Ask Craig

Craig Andera posted an email thread which offers some good insight and advice.

See, here's the thing that no one tells you: learning to be a good computer
programmer takes at least ten years. Which means that just about no one
coming out of college is any good. The smart employers (and believe me,
there are a lot of dumb ones) know this, and aren't really looking for
people that already have really strong programming skills. They're looking
for people with strong *thinking* skills, since those people can be taught
to do just about anything well.

...

My parting advice to you is that, regardless of what major you choose, be
sure to keep programming. Remember - it takes at least ten years to get
good. It sounds like you've already got a great start. (And you write well,
too, which is also a really good sign.) But make sure you take what you've
done already and keep building on it. Write code. Study design. Write more
code. Even familiarize yourself with some of the non-technology aspects of
programming like how team-based development works (e.g. pair programming,
test-driven development, etc.) You're going to need to do all of this - a
lot - before you can rightfully consider yourself an elite programmer. I
know I'm still learning.

# re: Ask Craig

Tuesday, June 08, 2004 8:04 AM by Darrell    
He got most of that from Peter Norvig's post "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" which was written in 2001:
<a target="_new" href="http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html">http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html</a>

You might have seen some of Peter's work, he's the Director of Search Quality at Google.

# re: Ask Craig

Tuesday, June 08, 2004 12:16 PM by Steve    
I'll have to check Peter's stuff out, I think I came across it before but don't remember anything about it, which is usually a good indicator that it might make sense to look it over again :)

# re: Ask Craig

Thursday, June 10, 2004 12:02 AM by Craig    
Actually, I've never read that book. But it sounds interesting!

# re: Ask Craig

Thursday, June 10, 2004 1:24 AM by Steve    
You guys definitely have very similar viewpoints, so I bet you'd like it! :-)

# re: Ask Craig

Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:09 PM by Vanessa    
Looking in Chesterbrook area for nice, no bug 2bdrm apartment at $800/month. Can anyone assist me in finding such?

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