On Wed, 22 Jul 2009, Wayne Lam wrote:
Hi all,
I am new in here and i am currently worked in the library too.
I am always confused that when i read the post in here, there are always
something i don't understand
and there are so much to learn.
So, the question is, hows everybody learns to be a good coder for
libraries, what s the secret and what
kind of technology are most important to learn?
You learn to be a good coder in a library the same way as any other
environment -- pay attention to the needs of the users and the demands
made by management. And all the while, keep up with advancements in the
field so that you can apply the best solution to a problem.
How you balance those first two things probably depends how receptive the
management is to ideas that they didn't come up with. (and you can still
pull the 'didn't you say something a while back about ...' trick so they
can still claim credit and you can get the better solution done.)
For the keeping up with advancements, I spend a fair bit of time scanning
headlines on various news websites, blogs and mailing lists (which was a
bad procrastination habit even before I started working for Fark), reading
books, the occassional side project to test out a new language, etc.
... and it's impossible to recommend any specifics without an idea of what
your overall role and background are. (are you a librarian who's been
pushed into the 'systems librarian' role, or a computer science person
who's new to libraries? are you working on front ends, backends, systems
administration? On windows, unix, linx? are you writing new software, or
just customizing existing packages for your library?)
-Joe
