How does one advance in programming?

Posted by Joe Barr on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Joe Barr
Published on 2010-05-28T00:37:25Z Indexed on 2010/05/28 0:41 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 259

Filed under:

learning

|

programming

I really have the felling as if I'm stuck in my own craft.

I've been developing and learning for a while now and keep having the feeling that I should advance more, or even be more knowledgeable. I've started projects I didn't finish because I thought I lacked the knowledge and the skill to make that feature work just right, or to make that code magically appear on my screen. I've read books I didn't finish, thinking I wasn't advanced enough for the subjects they covered. I've been around long enough to know that everything comes with experience, hard work and dedication.

Having said this, I just want to be able to work without getting stuck on a particular problem that involves my cluelessness of a language or a tool feature.

My question to you would be, how does one advance in programming? What are the secrets (if any) to advance to the point of fluency in a particular language or a task.

Thank you!

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about learning

Machine learning challenge: diagnosing program in java/groovy (datamining, machine learning)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All! I'm planning to develop program in Java which will provide diagnosis. The data set is divided into two parts one for training and the other for testing. My program should learn to classify from the training data (BTW which contain answer for 30 questions each in new column, each record in… >>> More
what's a good language for learning machine learning?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've been thrust into a situation where I need to know something about Machine Learning. Is there a language or perhaps a reasonable tutorial that breaks this subject matter in gently? I'm not a math guy, so it's got to start from a pretty basic level. >>> More
Learning WPF and MVVM - best approach for learning from scratch

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, I've got about three years c# experience. I'd like to learn some WPF and the MVVM pattern. There are a lot of links to articles on this site but I'm getting a little overwhelmed. Would a sensible approach for a begginer to be forget mvvm for a while and just quickly learn a bit a of WPF, then… >>> More
What are the advantages of Ceylon over Java?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Looking for the recent and powerful upcoming programming languages over net, I came across Ceylon. I dropped in at ceylon-lang.org and it says: Ceylon is deeply influenced by Java. You see, we're fans of Java, but we know its limitations inside out. Ceylon keeps the best bits of Java but improves… >>> More
understanding evaluation function

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I am developing a chess program. And have made use of an alpha beta algorithm and a static evaluation function. I have successfully implemented both but I want to improve the evaluation function by automatically tuning the weights assigned to its features. At this point am totally confused about the… >>> More

Related posts about programming

Imperative Programming v/s Declarative Programming v/s Functional Programming

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
Imperative Programming :: Imperative programming is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of statements that change a program state. In much the same way as the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands to take action, imperative programs define sequences of commands… >>> More
Programming in python Vs programming in Java

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've been writing Java for the last couple of years , and now I've started to write in python (in addition). The problem is that when I look at my Python code it looks like someone tried to hammer Java code into a python format , and it comes out crappy because - well , python ain't Java. Any… >>> More
Have you ever bought a commercial implementation of a programming language for personal programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Commercial products are often a source of ideas and inspiration for open source projects. There are free and open source implementations of almost every programming language ever devised, and a lot of them are very good. For non-work related personal programming projects, have you ever bought an… >>> More
Is Game Programming very different from normal programming?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
By normal programming, I'm referring to application programming (which is all I'm familiar with at the moment). My goal is to make games, and I wanted to know if the path was different than other programming paths at the beginner level. Or perhaps it's too early for me to worry about that at this… >>> More
Programming activities for high school kids who have no idea what CS or programming is

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I work at a small high school that's in a very high poverty area. There are only a handful of seniors that are thinking about applying to be an engineer of some sort in college and only 1 kid that applied for Computer Science (he has a couple acceptances so far!). He's been talking to me a lot as… >>> More