me physically nauseous. Not sure why. Guy had written a perl based time tracker for our contractor team. We'd enter tasks done and it would give a text based output to send to mgmt. Of course the guy hadn't planned on leaving after a few months and his program stored data by date but didn't separate by year. So I had to go figure out what it was doing since he was using a perl specific data archiver. Eventually just wound up blowing away the data store so each year was new. Told others how to handle it as I didn't want to do more perl and wasn't good enough at anything to replicate it all myself. Leam -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
My question has received several helpful responses, thanks! On 09/28/2017 01:01 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 12:41:24 -0400, leam halldeclaimed the following: "Programmer"... or "Software Engineer"? I haven't kept up on "job titles" but for my history, "programmer" is an entry level position, just a few steps up from "data entry operator" (aka "keypunch operator" -- to show my age) "Person who automates routine tasks". I used to get asked for MAC addresses. I was playing with TCL at the time and it had a built in webserver sort of thing. The boxes were Solaris. Made a cron job to run Explorer on the servers and another to collate them to a node with the TCL webserver. Gave the Network team the URL. I'll show my age; 5 bit ASCII punched tape and actual ferrite core memory. :P As a "programmer" (in my archaic world): be fluent in the language and core of the runtime (though perhaps not a master -- I still don't get Python's decorators and meta-class concepts; my uses haven't needed them). Be able to read language agnostic requirement/design documentation and translate to the language in question. At this level, knowledge of the problem domain is probably not needed. At the higher levels, the language begins to be irrelevant, but more knowledge of the problem domain becomes important -- the difference between designing/coding a web-based store-front (HTTP/HTML, database, security) vs number-crunching image streams from space probes... Afraid I've likely just tossed it back to you -- what really is your goal? As an introvert with a speech impediment I live by "Don't call me, I won't call you." Well, okay, yes. I did to Toastmasters and can shine at an interview. Still, day to day I prefer to create solutions that solve problems and answer questions before they are asked so no one asks me. I know a little Networking, Database, Systems Engineering, Project Management, Security, large datacenter, and other cool buzzwords to easily find a job doing Linux system admin. What I want to move away from is doing now what I was doing 10-15 years ago. A couple years ago I was back into C. A RHEL bug came up and management needed to understand the severity of the issue. I was able to read the reports, dig through the kernel code, and explain the issues and risks to MBA and PM types. I'm not about to represent myself as a C programmer but I can follow #include files. One place brought on Unix people and your first day was split between the Eng team lead and the Ops team lead. They would decide which you were more suited for. The Eng team lead wrote Perl and asked me to explain some of their code. I did and also pointed out a bug. Seems I was a better fit for the Ops team. :P My short term goals are to use Python to get better at OOP coding and to automate in Python stuff that might work in shell/awk but are more fun in python. To that end I'm reading Booch, just ordered an old copy of the Python Cookbook, and am coding a game/fiction tool to help me keep track of characters. It is often said to learn a language you grab the basics and then join a project. I'm happy to contribute to open source projects but the learning curve to "useful" has always been steep for me. There's gap between reading "Learning {language}" and contributing code. Python is very useful because all my RHEL boxes have it installed. If I build a tool I know it will be able to run. While I enjoy Ruby more, it's not on the servers and it ain't going on the servers. I need to be useful to keep getting paid. Due to developer count the ability to instigate a python project is easier than a non-rails ruby project so I can build my "software engineering team" skills as well. I appreciate your guidance and feedback; keep it coming! Leam -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 2017-09-28, bartcwrote: > On 28/09/2017 12:31, Steve D'Aprano wrote: >> Until now, I thought that people who wrote crappy code did so >> because they didn't know any better. This is the first time >> I've seen somebody state publicly that they have no interest >> in writing clean code. > > I meant I have no interest in reading books about it or someone > else's opinion. I have my own ideas of what is clean code and > what isn't. The world contains many programmers with more experience than one's-self, and some of them are good at explaining what they know in a comprehensible and entertaining way. I believe you will