The Programming Elite, Programmers Who Read | Hacker News Reader

The Programming Elite, Programmers Who Read

cycle-gap.blogspot.com

27 pointsrams25 comments

Well then, I must be in the utmost echelon of hacker demigods, as RescueTime tells me I spend the majority of my days reading programming stuff on the interwebs instead of working.

(In my defense, I do still manage to finish stuff on time...)

I think the problem is people who read things but don't try to build new things. You can write Lisp style code in C# and if you want to play around with the object system you can even do so in C++ or even Java but coders who only read the hype and never understand what it's saying build the same junk in each new platform.

This sets the bar for an elite programmer fairly low IMHO.

If you read coding horror you are a programming GOD!

Alternatively, unless you instantly grok the crufties code only to instantly transform it into the best code ever, and then go home and do some more programming on the side, and then you're also a social butterfly who is never ever on the market and never has to stoop so low as to send out resumes to get a job - well then you're just a VB drone loser.

I myself don't know where I fit in, because while I read lots of programming and cs related stuff, I can not do the 8+2 hrs thing, and I got my last job by sending out resumes. So I must be somewhere between god and total loser.

Do any programmers actually work only 8 hours a day..? I've never seen evidence suggesting this is actually true. 10+2 seems more realistic.

Some don't even make it to 40hrs a week, ask DHH and crew: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/893-workplace-experiments

Personally, I'm worthless after 6 hours of programming.

I'm decent for most of those six hours, and I can churn out maybe 3000 lines a month, but I tend to need a holiday afterwards.

I just quit my cubicle job to switch to iPhone programming, and it's been interesting how hard it is to knuckle down and really get started.

I've worked as a programmer for over 30 years.

I've had two really productive periods during that time.

One of those periods I spent about 4 hours a day coding, totally focused - get to work at about 5:30 after a leisurely brunch and a 30 minute bus ride during which I planned my coding for the day, jump on a machine and pound the teletype for 4 hours or so, and go home, nearly exhausted. This was writing device driver assembler routines and image processing code.

The second period, I was implementing a prototype of a distributed OS, about 10% of a 3 inch thick spec which defined the whole thing down to the level of small procedures, with a hard 6 month deadline (which was what I had estimated the job would take). I worked steadily for that 6 months on a 40 hour schedule, and finished about two weeks before the demo was given.

I'm currently reading On Lisp and The Four-Gated City (by Doris Lessing), for whatever that's worth.

I sit at a terminal for more than 8 hours a day, but I do things other than program.

There are times when I have done productive work for 20 hours straight, but most of the time I do about 4-6 hours of work.

"Elite" can have different meanings and is only relevant in context. If you have a small library of programming books you've read and you're constantly gaining new knowledge, you are "elite" compared to all the people who write bank software in Java that they learned once 5 years ago.

If someone they describe is in the top 5-10%, there are still folks in the top 4-1% and at some point it becomes ridiculously difficult to get anymore "Elite" without prodigy-like skill. I read a lot of books and am skilled in numerous computer-related areas including programming, but Linus Torvalds I am not.

Agreed. When was the last time Joel wrote about programming? I don't think he ever has -- he just writes about demanding that your boss buy you an expensive chair. I hate to tell you, but the way you get good at programming is by programming, not reading feel-good essays about how great you are. (I have a cheap IKEA chair. I like it.)

Jeff occasionally has programming content on his blog, but he doesn't offer much insight. The most intelligent thing I heard him say was "XSS is bad, escape user data when embedding it in HTML!" A good message, but one that everyone should have heard about 10 years ago.

This is not the kind of stuff the elite read. LtU is.

Even when I am actually doing work, I often spend at least half of my time reading and investigating existing code, not coding. Why? Because I want to:

1) Really understand what is going on in the existing code base

2) Make sure what I plan to do is in line with the philosophy of the current code

3) Make sure I'm not replicating something already implemented

4) Give my brain enough gestation time to allow lateral thinking to happen

In fact, often I'll spend some time reading, go off and practice juggling, then come back and whip off an initial prototype, then go and do something else distracting (read Hacker News) then revisit the problem again the next day. Most of the time, I'll figure out an even better way to do it.

" they are the kind of people who read things in order to better themselves as programmers. And that's already, you know, 5-10% of practising programmers"

I find this hard to believe. I have at least 20 friends who also program and they all read online and own programming books.

I'd like to know where Joel gets his statistics.

- From Peopleware, Productive Projects and Teams by Tom De Marco and Timothy Lister (2nd Ed, page 12)

This is often a difficult statistic for programmers who do read to grasp because the only programmers you likely know are more people like you. The thing is, there aren't as many of us as we think there are.

None of the programmers I know don't read. I am told that these people exist; they work in cubicles and so forth. However, I don't know any of them. So, personally, it takes a lot of concentrated effort on my part to not take that 5-10% and bump it to, say, 50%. Because in the world I live in, that statistic is crazy low.

In one of my previous jobs we had this dude who had like 20+ books on his desk.

At best the guy was an average developer...

There is a difference between a read and a reference.

Having books on your desk doesn't necessarily mean you read them. Most likely, he was showing off.

The average software developer, for example, doesn't own a single book on the subject of his or her work, and hasn't ever read one.

I used to own, and read, books about programming. Now my reference books at least are made obsolete by the web.

Meh. Whatever. If you learn online or learn by buying books or fall somewhere in the middle because you do both, you're still learning. Sometimes I just want something to read where I can read away from the damn computer under the sun. At the same time, there's a tonne of stuff online that will teach me the same thing. Who bloody cares where I learn it??? When I was earlier in my career, I spend a TONNE of money on books. Over the past few years, that's fallen to zero because there's a lot of information online. Recently, I started buying again just to change the pace. It really doesn't matter as long as the outcome is the same... which it is.

>And that's already, you know, 5-10% of practising programmers. It's not the vast masses of Java monkeys who were formerly VB monkeys who were formerly COBOL monkeys who are just doing, you know, large swathes of extremely boring stuff internally somewhere. <

I'm certainly not above the occassional look down my nose at Java, but how do you suppose someone would move to Java from VB without reading a few books or manuals?

Reading language manuals out of the pure need to survive doesn't count.

Most of the CS students I know don't really do any coding or reading about CS outside of their classes.

But I agree, I think it is garbage, meant to make the reader feel good.

I don't know where his data are comming from, but in my experience, most programmers read... so this stat is definitely vastly different in different social circles...

What about reading code? Isn't studying good, possibly open source, code more enlightening than drooling over hype filled blogs?

Joel also adds a little later, "Don't bother writing in, I will just commit suicide."

Anyone else writing him a letter now?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com