
Ask HN: What are some exercises/projects that have made you a better programmer? - joeclef
Hey HN,<p>What are some of the exercises&#x2F;projects you have worked on that have made you a better programmer or helped you gain a better understanding of how things work? Thanks
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Someone1234
Premature and unnecessary optimisations.

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.

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AnimalMuppet
Working with more experienced colleagues, and having them code review my
stuff. Not always easy on the ego, but it made me a much better programmer.

Note well, though, that they need to actually know better than you do, not
just have different opinions.

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partisan
Reading the code for shrinkr. It is a good example for application
architecture in the .NET world.