benefit from and even enjoy some of the literature. Here's a recent favorite: "The Pragmatic Programmer", Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. ISBN-13: 978-0201616224 -- Neil Cerutti -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 28/09/2017 12:31, Steve D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 09:12 pm, bartc wrote: And I have little interest in most of this lot (my eyes glaze over just reading some of these): > - how to use operating systems You've never used a system call? Written to a file? Moved the mouse? Wasn't that more this option: - how to program operating systems via system calls Which was in my first group. Using an OS, I just do the minimum necessary and don't get involved in much else. (In my first phase as a programmer, there were personnel whose job it was to do that. In the next phase, with microprocessors, there /was/ no operating system! Bliss. That phase didn't last long, but fortunately those OSes (MSDOS and the like) didn't do much so didn't get in the way either.) > - how to use an editor well (e.g., vim or emacs) You have no interest in using your editor well? I use my own editor as much as possible. That doesn't have any elaborate features that it is necessary to 'learn'. > - style (e.g. "Clean Code" by Robert Martin, pep 8, ...) Until now, I thought that people who wrote crappy code did so because they didn't know any better. This is the first time I've seen somebody state publicly that they have no interest in writing clean code. I meant I have no interest in reading books about it or someone else's opinion. I have my own ideas of what is clean code and what isn't. > - test (e.g., unit test), TDD You don't test your code? I assume this meant formal methods of testing. I suppose that makes it a lot easier to program. Just mash down on the keyboard with both hands, and say that the code is done and working correctly, and move on to the next project. *wink* Actually I used to like using random methods (Monte Carlo) to solve problems. That doesn't scale well however, at some point you have to properly think through a solution. -- bartc -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 18:18:10 -0700, Larry Hudson wrote: > On 09/27/2017 09:41 AM, leam hall wrote: >> On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 5:26 PM, Ned Batchelder>> wrote: > [snip] >> >> The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a >> programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically >> with Python. >> >> > Hopefully NOT like this person... > (Source: http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_misc.shtml There is no direct > link to this item, it's about 2/3 the way down in a long web page...) > > > Since I teach nights at a local community college, I get a lot of > professional programmers in my classes upgrading their education. One > student, who was one such person, attended every lecture and smiled and > nodded and took notes. But he only turned in his first assignment. The > results of his first test were horrid. Out of curiosity, I asked my > wife, who barely knew how to turn a computer on much less program one, > to take the test (which was mostly true/false and multiple choice > questions). My wife scored higher than this guy. > > The semester's end came, and he flubbed his final, too. A few weeks > later, I got a call from him complaining about his 'F'. I pointed out he > hadn't turned in any of his assignments, and those counted 75% of the > grade. > > "Did you hear me say something besides what the other students heard?" I > asked. > > "Well, I thought my test grades would carry me," he replied. > > It had turned out his company had paid for him to take the course. Since > he failed, it suddenly came to the attention of his employer that he > didn't know how to program, and now his job was in jeopardy. As I hung > up the phone, I mused that his company shouldn't fire him. It was a > perfect match: a programmer who couldn't program and a company that > couldn't figure out sooner that he couldn't. > the whole page seems to be full of "look how dumb this user is because they do no automatically know things that I had to learn" -- After they got rid of capital punishment, they had to hang twice as many people as before. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 09:12 pm, bartc wrote: > And I have little interest in most of this lot (my eyes glaze over just > reading some of these): > > > - how to use operating systems You've never used a system call? Written to a file? Moved the mouse? > > - how to use an editor well (e.g., vim or emacs) You have no interest in using your editor well? > > - style (e.g. "Clean Code" by Robert Martin, pep 8, ...) Until now, I thought that people who wrote crappy code did so because they didn't know any better. This is the first time I've seen somebody state publicly that they have no interest in writing clean code. > > - test (e.g., unit test), TDD You don't test your code? I suppose that makes it a lot easier to program. Just mash down on the keyboard with both hands, and say that