I’m going to share with you what I see as “25” common pitfalls when learning to program (or working towards mastering programming). Many of these points affect both beginners and professionals alike — myself very much included. 0. Forgetting that programming is all about people. Yes, the machine will execute your code, but programming
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I regret to inform you that Programming Zen will be on hold for a good while due to tragic personal circumstances. On the evening of Thursday, October 13, 2016, an 18 year old girl having a domestic dispute with her mother allegedly set her own house on fire. The fire spread quickly to the
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Some programming languages become popular. Others don’t. Why is that? Are the popular languages better than the obscure ones?[1] It’s more complicated than that, so let’s grab a long stick and poke at this hornet’s nest. Define popular To start off on the wrong foot, there isn’t really a consensus on the popularity of programming
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Most professions require their practitioners to remain constantly up-to-date. Think about accountants learning about new tax regulations, or doctors studying new medical research. It’s a challenge. So much so, that many fail to remain current even when lives are at stake. In our profession, the challenge is particularly prominent. Specific knowledge, outside of selected
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As I mentioned in my previous article, I bought a Chromebook with the intention of using it as a portable machine for web development, writing, and general productivity on the go. Chrome OS is quite limited so, in practice, my goal requires installing a version of Linux on the Chromebook. And since I don’t
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In my previous post on laptops for developers, I shortlisted a few options. In this one, I share the story of how I will end up developing with a Chromebook. I almost bought a Lenovo After mulling it over, and taking into account the feedback I received, I was quite positive I’d be buying a
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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been heavily researching laptops for software developers. Why I’m looking for a new laptop When shopping for a developer laptop, I usually stick to powerful machines with a relatively large screen. My main operating system is OS X, so my last few laptops have all been MacBook
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I’m a believer in learning by doing. Programming exercises are a useful tool to practice and improve your coding skills. After all, practice makes one, if not perfect, at least pretty darn good. (Yes, I know competitive programming differs from real-world programming.) Below is a list of high-quality sites for programming exercises. This is
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As things went well with my recent giveaway (congratulations to the winner, Tom R.), I figured it would be fun to do another this week. Unlike the previous one however, I’m delighted to report that this this giveaway is open to participants around the world, not just those in the US. Prize Details For
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I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference. — Sir Tony Hoare In mathematics, functions have a domain and a codomain. These are respectively the set of inputs and the set of possible outputs. The function then simply relates an input to an output. For example, consider the
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