1) Practice
2) Study the experts
3) Learn from your mistakes
Practice is by far the easiest thing to do. As I've mentioned before, I think the great lesson of Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success
is that one gets better at something by practicing. In anything competitive, by practicing against better players (that's #2). But time on the field isn't enough; you actually have to learn something.I've been thinking about playing Warcraft again, and in preparation I've watched a few Arena videos to get me motivated. That lead to watching some Quake videos, and that reminded me of my old days playing Quake. Obviously, the top players (at any online game) have played a lot. But time on the battlefield isn't enough; being smart by itself isn't enough.
I also read a number of "how to get better at Arena/Quake/Whatever" articles, and that led me back to Gladwell, a bunch of other articles and books, and eventually to the pickup community. A lot of people go to coaches for learning. This mostly gives the student a chance to find out who the masters are, so that he can study what they do. It's difficult to get better when you're around people that are as good as you; you're forced to learn everything yourself. Coaches will tell you what to practice, and they'll show you better players, too.
But learning that way is still pretty much learning by yourself. You just have better examples to teach you.
The better way to learn is to have a teacher. The teacher will look at your performance and suggest what to do different. They'll point out your mistakes.
That's the hardest part of getting better
Most people don't like to go back and revisit old work, but it's potentially the most instructive. And watching the pros at work isn't enough; a good teacher will point out what they're doing.
The the pickup community, "instructors" either "teach by example" (which is really doing what they do and then hoping that you figure it out on your own) or stick to mechanical skills (like body language).
In online games, there are no coaches; everyone learns by themselves. In this sort of community, the best thing to do is to play with the best.
In programming, the cost of practice is extreme; there's a plethora of experts; and they all say different things. About the easiest way to improve your programming is to refactor.
The best way to be a better programmer
The easiest way to improve is to try different tools, languages, and platforms. Until you try a decent interface builder, you'll probably think the one you're using is good enough. Until you try a functional language, you'll think your OO skills are all you need. Until you use a modern compiler, you might think the crap you have to do to satisfy your current compiler are acceptable.
Theory is nice. Where's the practice?
One of the things I learned while working on my other blog is just saying "try a new platform" is vague. Are there any that I could name that would be good?
Why, yes. Yes there are.
1) F#. Try building little Windows utility apps using it. Dive into the community to find better ways of doing it. Read a book or two and pick up the common wisdom.
2) iPhone dev. This is a great place to learn from other's mistakes, because the platform and tools are such utter shite. Seriously. The rest of the world is using modern compilers and tools that work. (OK, honestly, this entry is a bit of a joke, but you will learn message-passing.)
3) Find an open-source project using Perl or Python. Diving into one of these languages is the best way to learn them.
4) Website dev using C# and ASP.NET. Modern compilers & tools are an amazing thing.
I'm sure there's better examples out there; use these suggestions as a start.
No comments:
Post a Comment