the code is done and working correctly, and move on to the next project. *wink* -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 28/09/2017 03:33, Stefan Ram wrote: Larry Hudsonwrites: Hopefully NOT like this person... Since I teach nights at a local community college a programmer who couldn't program It is not clear what »this person« refers to: Do you hope one is not like that teacher who publicly is shaming one of his students, though without actually giving the name of the student. Or do you hope one is not like that student who did not turn in the assignments? The fact that programmers can't program is known since the invention of the "FizzBuzz" programmer test. But in the case of the student, one actually can't know for sure whether he only had problems with the /upgrade/ of his education, but still can program in his everyday job. So, what was the question? Quoted from earlier in the same thread: |The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out |as a programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? |Specifically with Python. Some areas of knowledge follow, a programmer should not be ignorant in all of them: I can probably manage the following, even if I hate some of it or some might be advanced: - writing FizzBuzz - writing GUI software [My own] (Writing a GUI system or using one? I've done both and try and avoid GUI completely if possible.) - writing software to analyze text files - writing software to generate images from data - writing software to analyze images - how to program operating systems via system calls - algorithms and datastructures - numerical mathematics - how to write a recursive descent parser - maths (how to transform to polar coordinates or what the use of a fourier transformation is) And I have little interest in most of this lot (my eyes glaze over just reading some of these): > - writing GUI software [Other people's] > - writing software to analyze data bases > - writing user interfaces for data bases > - how to use operating systems > - how to administer a computer > - how to use the command languages of operating systems > - how to use an editor well (e.g., vim or emacs) > - how to use UN*X tools (grep, uniq, sed, ...) > - regular expressions > - a source management tool (like git) > - design patterns > - design by contract > - OOA/OOD > - the most important libraries for Python (standard and other) > - data base design / normalization > - style (e.g. "Clean Code" by Robert Martin, pep 8, ...) > - refactors > - software engineering > - being able to read and write EBNF > - software-project managemet (e.g. Agile, "Scrum") > - computer science (complexity, NP, grammars, ...) > - test (e.g., unit test), TDD > - programming interviews (there are many books about this topic!) > - Using a real Newsreader (not Google Groups) > - common algorithms/heuristics for global optimization > - common types of statistical analyses and neural networks It seems the first group is more pure coding (and fun, a lot of it), and the second is the usual lot of tools and technologies that programmers seems to have to know about these days (and not so much fun). -- bartc -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 27 September 2017 at 17:41, leam hallwrote: > Hehe...I've been trying to figure out how to phrase a question. Knowing I'm > not the only one who gets frustrated really helps. > > I'm trying to learn to be a programmer. I can look at a book and read basic > code in a few languages but it would be unfair to hire myself out as a > programmer. I'm just not yet worth what it costs to pay my bills. You're already ahead of the game in wanting to be useful, rather than just knowing the jargon :-) However, I've always found that the biggest asset a programmer can have is the simple willingness to learn. "Programming" is far too broad a subject for anyone to know all about it, so being able (and willing!) to find things out, to look for and follow good practices, and to keep learning, is far more important than knowing the specifics of how to code a class definition. Most programmers work in teams, so you will likely be working with an existing code base for reference (even if you're not doing actual maintenance coding), so you'll have examples to work from anyway. > To move forward takes a plan and time bound goals. At least for us old > folks; we only have so much time left. I want to avoid retirement and just > work well until I keel over. > > I don't come from a CS background but as a Linux sysadmin. My current push > is OOP. Grady Booch's book on Analysis and Design is great and I've got the > GoF for right after that. I've been doing more testing but need to write > more tests. Writing code and starting to work with others on that code as > well. I haven't read Booch, but I've heard good things about it. The GoF is good, but a lot of the problem's it's addressing aren't really issues in Python. So be prepared to find that the solutions look a bit over-engineered from a Python perspective. The ideas are really useful, though. Keep in mind that in Python, OOP is just