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Vinh
Vinh

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How I improve my programming skill

As a programmer, I always try to see how can I continue to learn and become better. Of course, I can continue to practice, by writing more code. That may get me to some certain point but then I feel isolated. Because the code I write is in my head, the thing I do tend to be use by myself. It's similar to you don't know how good you are until you see others do it.

In other field, people improve by constantly getting feedback. Example they re-watch how they do something and try to improve. They try to meet with people better than them and try to see what they can learn. You want to cook something and meet with other to exchange tip. You want to swim better and watch expert do it.

On the age of internet, information is everywhere. Hacker News, Dev.To, HackerNoon...it's a lot to consume. But one thing is they are talked at a higher level, about design decision, about infrastructure. You can listen to programming podcast, but then again, I feel like they are more about information and perspective than to really improve skill.

One day, I stumble upon the idea of why not seeing how people review code. You got to see how best programmers review other code, how do they said, what are their concern.

I think you should started by looking at your dependencies, your Gemfile, package.json, composer.json, Gopkg.toml, mix.ex and spend 45-60mins per day see how people do code review. Or event looking at your framework, your language.

Example let take a look at this PR: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/31989

The description is very informative. It explains what it's, the problem it solve, the drawback. By forcing myself to write about something in plain text, I have to think deeply rather than just bang out code and call it a day.

Then you see people review code.

Or in this PR: https://github.com/fastlane/fastlane/pull/11329#discussion_r158537954 I learn about a better approach to handle and throw error very elegant.

That's how I improve myself? What about you?

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