http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=196463


in reply to Designing the programmer

Never stop. It's one thing to keep learning new skills, especially techinical ones, but quite another (and at least as important) to keep forming new opinions, researching them, fleshing them out, and testing (and ultimately discarding or mutating) them. I'm constantly trying to improve on my conception of "the best way to program". I read books and articles on software engineering, design, languages, and so on compulsively. (My last workplace was great for that: I went through The Mythical Man-Month and The Pragmatic Programmer in two weeks. And I'm a better programmer for it.)

All those good ideas don't do you any good if you're ambivalent about them. Form strong opinions. Stick to your guns until you're convinced that there's a better way to do it. (You don't have to be a jerk about it, but if a vi vs. emacs flamewar doesn't get you steaming mad at some point, you're not paying enough attention to your editor.) That said, don't blindly shut your eyes to alternatives... be skeptical, not pigheaded.

If you have to constantly examine and defend your beliefs, you end up learning a lot about them.

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F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
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The hell with paco, vote for Erudil!