The latest in this series makes a shift from C++ to Java since that’s what I’ve been mucking about with lately. I’m in a little bit of a time squeeze at the moment so explanations will have to come later (though this code should be fairly readable and obvious what its doing).
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import [...]
Today I take another paragraph from one of Joel Spolsky’s posts and quote it here for emphasis on something I find very important:
“When a programmer complains about “politics”, they mean—very precisely—any situation in which personal considerations outweigh technical considerations. Nothing is more infuriating than when a developer is told to use a certain programming language, [...]
“If somebody tells you that the job of a bricklayer is to lay bricks on bricks then you will probably not want to be a bricklayer. But what if somebody told you about building a cathedral? It is the same with programming. You need a vision to make it meaningful.”
Today I went back and re-read Joel Spolsky’s advice The Law of Leaky Abstractions and it hits a nail on the head about what peers from EWU were missing:
“Learn how to do it manually first, then use abstractions to save time. Code generation tools which pretend to abstract out something, like all abstractions, leak, [...]
I spent several months trying to locate a job in Seattle, but the economic situation displaced a lot of software developers who are now vying for the same positions as college graduates. I had many interviews and leads in Seattle, but in the end it proved too competitive to break into. Now that the ink [...]
I kept updating my blog with a list of things I’d like to learn or improve upon, and it seemed redundant to continually copy/paste the information to a new post, just to update it. I would however like to keep the list online, so I’ve moved it to this single location.
Updated 6/29/2009 : 09:15pm
I’ve been thinking for some time about the possibility of starting another website. This blog is certainly where I post general goings-on with me and my programming, but I think it would be cool to create a website dedicated to teaching up-and-coming programmers things, categorized in an easy to navigate way. This [...]
I knew that when I started the job search, I would ultimately end up doing a lot of algorithm development in my interviews, so I made an investment in a good dry-erase whiteboard to practice on. I explained to Susanna that, as a programmer, a whiteboard is just as important as the computer or code [...]