Programming

17695 readers

270 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

Ategon@programming.dev

MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz

Any tips to help a scientist become a better programmer? (iusearchlinux.fyi)

submitted 9 months ago by mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi to c/programming@programming.dev

70 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey there!

I'm a chemical physicist who has been using python (as well as matlab and R) for a lot of different tasks over the last ~10 years, mostly for data analysis but also to automate certain tasks. I am almost completely self-taught, and though I have gotten help and tips from professors throughout the completion of my degrees, I have never really been educated in best practices when it comes to coding.

I have some friends who work as developers but have a similar academic background as I do, and through them I have become painfully aware of how bad my code is. When I write code, it simply needs to do the thing, conventions be damned. I do try to read up on the "right" way to do things, but the holes in my knowledge become pretty apparent pretty quickly.

For example, I have never written a class and I wouldn't know why or where to start (something to do with the init method, right?). I mostly just write functions and scripts that perform the tasks that I need, plus some work with jupyter notebooks from time to time. I only recently got started with git and uploading my projects to github, just as a way to try to teach myself the workflow.

So, I would like to learn to be better. Can anyone recommend good resources for learning programming, but perhaps that are aimed at people who already know a language? It'd be nice to find a guide that assumes you already know more than a beginner. Any help would be appreciated.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] boeman@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You aren't wrong... But everything with extended use needs to be maintainable. Making a change in 5 places sucks.

Plus, that's what open-closed principle is all about. Instead of adding additional functionality to current working code, you extend and modify.

[–] Fal@yiffit.net -2 points 9 months ago

Making a change in 5 places sucks, making it in 2 could be reasonable. If 2 pieces of code are similar but different enough, I've seen way too often people try to force them into a common abstraction. That's more what the article is about.