Tips on Programming:
Programming is very hot by profession these days. Everybody is trying to enter into the field of IT and programming is the mail part of the IT. However, Everybody cannot become a good programmer even if one has all the technical skills acquired from education. I think to become a successful programmer one should
1.Keep his head cool.
2.Be Focused, dedicated and willing to learn all the time.
3.Have good grasping power to understand the business area.
4.Have good logical skills to understand the business flow.
5.Good Common Sense.
Now I will describe these in bit detail:
Cool Head: This is very important in today’s world of tight delivery schedule and strict quality norms.
Computer programming constitutes a no of syntaxes and like things that if not used correctly, may stop the working of the program or may not give correct output. Now if a programmer has missed some thing in the syntax(Like, ; etc) and delivery schedule is very tight, he may get bog down or nervous and may not find the fault easily until he has a cool head. I have seen myself such things happening during programming. One example that happened me: one of my colleagues missed one ‘, ’ one day in a program and that ‘, ’ was used to filter some values. Now when testing, it was running for all the values but for one. He tried his level best and I also checked the program and could not find the fault because all of us were under very tight delivery schedule and were feeling nervous. Then we were advised to have a cold drink and relax for sometime and then wrote the whole program again and found the fault.
Focused, dedicated and willing to learn:
A programmer, if focused, will be able to deliver fast and better. If he is looking for many things at one time and not focused on his program, he may mix the logic of two programmes and may make other mistakes. Besides this he has to be dedicated to the work he is doing, naturally. In the field of computers, things change so fast that it is difficult to be left out. Hence a person should be willing to learn all the time. He should update his skills and competencies all the time to move ahead in this field.
Grasping power:
When programming for certain application, it is necessary to understand the functioning of it. This is called as business knowledge. A good programmer will have quick grasping power so that he can understand the business that is necessary to make a program. If a programmer is not aware of the business, he may not make the right system or may take more time in making that. Not only this, programmers do not have much time to understand the same. So they have to be quick in gaining that.
Good Logical Skills:
It is must to design the system and then programming. In the absence of the logical skills, good technical knowledge is waste. If one is not able to design the flow chart effectively, he cannot do the programming effectively.
Good common sense:
I think this is also very important for a good programmer. This helps in increasing the efficiency of the programmer and putting the right things at the right place at right time.
I am basically a mechanical engineer and now working in IT. I have never had any formal training in any IT programming skills. I think I am doing ok, if not bad.