CC Notes - Chapter 33: Personal Character

CuriosityBuild your awareness of the development processExperimentRead about problem solvingAnalyze and plan before you actLearn about successful projectsReadRead other books and periodicalsAffiliate with other professionalsIntellectual HonestyReadily admitting your mistakesTrying to understand a compiler warning rather than suppressing the messageClearly understanding your program - not compiling it to see if it worksProviding realistic status reportCreativity and DisciplineLazinessWriting a tool to do the unpleasant task so that you never have to do the task againPersistenceWhen you notice you're frustrated, that's a good time to ask the question. Asking doesn't necessarily mean that it's time to give up, but it probably means that it's time to set some parameters on the activity:" If I don't solve the problem using this approach within the next 30 minutes, I'll take 10 minutes to brainstorm about different approaches and try the best one for the next hour"ExperienceThe bottom line on experience is this: if you work for 10 years, do you get 10 years of experience or do you get 1 year of experience 10 times? You have to reflect on your activities.HabitsWhen you first learn something, learn it the right way. When you first do it, you're actively thinking about it and you still have an easy choice between doing it in a good way and doing it in a bad way. After you've done it a few times, you pay less attention to what you're doing and "force of habit" takes over. Make sure that the habits that take over are the ones you want to have.Bill Gates says that any programmer who will ever be good is good in the first few years. After that, whether a programmer is good or not is cast in concrete.