So you want to be a better programmer?
- Have you ever READ a program written by Bill Gates?
- Have you ever READ the original papers by Edsger Dijkstra, Fred Brooks,
C.A.R. Hoare (who is he?)
- Have your professors ever shown you an example of code written by
the professionals themselves (EMACS, the TCP/IP Protocol stack
(BSD port),etc)
I once had the pleasure of being a student of UP PhD guy named Dr. Abaya.
He was teaching at that time Digital Communications and one occasion he
was teaching directly off the ORIGINAL 1940s(?) paper by Nyquist (Nyquist
Theorem). This made a big impression on me because this was the only
time in my whole college life that somebody went to the pain of getting
the ORIGINAL research paper instead of relying on the "usual" books.
There is no need to look for a mentor. Everything is available online,
some for free (e.g. Linux source) and some for a fee (www.acm.org,
www.ieee.org, www.computer.org). It only takes a matter of aptitude and
persistence on whether a person would want to play CounterStrike or
spend time reading professional code. Unfortunately, most
students would prefer to play CounterStrike.
In the words of the Obi-wan:
"Use the source Sacha, Use the source"
Ambo
P.S.
Where would you find source for Bill's code?
On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, Sacha Chua wrote:
> I want to make a difference not only in the way I'm learning but also in the
> way other people are learning. I want to become one of the best programmers
> in the world. =) But I can't train myself well enough - I still don't have
> the experience and perspective that other people do. I find it hard enough
> to find people who are as into computers as I am - I always want to get to
> know other people so that we could learn from each other. It would be really
> great if I could find a mentor, someone who's done the same thing and who
> can guide me. That's why I constantly try to seek out better programmers,
> people who really love what they're doing.
>
> Can anyone help me?
>
> Sacha 8)
> 2 BS CS Ateneo geek
>
>
>
>
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