Learning everywhere

World is your playground, play if possible; if not learn to play; alteast try to learn to play; you will appreciate things more.

This applies to programming as well. Programmers who know more than one programming paradigms deliver better outcomes. Very early on, I was misinformed that javascript doesn't care for invariants. The folks discussing this were my seniors, had thorough handson experience on C++ and Java. They are reknown for their sane and lucid code. They were working on a GUI generator (HTML UI) and using embedded js for validation. They did not knew unobstrusive JS. All they wanted was some validation on client UI that was realized using

 onclick="validateForm()" 

. The statement now seems silly, but from their point of view, it is akeen to writing business invariants in sed or grep. I couldn't grasp why one could not write class invariants in javascript, so asked them and got a response that in javascript everything was public (access scope). It was only a couple of years later I learnt the better parts.

My intent is not to demean any, but to highlight that even the best of the team is often blinded by competence. If one doesnot empty his pot, how can one fill fresh water! Another example comes from SQL, sql is declarative hence no imperative syntax. While it is true for the most part, certain implementations specific functions say

case...when, coallesce, nullif

can be used to impart imperativeness.

Java developers are a different breed, some just write procedural code, mask it under the name of OOPS and live with it. Some advance to proper OOPS, design and architect properly. A few others master AOP, MDD, ORM and try to be a bit more smart. JavaScript programmers on the other hand are the most eccentric ones. A true master uses functional, procedural, prototyping, event handling/messaging & OOP concepts to the fullest. While it is true that JS allows a whole gamut of things, it is still not fully seen beyond webservers. However, it is one of the few areas that indicates life beyond the know IDE realm.

Learning new languages may or may not be fun, but understanding and appreciating the concepts is definitely delightful. When I started with JRuby, the concept of blocks was the most enticing. The brevity of code was just not plausible in Java. Python had similar givings. When I moved to GWT, the concept of callbacks and message bus usage was obvious to me (naturally, they are defacto occurences in JS apps). I found certain developers crack their heads trying to propogate references/spoil interface definitions all in an attempt to meet the goals. I just wish they read a bit more.

Programmers who claim to be good with languages are not exempt. Ask them to come up with a proper word document, they do it - do it with style corruption. Most of us do not even understand what style/doc corruption is. We donot use styles. If we showed the same zeal towards MSWord, the world would be more pleasent to us. A close analogy is learning to type (finger typing or soft typing). My friends and collegues at times express their awe, well I have trained some portion of my brain to instinctively use a qwerty keyboard, (my friends can do it, but they never cared, if only you saw their stupendously long combo movements on arcade games).

My mom cooks great food. Serving several dishes working on them simultaneously is not a straight chore. I used to wonder how she did that. I observed that she planned ahead, cut her veggies and gathered her spices ahead. Even when the flame is up, she knew the order and quantity required; and accordingly batched her job. All good cooks are great planners, the plans don't always work - but planning is indispensable. Last time I was deploying a project, I took a leaf from her and prepared a check list. After a couple of reviews, we use it pre deployment, to identify what all needs to be done. A thorough deployment without a need to revisit is a small achievement, but a happy one. I am not saying that the deployment worked because I can cook things; all I am saying is that I can appreciate a intangible task in a better way.

All we need to do is keep an open mind to suggestions, and a realization that we are ignorant for the most part. Ignorance is a bliss, knowledge is power. I am happy that I have forgotten my calclus (Ignorance) but not my friends :)