Learning to Program

Eventually, every programmer blogs about how to become a better programmer. It seems to be the price of admission to the industry. Programmers are a vain lot, and every one of us likes to think he has a unique viewpoint to contribute with insightful advice and meaningful guidance. The reality is that the “learn how to program” post is cliché. There are so many that each new one is nothing more than an echo of some old, vaguely-remembered, proto-learn-how-to-program-post. No one should write another. There’s no point.

So obviously I’m going to write another.

Programming is Exactly Like This

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The Origin of Perfect Software

In another post, I claimed that software can’t be written with no bugs at all. Well, it turns out that’s not quite true. What I shouldhave said is that writing bug-free software is not possible within the constraints of most software businesses or open-source projects.

But that just doesn’t have the same pizazz, does it?

The trouble is that software businesses exist to make money, and open source projects exist to give developers interesting things to do and exposure. (Naturally, there are some exceptions in both camps, but if you imagine that’s always true, you won’t be too far off.) And if these are the goals you’re chasing — customers and money, or interesting problems and exposure — you don’t end up with perfect software. You go broke or get bored before you get there.

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The Economics of Perfect Software

Ask 100 CEOs of software companies if they want to ship software with bugs. What will they say? 50 won’t answer at all, saying something about how bugs are a huge problem in the industry that needs to be addressed; 40 will say “Of course not!” and promptly call their shark tank in preparation for a lawsuit; 9 will hang their heads and say “we can’t help it”; and that last 1 will look you straight in the eye and say “Absolutely.”

I have no idea what that last guy’s doing heading up a software company, because he studied economics.

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