How to be a good Programmer By Elvis Lesha How to be a good Programmer

Bad Programmer Writing code without thinking Poor understanding of the programming language model Lack of Critical Thinking Not being able to write a program from scratch Messy code No comments Random indentation

Good Programmer

Problem Solving Analyze the problem Divide into sub-problems

Algorithms Have a good understanding of algorithms Know how to use them

Language Pick a Language Ensure you have a good understanding of it Once you’ve learnt one language you can apply the same concepts to another language

Practicing Constantly keep programming Help others with their code Set yourself small tasks Help others with their code StackOverflow

Debugging To be good at debugging, you also need to practice. When you have lots of experience, it’s easy to formulate hypothesis about what’s wrong

Quality Code Simple code Understandable code “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” Bill Gates Understandable code Well structured (indentation etc..) Write Documentation (comments)

Coding contest International Collegiate Programming contest topcoder

Working on project Work on small piece of a large project Start your own project

Apis and libraries You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel Read documentation

Things to think about while coding Testing Bugs Don’t leave the testing until the end Design Interface User experience

SUMMARY To be a good programmer: Think logically Practice Help others Experiment