one option of many - it's a very useful approach for many problems, but it's not as all-embracing as people with a Java or C# background imply. In particular, Python uses a lot less subclassing than those languages (because duck typing is often more flexible). > The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a > programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically with > Python. With Python, I'd say that an appreciation of the available libraries is key - both what's in the stdlib, and what's available from PyPI. That's not to say you should memorise the standard library, but rather cultivate an approach of "hmm, I'm pretty sure I remember there being a library for that" and going to look. The best way of getting this is to actually work with code - you can start with doing coding projects of your own (it's *always* a good exercise to have a problem that interests you, and work on coding it - no matter what it is, you'll learn more about understanding requirements, testing, bug fixing, and practical programming by working on a project you care about than you'll ever get reading books) and/or you can look at existing open source projects that you're interested in, and offer help (there's always a bug tracker, and typically some simpler items - and you'll learn a lot from interacting with a larger project). Hope this helps, Paul -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 12:41:24 -0400, leam hall wrote: > The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a > programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically > with Python. The longer I claim to be a programmer, the more I discover how wide a net that is. Web sites, embedded systems, user interfaces (text and graphical), databases, communications protocols, applications programming, systems programming, real time systems, text processing, scientific computing, simulations, security, etc., etc., etc. And I stopped there only because I hope I've made my point and not because that's an exhaustive list. Some of it you'll know up front; it's a pretty boring job on which you learn nothing new. What must be known is how to produce a program that does what the customer says they want (note that they likely don't know what they need, only what they want, but that's a whole other ball of wax). You'll also have to know enough about the problem domain to converse with the customer to turn what will be a vague request into something tangible. I'm sure you already do this when it comes to automating your own tasks. If I'm hiring myself out as a plumber, I should know how to unclog drains; and install, repair, replace toilets, water heaters, and other plumbing fixtures (or whatever else a plumber might be called on to do). Ignore the question of licensing; it doesn't apply to programmers. It's the same whether you use Python, something else, or some combination. Wow, that's a lot more than I intended to write. I don't mean to be discouraging, only enlightening. We all started somewhere, and your background as a sysadmin puts you way ahead of a lot of future programmers. HTH, Dan -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:18 AM, Larry Hudson via Python-listwrote: > > It had turned out his company had paid for him to take the course. Since he > failed, it suddenly came to the attention of his employer that he didn't > know how to program, and now his job was in jeopardy. As I hung up the > phone, I mused that his company shouldn't fire him. It was a perfect match: > a programmer who couldn't program and a company that couldn't figure out > sooner that he couldn't. > I had a coworker like that at my previous job. The boss basically was paying him to learn to code, and yet (for reasons which to this day I cannot fathom) let him make a lot of decisions about technology. Thus we used PHP and MySQL (okay, it could have been worse), with a multi-threaded daemon in addition to the actual web server (I take that back, it WAS worse). I had to fight uphill to convince my boss of the value of git ("why bother, I have daily backups for a week and then weekly backups for two years"), and even then, this coworker didn't commit or push until, well, pushed. Eventually he quit the company (rumour has it he was hoping we'd beg him to stay, since we were that short-handed), and I had to take over his code... and found it full of The Daily WTF level abominations. Heard of the "For-Case paradigm"? Check out this [1] old article if you're not familiar with it. Well, he gave me this thrilling variant (reconstructed from memory): $i=1; while ($i<3) { switch($i) {case 1: ... snip one set of validations $i=3; break; case 3: ... some more validation work $i=2; break; case 2: ... snip another set of validations $i=4; break; }} I don't remember the exact details, but it was something like this. It looked like the code just stepped straight through the switch block. So I stripped out the junk and just did the validations sequentially. And the code stopped working. Since I *had* been committing to git frequently, I checked out the previous version. It