Are some people not cut out for programming?

andy macpherson · 2014-03-16T00:42:58

So I decided to write a c++ parser, lots of string manipulation, plenty of substr's and find_first_of \n \t \f et al. I was up to about 500 lines of code, with quite a few functions such as trim and various splitting functions, tailored for certain situations such as if you are parsing pre-processor directives you can have whitespace after the # to the directives keyword, such as '#323232include', all this has to be taken care of, so many little situations like this that the code just bloats up and this is just for comments and macro and only just checking that a PP directive is found and is valid never mind actually checking if the statement itself is valid. Then I decide to load up all the gcc source and look at the lexical and parser sections and apart from the horrendous notation in gcc, you can see right away that it is in a different ballpark, the code and comments show this, making my code look like script kiddies JavaScript. I also load up the NASM source, which is nicely written code, but, and even though it is a full compiler/assembler and the parser parts are only a fraction overall, it's obvious that I am a long way away from the understanding and coding efficiency that these guys have. I also see that Boost has a lexical analyzer and parser, part of their Spirit library, which again, after reading through a bit of it seems so far from what I am doing, they have a complete academic understanding and design of parsing, tokenizing and validation of source code. Quite demoralizing I must say, I would make a good scripter I think, but I do wonder if I am cut out for this, and if I will ever progress to the levels of this compiler source I am talking about. Is it mainly practise and hard work or are some people just born to code at these high levels?

For Beginners

Started by rAm_y_ March 11, 2014 01:51 PM

34 comments, last by Josip Mati? 10 years, 1 month ago

DareDeveloper

1,018

March 12, 2014 09:00 PM

Well I guess some people are not cut out for it, but what you describe is not something that should worry you.

Do you have a basic understanding of what data structures are important for ... and how algorithms can be efficient or inefficient etc?

You have

decided to write a c++ parser

so I would not worry about being one of those people.

Most people who are not cut out for it fail a lot earlier and do not have the resilience to dive that deep into programming.

Find the right approach and you can and will improve in many areas. You will laugh when you see the code you wrote one year ago.

I guess reading about skill acquisition might be something for you (I like the book "The First 20 Hours"). I know I am no good at learning & improving on my own.

I need either guidance or invest a lot of time in thinking about how to improve consciously. I need input from many directions in order to avoid stagnation.

Avoid specializing too much and obsessing over something that does not deserve much attention.

Also: consider reading or rereading "The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People". It might change how you feel about interdependence and make huge projects seem more manageable in one lifetime :-)

Given enough eyeballs, all mysteries are shallow.

MeAndVR

DejaimeNeto

4,221

March 13, 2014 12:41 AM

I double what both, Bregma and Dare Developer, said.

People usually develop interest on what they are actually cut out for. Game Development is a complex case since lots of people develop an interest based on liking to play games, not natural interest in the development process. But still, the simple fact that you decided, by yourself, to write a C++ parser, shows that you are probably going to be there someday.

And, repeating what Tom Sloper posted, Practice and Hard Work; I mean real practice, not read some books practice.

Build and Gun

BHXSpecter

3,123

March 14, 2014 06:03 AM

Okay, I take it back. Some people definitely are not cut out to be programmers and if they are in my family they should be heavily supervised when they are programming. Monday I gave my cousin one of my editions of C++ Primer. Just received an email asking me to help him fix his code and had a heart attack upon opening the source code. I was greeted with this at the top of the main function.


int statSize = 1024, *psSize = &statSize, **ppSize = &psSize;
int ***pppSize = &ppSize, ****ppppSz = &pppSize, *****pppppSz = &ppppSz;

Is it possible to give the compiler and computer a pointer overload?

After seeing that, I have to agree with what the others are saying. Practice and hard work, but try not to over complicate things even if you are just testing things out.

irbaboon

1,631

March 14, 2014 06:08 AM

Okay, I take it back. Some people definitely are not cut out to be programmers and if they are in my family they should be heavily supervised when they are programming. Monday I gave my cousin one of my editions of C++ Primer. Just received an email asking me to help him fix his code and had a heart attack upon opening the source code. I was greeted with this at the top of the main function.
int statSize = 1024, *psSize = &statSize, **ppSize = &psSize;
int ***pppSize = &ppSize, ****ppppSz = &pppSize, *****pppppSz = &ppppSz;
Is it possible to give the compiler and computer a pointer overload?

After seeing that, I have to agree with what the others are saying. Practice and hard work, but try not to over complicate things even if you are just testing things out.

Wait what... Wait... What... What did he ... like... you know... try to do?

General Awesome

205

March 14, 2014 06:28 AM

Okay, I take it back. Some people definitely are not cut out to be programmers and if they are in my family they should be heavily supervised when they are programming. Monday I gave my cousin one of my editions of C++ Primer. Just received an email asking me to help him fix his code and had a heart attack upon opening the source code. I was greeted with this at the top of the main function.
int statSize = 1024, *psSize = &statSize, **ppSize = &psSize;
int ***pppSize = &ppSize, ****ppppSz = &pppSize, *****pppppSz = &ppppSz;
Is it possible to give the compiler and computer a pointer overload?

After seeing that, I have to agree with what the others are saying. Practice and hard work, but try not to over complicate things even if you are just testing things out.

