Book Sh-elf
What does good code look like?
We think it really helps to see some good examples. Peter Norvig is a Director of Research at Google so he knows how to program. It is worth reading some of his code, just to see what good looks like. Norvig calls these pytudes.
What is software architecture?
It won’t be long before you are wondering how to organise the code you write. That is the kind of question dealt with by “architecture”. Having a familiarity with some basic archtiectural principles will save you getting into a mess in the long run. Martin Fowler’s site is a great jumping off point.
Understanding character sets
Digital Elf projects often involve text processing, usually from CSV files extracted from hospital systems. Text is surprisingly complicated. If you have had a little bit of exposure to programming you might be thinking “plain text = ASCII = characters are 8 bits”. In which case you might also be wondering why the text in a CSV file contains extraneous question marks and diamond symbols, or question marks in diamonds. What’s that all about?
Plain text has not been 8-bit bytes for a very long time. There is something called Unicode and you should have read this article at least once:
Time management and programming
Programmers talk a lot about meetings, in a negative sense. This essay explains why.