worked. I redid the simplification. It broke again. I stuck in some console output, and found that one of the blocks of code was actually getting skipped... and due to the compounding of two or three other bugs, valid input would get rejected by the validation that wasn't happening. I have no idea whether he intentionally removed part of the validation, or if he just never noticed that it wasn't running. It was a truly impressive piece of work. ChrisA [1] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_FOR-CASE_paradigm -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 09/27/2017 09:41 AM, leam hall wrote: On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 5:26 PM, Ned Batchelderwrote: [snip] The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically with Python. Hopefully NOT like this person... (Source: http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_misc.shtml There is no direct link to this item, it's about 2/3 the way down in a long web page...) Since I teach nights at a local community college, I get a lot of professional programmers in my classes upgrading their education. One student, who was one such person, attended every lecture and smiled and nodded and took notes. But he only turned in his first assignment. The results of his first test were horrid. Out of curiosity, I asked my wife, who barely knew how to turn a computer on much less program one, to take the test (which was mostly true/false and multiple choice questions). My wife scored higher than this guy. The semester's end came, and he flubbed his final, too. A few weeks later, I got a call from him complaining about his 'F'. I pointed out he hadn't turned in any of his assignments, and those counted 75% of the grade. "Did you hear me say something besides what the other students heard?" I asked. "Well, I thought my test grades would carry me," he replied. It had turned out his company had paid for him to take the course. Since he failed, it suddenly came to the attention of his employer that he didn't know how to program, and now his job was in jeopardy. As I hung up the phone, I mused that his company shouldn't fire him. It was a perfect match: a programmer who couldn't program and a company that couldn't figure out sooner that he couldn't. -- -=- Larry -=- -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 12:41 PM, leam hallwrote: > The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a > programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically with > Python. Fake it till you make it! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 5:26 PM, Ned Batchelderwrote: > On 9/23/17 2:52 PM, Leam Hall wrote: > >> On 09/23/2017 02:40 PM, Terry Reedy wrote: >> >>> https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/201709/beginners_and_experts.html >>> >>> Great post. >>> >> >> Yup. Thanks for the link. I often have that "I bet > Fred> doesn't get frustrated." thing going. Nice to know Ned bangs his head >> now and again. :P >> >> > "Ow!" --me Hehe...I've been trying to figure out how to phrase a question. Knowing I'm not the only one who gets frustrated really helps. I'm trying to learn to be a programmer. I can look at a book and read basic code in a few languages but it would be unfair to hire myself out as a programmer. I'm just not yet worth what it costs to pay my bills. To move forward takes a plan and time bound goals. At least for us old folks; we only have so much time left. I want to avoid retirement and just work well until I keel over. I don't come from a CS background but as a Linux sysadmin. My current push is OOP. Grady Booch's book on Analysis and Design is great and I've got the GoF for right after that. I've been doing more testing but need to write more tests. Writing code and starting to work with others on that code as well. The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically with Python. Thanks! Leam -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 9/23/17 2:52 PM, Leam Hall wrote: On 09/23/2017 02:40 PM, Terry Reedy wrote: https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/201709/beginners_and_experts.html Great post. Yup. Thanks for the link. I often have that "I bet Fred> doesn't get frustrated." thing going. Nice to know Ned bangs his head now and again. :P "Ow!" --me -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 9/23/2017 2:52 PM, Leam Hall wrote: On 09/23/2017 02:40 PM, Terry Reedy wrote: https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/201709/beginners_and_experts.html Great post. Yup. Thanks for the link. I often have that "I bet Fred> doesn't get frustrated." thing going. Nice to know Ned bangs his head now and again. :P As do I ;-). -- Terry Jan Reedy -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)
On 09/23/2017 02:40 PM, Terry Reedy wrote: https://nedbatchelder.com//blog/201709/beginners_and_experts.html Great post. Yup. Thanks for the link. I often have that "I bet Fred> doesn't get frustrated." thing going. Nice to know Ned bangs his head now and again. :P Leam -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list