Study Advice

Why do I want to be a programmer? Fame? Who programmed your favourite game? Money? Apart from the infamous William Windows, name a programmer that has a fat bank balance. It's a fad among my friends? I.T is the way forward? If these are your reasons rather pursue an acting career or start a rock band. Programming is for the individual who doesn't mind spending hours in solitude with nothing but a computer and a cup of coffee for company.

How patient am I really? Do you have the patience to sit and untangle a ball of wool that your gran messed up and now wants to knit you that awful green jersey with? Programming can sometimes be exactly like that when you get stuck...and you will get stuck.

How much time am I prepared to commit to learning this? You should realize that programming is not a TV dinner. It's a five course gourmet meal that requires a skilled chef. There are no shortcuts and there's no way in hell you can learn it "in 21 days". Sorry!

How creative am I? When you are given a bucket full of Lego building blocks, do you build what is featured on the packaging, or do you create your own masterpiece?

How good am I at giving instructions? If someone asks you for directions to your home or office, are you able to give them clear step-by-step instructions? Programming is simply a set of instructions you give the computer.

How good am I at solving problems? What do you do when you lock your keys in your car? Break a window? Call a locksmith? Or do you walk around the car first to see if any of the other doors are open?

How organized am I? Are you constantly looking for misplaced personal items? Great programs start and end with planning and documenting every step in the coding process.

Whether or not you passed the questions with flying colours is irrelevant. Whatever your reasons for wanting to program may be, the most important thing to remember is - have fun!

You will require a computer running Windows 2000/XP as well as Microsoft Visual Studio.NET or Microsoft Visual Basic.NET or Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express.

P.O. Box 2341, Fourways 2055
Tel: 011- 469-1227
Fax: 011- 469-1682
Cell: 083-415-8909
e-mail: marilynk@iafrica.com

If you know of any other South African distributors of Microsoft Visual Studio products, please inform the Webmaster.

If you are strapped for cash, you might want to consider SharpDeveloper, a free open source "clone" of Visual Studio.Net. (Please note that I have never used the free software and can therefore not vouch for it.)

At a later stage you will require Microsoft Access, but for a beginner you need not worry about it anytime soon.

You could gain from having Microsoft Visio. It's a great way to create flowcharts during the planning of your programs. Again, don't worry if you don't have it.

A decent textbook is always a good investment. With so many books on the market to choose from it can be quite confusing in selecting a book that is right for you. On a personal note I can strongly recommend any textbook written by Diane Zak. Her books are well written in plain English and offer numerous examples, exercises and test questions. She doesn't just teach you, she explains it to you. A true educator!

This can be confusing for people who are new to programming; it certainly was for me.

Visual Studio.NET is a platform that consists of programming languages such as Visual Basic.NET, Visual C#.NET, etc.

Let me explain it this way. Think of the utensils in the kitchen. You have dinner plates, glasses, cutlery, and so forth. You can use a dinner plate without using a glass and you can use the cutlery without a plate. Together they form a dinner set. Individually these items can still be used for their intended purpose and together they form a collective.

Seven habits of highly effective programmers*

An effective programmer is one who has the ability to complete projects in a timely manner with the expected quality.

1.	Understand your requirements
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1.1	Build early: Get a demonstrable system working as early as possible. This means establishing the interface first,
1.2	Deliver often: Let people play with [your software], see their reactions, and let this guide and prioritize your development. There is no substitute for watching how people use your software.
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2.	Keep it real
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2.1	Use real data: If you just test with sample data, that big iceberg of real data out there is going to sink your program.
2.2	Use real builds: Remember the development build on your machine is not the real build.
2.3	Merge often: Keeping your code out of the official build means that programmers cannot evaluate your code and testers cannot spot bugs early.
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3.	Understand your code
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3.1	Code with style: Both prose and code are textual, have grammar, syntax, spelling and semantics and spelling.
3.2	Cut-and-paste: The opposite of stylish programming is cut-and-paste. I've even had trouble diagnosing my own code that was cut-and-pasted from sample code. If you can't explain how your own code is supposed to work, how can you expect anyone to help you with it?
3.3	Keep it clean: You should periodically inspect your code, sweep up accumulated hard-coded numbers, outdated comments, misleading function names, or you'll inevitably end up with uninhabitable code that's embarrassing to show anyone else.
3.4	Questions? Comments?: Document your code as if someone else might have to take it over at any moment and know what to do with it. Annotate your code as you write it, instead of waiting for a convenient cleanup phase in "post" - annotating as you code can even clarify your thoughts while you're programming.
3.5	Full warning: Ignore compiler and runtime warnings at your own peril.
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4.	Optimal programming
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4.1	Code with purpose: While it's laudable to have a programming esthetic, it's a waste of time (and a useless risk) to change code just so it looks better to you.
4.2	Do no harm: The trick is in reorganizing code for the better without breaking anything.
4.3	Find the bottleneck: If you do need to optimize for speed or space in your application, attacking anything other than the bottleneck is a waste of time.
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5.	Manage thyself
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5.1	Are we there yet?: Awareness of the schedule is critical to actually getting the project done on time. Give a realistic prediction. Any concessions should be based on pragmatic tradeoffs between features and resources. Be clear about the assumptions, dependencies and resources on which the schedule is based
5.2	Plan your progress: Before you sit down at our computer, you should know what you want to accomplish that day and have some idea how.
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6.	Continuous education
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6.1	It's Science: You don't have to know everything under the sun, but you should have at least a cursory familiarity with many areas and be prepared to do some additional research as necessary.
6.2	Free beer, free speech, free software: Just about everything you need is on the Internet - tutorials, discussion lists, and free software.
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7.	R-E-S-P-E-C-T
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7.1	There is such a thing as a stupid question: A good question that exposes unresolved issues tells people that you know your stuff and you're sharp enough to catch all the implications. Asking for clarification about a specification shows you know how to find and read the spec and your ability to detect ambiguities.
7.2	There is such a thing as a stupid answer: If you're going to act like you know what you're talking about, you really better know what you're talking about.

* This is a summary of the essay written by Phil Chu. Click here for the complete essay.