Re:The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text....
by derefr on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @09:51PM
(#1320081)
I'm definitely not saying it's not a good idea to read code—it's just something that almost nobody does, because, as you've said, it's very hard work; much harder than having the "story of the code" told to you in a book or a blog post.
It's also work no one knows you did; unlike reading a book or a blog post, you can't really reference or quote a codebase to prove you know what you're talking about, because you can't expect the people you're talking to to have read the same exact lines.
Re:The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text....
by jacquesm on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @09:57PM
(#1320101)
It's probably related to the way I learned about tech, I relentlessly pulled stuff apart until I understood how it worked. I never really grew out of that I guess.
Re:The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text....
by aaronblohowiak on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @12:32AM
(#1320330)
Getting good at reading code helps with debugging. I like teams where every commit is reviewed by somebody else -- keeps you honest, you learn new tricks and you reduce bus factor
And it is surprising how much you can learn from reading code, the most humbling thing I learned from reading other people's code is that I'm not nearly as good a programmer as I thought I was.
I haven't read a program yet that didn't teach me something.
Reading programs is hard work though, it can tire you out pretty quickly, especially in the stage before things start clicking in to place and you can start to predict what's coming next based on the parts that you've already grokked.