On 9/19/07, Michael Langford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I do think this is a good question for getting a sense of where a > person's understanding is. I wonder how much this understanding is a > pre-requistite for being a good developer... not too much I hope! > > A good developer is a very loaded term. :o) > > There are a lot of good programmers who are bad developers. A lot of being a > good developer is getting things done that work well enough to supply > whomever is downstream from you at work.
Agreed - we discussed this at work yesterday when designing the interview tasks for our new recruits. On this point, I feel I score highly. > It also has to do with several things such as source control > tools, ticket tracking tools, testing, debugging, and deployment as well. Right - which is the sort of stuff a fresh-faced university student will take time to get up to speed with, > You will find yourself making more informed choices on things and debugging > things a lot better the more of this technical programming stuff you pick > up. A good compiler/interpreter book and a lot of experimentation will > really open your eyes on a lot of this, as will just doing your job while > constantly reading reading reading about what you are learning and doing > things like talk with your co-workers at lunch about hiring tests, and > participating in online discussion boards. :o) Yes - this is exactly what I feel, and try to do. I'm lucky that I work with some brilliant people. I wasn't hired as a developer - I'm a sysadmin who can also program. I've been seconded to the development team, and am loving it, but quickly realising how much I don't know! > In addition you should try doing really hard things that break or come > really close to breaking the tools you use. But not too hard, you have to be > able to *do* them after all. Learning how VM's and interpreters and > compilers work, then understanding the concepts behind why they work that > way really helps give you a framework to hang an understanding of what's > going on in a program. One way to get this knowledge is to start far in the > past and work forward. Another is to dive deep into something from today. Inspiring advice! :) > I will say if you're already in the workforce and not headed back out to > school, the onus will be on you to pick up more of this. Much of the > conceptual stuff you won't hear at work, except occasionally overheard in a > discussion assuming you already know it. You'll have to ask questions, and > you'll have to read up on it afterwards, because often your co-workers won't > have the whole picture either. Right. And I must spend more time here again. Since leaving my last job most of my programming has been in Ruby (and now PHP and SQL). I sort of fear that my head won't be able to hold it all at once, so I've neglected my Python studies! S. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
