Clarke Ching - More Chilli Please

ReLearning to Program

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm tinkering with relearning to programming. I've no intention of ever coding professionally again, I just like the idea of tinkering a bit.

I've started with Chris Pine's Learn to Program (You'll find the book and the original tutorial the book is based on here: http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/). It's been an eye-opener.

I'm just finishing off a stickyminds.com article about RElearning to program (rather than learning for the first time). I'm going to reference Chris's book ... but I'd like a few other suggestions.

What books, resources, courses would you suggestion?

Derek's story ...

I caught up with Greg B yesterday.  He lives and works in London, I live in Scotland, but we both grew up in the same part of New Zealand, on the far side of the picture below, but a few years apart.  We didn't know each other in New Zealand and we only met because our professional interests (TOC and Software development) overlap.  Greg is a big thinker and a big doer, a hands-on senior, manager with a an excellent grip on the  nitty gritty technical side of development.

Greg pointed me towards Derek Silver's article about how he ditched Ruby on Rails in favour of PHP.  Even if you know little about programming it's worth a 2 minute read.  The 10 second version is that Derek cancelled a 2 year project which was rewriting CDbaby.com in Ruby on Rails then rewrote it in PHP (because it suited him) in 2 months. 

[Technical confession: he says "Rails", I assume he means "Ruby on Rails" ... I may be wrong.]

There are 78 A4 pages worth of comments, and you could bogged down in bogginess of it all if you tried to read them all, so let me tell you what I took from it: Derek, a good (but I think, self-taught) PHP coder,  learned to write far, far better code and massively increased his productivity, because he learned how to write code by working with Ruby on Rails for a while. As he put it, "It’s the most beautiful PHP I’ve ever written, all wonderfully MVC and DRY, and and I owe it all to Rails."

Depending on your background you may come to many other conclusions about Derek's story, but here's an intriguing thought: Could most programmers become better programmers (considerably more productive) by working with Ruby on Rails for a while?

I've suddenly realised this is very, very important: COULD MOST PROGRAMMERS become more PRODUCTIVE by working with RoR for a while? 

Please email me your thoughts or post comments ...

Is there a better way to improve the design skills of programmers? Would you need to work with a word class RoR programmer to learn RoR's good stuff (mvc, dry, etc)?  Could COBOL programmers benefit?  Could C programmers? 

This could be the one thing that's missing from my book: a way to teach programmers how to write better, more malleable code.   

If only I could speak Italian ... I'd be blushing now

Jason shared this brilliant youtube hidden-camera video.  A former F1 driver takes his wife for a quick drive around some race track.  Quick is the important word here.  His expression never changes.  Her's ... watch and see.  (As one commenter, who can understand italian, wrote: "but she has a very bad tongue").

'tis very funny.

Ralph

Ralph writes a nice agile blog and he's been very supportive of me during my book writing.

http://agiletips.blogspot.com/

Macbook rethink

They used different words but Rob and Stuart both asked me the same question: what's stopping me liking the Macbook.

The honest answer: it would have been easier for me to stick with a windows machine.  It's like learning to walk again.

The really honest answer: I hate learning new things; I hate the feeling of not being good at something; I have what Carol Dweck, in her remarkable, but brief book, calls a fixed mindset.

To put that another way: I like doing things; I hate TRYing to do things.

My wife and I both talk about this every so often.  Dweck's book was an eye opener for us.  We both grew up being really, really good at school work.  We were both top of the class or damned-near top of the class in every class we took at school.  I'm not being boastful here but we were both just good at school.  And neither of us had to try all that hard.  And now we're both crap at doing things where we aren't instantly good at them.

We aren't good when we have to TRY. TRY is a very important word. 

You can dry your eyes now.

Failing or not being good at something is really, really, really hard when you are not used to.  I took French lessons about 10 years ago and I was blatantly bottom of the class.  I gave up after two weeks.  And, to be honest with you, I don't think I've put myself in a learning situation where I had to TRY - where I wasn't going to succeed - since. 

And now this MacBook is kicking my arse and I hate it.  (It does suck though: where are my page up, page down, home and end keys?  Why is trackpad freaking finicky  What about my del key?  Why is it sooooooo hard to learn to edit text? Why?  Why? Why?).

Like I say, it's like learning to walk again.

So, I read Rob and Stuart's comments this morning, I reflected, and I decided to play a few mind-games on myself.  I bought a spare battery and a bluetooth mouse for it today.  I'm fighting back by increasing my cost of giving up, of switching back.  I also wrote an article, from fresh, this afternoon.  It seemed less risky than working on my book.

Is there anyone else out there who doesn't like doing new things or TRYING?

Macbook

I think there's a big conspiracy going on.  I think that windows machines are far, far easier to use than apple machines but the apple people are just too embarrassed to admit that they've been conned.  I still have another couple of weeks to go until I can return my macbook (losing 20%) and at the moment I think I'm going to do it.  I'll see how I go.  I'd love to love this beast, but in many ways it is feeble compared to what I can do with my 5 year old Windows XP desktop.

blogo 2

And blogo is worse. Too confusing.  I lost the first post I wrote using it. Pity.

Testing out MarsEdit - Mac blogging software

Rob and Paul, and others, suggested I check out MarsEdit for blogging. If you are reading this ... then it worked! The software looks and feels very nice. I've also picked up TextMate as my text editor. The evidence was overwhelming. Andy Hunt rather kindly comped me a copy of (the excellent) TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac and said it was the first editor to draw him away from vi in 25 years. I've even started programming again ... in a small way. I've been working through Chris Pine's Learn to Program although I've been using it to RE-LEARN programming and pick up a little ruby. It's a great little book. Nicely, written; easy to follow. And Ruby ... wow, things have changed a lot in the 10 years since I last coded (in "c" and Cobol ... at the same time!). I'm really, really impressed.

Mac blogging software?

Hello my kind, wonderful and helpful friends. 

I don't know if you lot get much out of this blog - I hope so - but I find you all really, really helpful when I get stuck.  I've found work through this blog, I've discovered cool board games, I've bought Wall Street, even, because it's useful research for my book, and lately I've been getting so very reassuring advice re my new macbook.  Good news: it still sucks, but it sucks less; apparently I've got a week or so to go before I start to approve.  I've also confirmed that I can get a refund in 3 weeks time, with 20% "costs", so all is not lost ... and more than that, I've got Windows XP install on it too and that runs faster than Vista used to on my old Sony laptop (which is hidden under the couch, in case of emergencies).

Now: I want a blogging client for the MAC ... any advice?

Lead Engineer at Toyota - video

Okay, confession time: I'm trying to edit the following text using my macbook and I can't.  They keys just don't work like they should ... Follow the link, it's worth it, apparantly.  I'll get this thing sorted.

Jonathan Rasmusson linked to this video of a talk by Kenji HiranabeChief (Engineer of Lexus/SC, IS, and Altezza) where he  gave a talk in which he summarized a
> presentation by Nobuaki Katayama (Chief Engineer of Lexus/SC, IS, and
> Altezza) at Developers Summit 2008 in February in Tokyo.