What's on Your Programming Reading List?
“I think you need to read more,” my professor told me bluntly. I’d just shared my idea for an upcoming paper, and he clearly wasn’t thrilled…
read this post →
3 Programming Habits to Build Now
You’re learning to program, and looking for some answers. What skills do you need to develop? What concepts matter most? Which resources are…
read this post →
Why You’ll Get Better Faster with Feedback
We often think that the best doctors have the most experience. But one study suggests otherwise: the longer doctors have been in practice…
read this post →
How to Accelerate Your Programming Knowledge with Multiple Streams of Learning
My recommendation is to apply an approach that I like to call “multiple streams of learning,” or MSL. It means to actively study a field or…
read this post →
Learning to Program Is a Lifelong Pursuit
It’s odd to me. People talk about learning to program like it’s a one-time thing; that it’s something for novices. I don’t see it this way…
read this post →
Are You Becoming a Better Programmer?
I received an interesting question from a reader recently. He wanted to know how you can tell if you’re making progress as a programmer. It…
read this post →
How freeCodeCamp Is Helping Me Become a Better Programmer
Judging by the title, you may think this article is about the programming content on freeCodeCamp. You’d be partly right. But it’s also…
read this post →
Cory House’s Analogy Between Writing Code and Writing Prose
I’m working through Cory House’s Pluralsight course, Clean Coding Principles in C# , and something interesting has caught my attention…
read this post →
How to Get Better at Solving Programming Problems
Most of us have been given the same advice: to become a better problem solver, you need to solve more problems. But this advice is too…
read this post →
Learn to Program Better with The Weekly Spot Drill
Most of us have fallen into this trap. We’re so focused on learning a topic or honing a skill that we don’t touch previously learned…
read this post →
Improve your Code by Writing Better Variable Names
“You should improve your variable names,” a programmer told me bluntly after reviewing a program of mine. His comment stopped me in my…
read this post →
Why Programmers Need a Training Journal
The field of programming is as wide as it is deep. No matter if you’ve been programming for a month, year, decade, or more, all of us have…
read this post →
How to Declare a JS Arrow Function—My Recent freeCodeCamp Article
If you find JavaScript’s arrow function syntax a bit confusing, you’re not alone. It can be tricky to nail down at first. And that’s why I…
read this post →
2 Traits of Great Programmers
What distinguishes great programmers from good ones? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with since I began learning to program . I’ve…
read this post →
Why Reading Code Matters (and how to get better at it)
It strikes me as odd. We’ve heard the same messages: Write clean code. Write readable code. Write concise code. I agree with these…
read this post →
The Best Resources to Learn Python in 2020
Finding a good programming resource is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It's hard to find and can take a lot of time. I’ve used…
read this post →
4 Ways to Learn Programming Topics
All programmers have something in common. There’s a lot of programming knowledge to learn and we need a way to learn it effectively. In many…
read this post →
How Ben Franklin Can Help You Become a Better Programmer
Benjamin Franklin was a lot of things, including a scientist, an inventor, writer, and politician. He was also a great learner. In his…
read this post →
Program Better in Ten-Mode
Many programmers don't get the most from their programming hours. In large part, this is because most workplaces don't emphasize peak…
read this post →
Why You Should Cross-Train Your Programming Brain
It seemed counterintuitive. Standing in Barnes & Noble one winter evening, I paged through a running book titled Run Less, Run Faster…
read this post →
How to Retain the Programming Knowledge You’ve Gained
There’s a lot to learn as a programmer. And there’s just as much material to remember and recall. You don’t want to relearn SQL because you…
read this post →
A Better Way to Learn Test-Driven Development
The meetup had a requirement. About fifteen of us sat around plastic tables and chairs listening to the meetup organizer explain the problem…
read this post →
Learning a New Programming Topic? Start with the Big Picture
It kept happening. I’d set out to learn a new programming topic and get caught up in the details. Learning something new took forever. I’d…
read this post →
The Art of Problem-Solving
On a rainy Monday night in downtown Boston, I sat around a small conference room table with three other programmers. I was at a Python…
read this post →
Jocko Willink and The Disciplined Life
Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL, underscores the importance of discipline in his latest book, “Discipline Equals Freedom.” It’s filled…
read this post →
Use a Standing Desk to Boost Your Energy at Work
People try kinds of tactics to stay awake during the day. Drinking caffeine in one of its many forms — coffee, energy drinks, or soda — is…
read this post →
A Simple Solution to Improve Your Work
In 1935, a pilot error on Boeing Flight 299 resulted in a deadly crash, killing two people and injuring others. In response, Boeing…
read this post →
Supercharge Your Lunch Break
Most people spend their lunch break working or eating, and sometimes both. But I have another suggestion: take a beneficial break…
read this post →
5 Things Artists Can Teach Us about Productivity
Society portrays artists as eccentric people, lounging around their studio or office waiting for inspiration to strike. But after reading…
read this post →
Stop the Meetings!
The workplace is meeting-happy these days. We meet to discuss projects. We meet to create processes. We meet to share daily goals. And we…
read this post →
Be a Good Manager
I was intrigued by Jason Fried’s recent post on being a bad manager , so I decided to take the opposite tack. This post is about being a…
read this post →
Working in Blocks of Time
I used to be a to-do list fanatic. Each evening I wrote the things I wanted to accomplish the following day on a pocket-sized notebook pad…
read this post →