How To Become a Good Programmer - David Heinemer Hansson (creator of Ruby On Rails)

the only way to become a good programmer where by definition i define good programmers somebody who program who writes software with clarity is to read a lot of software write a lot of software just like how do you become a good photographer you take a lot of pictures and you look at them and you practice and you practice and you practice that's actually quite similar to the problem with diets right the fundamental truth with diet is to be healthy well you should probably exercise regularly you should probably eat a reasonable amount and it should be good stuff like that's three things incredibly hard to do most people do not do that right figuring out how to write good software read a lot of software write a lot of software um aim for clarity it sounds too simple why is it simple because there's not just a secret there's not just one answer somebody can give you um the only way you can get there is by doing it so when i first started developing rails i read a ton of software i read the entire ruby standard library partly because documentation of ruby at that time was pretty poor and the only way to figure out how it worked was to actually look at code but that was also where i learned so much today we have it so much easier bundle open name of any gem and elopin boom right up in your text editor you can look at any code how many of you have read through a complete gem recently something you did not write awesome that's actually really encouraging i thought it'd be much less i think that is exactly the path you need to take you need to read a ton of code and it's not so much just because you read this code and then oh that's all great stuff um just as important as it is to to develop your sense of writing by reading a lot of writing so is it with code and i think you'll find that that is actually very easy because a lot of things you'll do bundle open on will follow sturgeon's revelation 90 of everything is crap um well at least you know you have company if you write crap software and i certainly do from time time um and that's a great way to learn i actually find that i learned the most about software i learned the most about what matters to me i learned the most about what clarity is when i read poor software because what i do is i take a piece of software i take a class or method and then i look at how good is pclearer like this is i think this is poorly written i think this smells um how can i rewrite it so by just sitting down and going through that exercise and rewriting it i find i learn a whole lot about what i care about so that's what i've been doing lately engaging in a lot of these internet arguments somebody will submit a piece of code and usually the submission will come along with the proposed solution too right i had this shitty piece of code then i learned about these three patterns and now it's wonderful and what i have found every single time and i've only done this maybe a handful of time maybe a little more is that every single time you just took the shitty code and you stuck it into some different boxes like it didn't actually improve applying the pattern to it did not improve the underlying clarity of the code because you just wrote it poorly like the problem with the code was not that it was missing patterns the problem with the code was that it was crap that it just had to be rewritten now that leads us to sort of uh mission in some ways for what rails is and what ruby is and it leads also to clarify some of the arguments we've had in the rails community for a while readability is incredibly important to ruby we have a lot of duplicated methods that do exactly the same thing just so we can improve readability i remember the first time i saw unless when i was learning about ruby that was one of those light bulb moments like wait a minute unless it's exactly the same as if not but it's a different keyword huh right it was not just about making the most efficient compact language it was about readability mind blown and decade long love affair would ruby established and i think this is what we're trying to achieve constantly in rails as well a lot of people will gripe about oh active record is too big or something is too big or have too many methods the surface area is too big or there's whatever it is right like who gives you is it more readable is it more clear that's the only thing that matters what do i care whether the surface area of a method is 100 methods or it's 200 methods i don't give a about that the only thing i gave a about is whether it's the code i'm actually reading is the system i'm trying to understand is that more clear when you put clarity as your number one mission a lot of concerns just fall by the wayside it just doesn't matter anymore and it's liberating so i think this actually comes from sort of the same route i didn't have time to write a short letter so i wrote a long one instead i think that describes about eighty percent of all that ninety percent of shitty code most people did not take the time to write a short piece of code so they wrote a long one instead and then they wrote that long one piece of code and they like pulled out their suspenders and like oh yeah i'm done my tests pass boom right or they look at it and say oh this is too long i must be missing some patterns if i just sprinkle some patterns over this wonders right no what you wrote was a draft this was just the first draft right any piece of code you write down is just a draft um mark twain actually had the hard job right he wrote an ink if you actually had to change that was kind of hard right so his drafts were a lot more complicated ours we have it so easy a text editor you just delete stuff you don't need any of this little stuff that you you fill over the page and you spill it everywhere and so forth eraser you can just delete stuff like that's my favorite key the delete key it's the number one tool for improving code delete key so uh when i was in high school um i submitted a bunch of first drafts as essays and they were really shitty and of course they were they were the first draft and my teacher at the time said oh right all right this is actually not bad you just only did step one if you have something on your mind you should write it down that's what i did i i wrote it down and then i hand it in oh if you've written something down you should rewrite it oh that was the step i missed and i think that's the step most people miss when they write down code because they're focused on all these other things they're not focused on the clarity because when you are focused on the clarity you will realize that all your first drafts are terrible all my first threats are terrible all my first attempts at writing a good class are poor they're too long they're not at the same level of abstraction they're not clear and that's okay i wrote something down i was trying to figure out what the system was supposed to do that's hard work and oftentimes you don't get perfect code out of that when you're still trying to figure out what it is that you're writing um but once you've written it down you should rewrite it and i think the key part of rewriting is omitting needless words when it comes to regular writing when it comes to programming it's omitting needless concepts it's submitting needless patterns it's submitting needless practices it's submitting needless classes it's submitting all these extra things that aren't getting you closer to clarity right how do you know you develop an eye for it how do you develop an eye you read a lot of code you write a lot of code you rewrite a lot of code and you forget about patterns for a while you forget about tdd for a while and you focus on just what's in front of you the piece of code how can i write it simpler write software well thank you very much [Music] you

Channel: Reiz Ariva

Views: 6,543

Keywords: dhh, david heinemer hansson, programmer, how to become a good developer, programming, ruby on rails, javascript, coding, web development

Id: nHIu9b4ny2o

Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2017