Higher Aspirations
Something about my recent time up in Chicago lit a fire under my butt to get coding a lot more, and a lot better. Some may debate, but I am not happy with where my coding style, and quality is at this point in my life. I'll concede that I might have better habits than others my age, but I rarely compare myself to anyone my age. A large amount of my friends are between 6 and 10 years older than me, and I've realized its them I compare myself to. So, in my mind the fact that I'm worse than someone with 6 more years of experience is an issue, and one I aim to fix.
Like any skill, this will take work. I don't expect to wake up tomorrow and churn out gorgeous exploits that'll win me some nice bounties. No, I know I'm going to have to consistantly work towards improving my style, and taking concious note of my mistakes. I don't mean I'll kill myself over every bug, for every coder has bugs. If you know one that doesn't, he's lieing to you. However, I'd like to learn the most common bugs I make (typing too fast and screwing up var names, for instance) so that I can remove those bugs from my code (perhaps forcing myself to check over my code again before compiling and checking var names).
I'd really like to learn vi better. Its the editor I've always preferred, just never got around to using its full functionality. I saw Harkins use it effectively, conserving keystrokes, and making batch changes, and I realized it was like I had a car, but insisted on pushing it everywhere when I could be driving. So, I'm learning vi this semester. I don't mean basic commands (:wq) I mean like the back of my hand. Any time I can, text files and code WILL be written in it.
Along the same lines, I intend to learn more of the tools I have available. First off, svn... it can be a life saver and I need to make sure I use it. Also, Makefiles.... I learned to love them a few courses back, and I'm trying to work them into a class this semester to make my life real easy. They're amazing, if you've never used one, and can REALLY simplify everything from building your code, to tarring it up and emailing it to beta testers.
Also, while my style is pretty decent, I believe in indentation, and readability, it could be better. My indentation changes between tabs on one editor to three spaces on another. I comment some code more than others. No good. I want uniforimty.
Finally, I'd really like to get out of the "code and check" mentality. By which I mean spam check. I'll make one change, save the file, and run all my tests. Some may think this is good, as I know exactly how I broke something, yet this ends up wasting my time. It's almost as if I'm OCD, hitting ctrl-s (or :w) constantly. That I'm cool with. It's the "CTRL-Z ./ Now, I'm probably not the only one who feels like this. So, if you want to join me in my quest for bettering my coding this semester. let me know. Maybe we could grab an IRC channel, or a chatroom, or email to look over each others code, make suggestions. Challenge each other to get better code. I think it'd be a fun time, but then.... I've always been a bit weird.