Aardvajk

13,217

March 14, 2014 08:07 AM

Okay, I take it back. Some people definitely are not cut out to be programmers and if they are in my family they should be heavily supervised when they are programming. Monday I gave my cousin one of my editions of C++ Primer. Just received an email asking me to help him fix his code and had a heart attack upon opening the source code. I was greeted with this at the top of the main function.
int statSize = 1024, *psSize = &statSize, **ppSize = &psSize;
int ***pppSize = &ppSize, ****ppppSz = &pppSize, *****pppppSz = &ppppSz;
Is it possible to give the compiler and computer a pointer overload?

After seeing that, I have to agree with what the others are saying. Practice and hard work, but try not to over complicate things even if you are just testing things out.

Looks pretty good to me. Someone just experimenting with, and grasping, the idea that you can use indirection operator as many times as you like. Hardly production code, but a good bit of work from an enquiring mind that has just read a textbook chapter about pointers. :)

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Bacterius

13,181

March 14, 2014 10:34 AM

Okay, I take it back. Some people definitely are not cut out to be programmers and if they are in my family they should be heavily supervised when they are programming. Monday I gave my cousin one of my editions of C++ Primer. Just received an email asking me to help him fix his code and had a heart attack upon opening the source code. I was greeted with this at the top of the main function.
int statSize = 1024, *psSize = &statSize, **ppSize = &psSize;
int ***pppSize = &ppSize, ****ppppSz = &pppSize, *****pppppSz = &ppppSz;
Is it possible to give the compiler and computer a pointer overload?

After seeing that, I have to agree with what the others are saying. Practice and hard work, but try not to over complicate things even if you are just testing things out.
Looks pretty good to me. Someone just experimenting with, and grasping, the idea that you can use indirection operator as many times as you like. Hardly production code, but a good bit of work from an enquiring mind that has just read a textbook chapter about pointers.

The limit is in fact 12 levels, above which your C/C++ program is no longer standards compliant. But it is no longer able to be parsed by a human being after 4 or 5 levels, so who cares I think curiosity is one of the most important qualities you can have in any profession. Not being curious means not asking questions, not questioning your beliefs, not connecting seemingly unrelated ideas, not studying the limitations of what you know and what you don't know yet, it means not evolving, not making progress, stagnating. So definitely this is a good sign!

I have no opinion regarding whether people are cut out for certain types of tasks, and would prefer not to enter the debate.

“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”

alh420

5,995

March 14, 2014 10:44 AM

Not about programming, but still somewhat on the topic if some people are cut out for certain tasks or not: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/01/random-promotion-research

TL;DR: One study suggests promoting people at random is better then any other alternative of selecting people for promotion

Durakken

692

March 14, 2014 11:48 AM

Not about programming, but still somewhat on the topic if some people are cut out for certain tasks or not: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/01/random-promotion-research

TL;DR: One study suggests promoting people at random is better then any other alternative of selecting people for promotion

Of course it doesn't cite and link to the actual paper, but it's obvious why a random approach might be better than other methods.

The reason being that the other methods of promotions don't promote the things that are important to the position.

The best of the listed is the "merit" system which is based on supposed merit, but there are many things that could be causing that merit from a team of people they're managing to them stealing credit, to them being good for that particular level, but not for another. Some people needs certain amount of stress to perform. Too much or too little and they'll fail.

With that being the case it is more probable to promote the person who has the merit if you are randomly promoting than it is if you are trying to promote based on merit.

The problem is the "supposed" merit. I would say this is what I've always argued for why the game industry keeps making pretty bad games...They are promoting people they perceive to have merit by promoting programmers and artists into a position to design a game, or whatever you want to call it, but the thing that you need to make a good game isn't either of those things. They're useful, but they aren't the it factor of what makes a good game designer. Hypothetically, at the moment, it would be better for the game industry to randomly promote people to the position or to make it so easy to try that lots of people can... and then the meritable to will rise again. Because this is how things work in the media industries... good people rise, establish a company. it becomes easier to do, the established company falls, good people use the easier way to rise, establish a company... etc etc and they've been doing it for the last 120-ish years, and if you expand it and if you want to really analyze things you could show that cycle in most things.

So yeah. If you know who has merit then established companies can survive by promoting those people and it's the best, but if you only "believe" you know who has merit it's probably better to randomly promote from within the area that is showing the merit, and not specifically the person who supposedly has merit.

BHXSpecter

3,123

March 14, 2014 07:56 PM

I think curiosity is one of the most important qualities you can have in any profession. Not being curious means not asking questions, not questioning your beliefs, not connecting seemingly unrelated ideas, not studying the limitations of what you know and what you don't know yet, it means not evolving, not making progress, stagnating. So definitely this is a good sign!

I agree completely with that.

I emailed him and apparently he read online somewhere that pointers were a good thing then got to the example in C++ Primer (Chapter 2 I think) where it shows the pointer to a pointer to an int. He thought doing that was a good practice. I simply told him it was fine to experiment like that but for simple programs just one pointer was enough, but to keep pushing everything he learns until he understands it.

I guess it just struck me as funny and odd because I have never seen code that had that many pointers to pointers.

Are some people not cut out for programming?

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