Bits of Learning

Learning sometimes happens in big jumps, but mostly in little tiny steps. I share my baby steps of learning here, mostly on topics around programming, programming languages, software engineering, and computing in general. But occasionally, even on other disciplines of engineering or even science. I mostly learn through examples and doing. And this place is a logbook of my experiences in learning something. You may find several things interesting here: little cute snippets of (hopefully useful) code, a bit of backing theory, and a lot of gyan on how learning can be so much fun.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Programming -- Some Gyan

Here comes the most important part of programming. Good programming
is dependent on your taste, experience etc. And in the end it all boils down
to practice. That's why many in computer science think that programming
is essentially an art. Well, lots of people try to make the whole process of
programming very formal, so that it can be argued that programming is an
engineering activity, not an art (as if it's being an art is some kind of bad
thing!). But, I think we don't get into that. If it's an art then let it be. We
know well what's required to create good pieces of art.
One point to add to that is: the beauty thus created by this art of programming
is more pragmatic in nature than other creations of art. Accordingly,
this artist the programmer learns to measure the beauty of his
creation in terms of things like efficiency, changeability, portability and intuitive
appeal. If and as you get more experienced developing programming
you will develop a fairly good idea of what score high on the above points.
Really, I can't give a mathematical method of measuring that. Practise!

No comments: