| If you stop and think about it, programming knowledge is nearly useless
by itself. What exactly are you going to create with all that expert
programming skill, if it’s all you have? The world needs only so many
text editors.
What makes the craft interesting is how we apply it. Combine programming
prowess with accounting practices or even just a need to reunite
hurricane victims with their scattered family members, and you have
the makings of a real, and potentially useful, application.
Practical programming experience can be surprisingly hard to come by.
There are classes and books to give us theory and syntax. If you’ve
been a programmer for any amount of time, you will have read plenty
of those books. Then what? I think most of us inherently know that the
next step is to write something, but many of us struggle to find a topic.
I love games. I’m always playing something, and struggling to put
together a winning strategy never quite feels like work to me. I use
that to make myself a better programmer. I play games with my code.
I assign myself a task I’ve never tried before, perhaps to get more familiar
with an algorithm or a library. Or sometimes I’ll give myself a completely
routine task but add an unusual twist: implement this fullfeatured
trivial program in one hour or less. |
