Ask HN: What are some exercises/projects that have made you a better programmer? Hey HN, What are some of the exercises/projects you have worked on that have made you a better programmer or helped you gain a better understanding of how things work? Thanks |
I spent a lot of time optimising things and looking back it was pointless/a waste of time. But it did teach me how to write better code, since now I incorporate a lot of optimisations into my code for "free" because I simply know what makes things run faster (or how things are working under the hood).
They say the root of all evil is premature optimisation, and they may be correct, but it does teach you a thing or two about how your code runs. In particular in higher level environments where there is a dozen levels of misdirection before it hits metal.
Note well, though, that they need to actually know better than you do, not just have different opinions.