In this apprenticeship pattern, it talks about the importance of practicing our coding skills and how we should practice. The section starts off by talking about how the reason why people make coding mistakes on the job is because they are practicing and learning the skill while they are doing it. A lot of programmers do not have the time to practice and learn the skill before they have to put the skill to use at their job and with the looming project deadlines that is why there are often so many mistakes made on the job. So, the first thing that the chapter talks about is the importance of finding time to practice coding skills on our own without any deadlines. Without deadlines, it removes the pressure of having to learn a skill before a certain date and we can learn at our own pace. In addition to making time to practice our coding skills, the section also talks about how we should allow time for criticism. This is because if we don’t, we may or may not pick up bad habits without knowing it. The last topic that the section talks about is the importance of not practicing so much that it becomes a permanent habit and that instead we should be careful on what we choose to practice.
I agree with this section and think that practicing is very important. I think this is something that I personally need to work on. Often after I learn a skill in class, I don’t touch that skill again until it is brought up again in another class and usually by then, I had let that skill become stale. Another thing that I agree with from this section is the importance of not practicing too much and that we should be careful of what we practice. I agree with this because I was guilty of letting this happen before. A while back when I was practicing coding with my cousin, we were both working on the same problem, and I coded it how I normally would. My cousin asked me why I was coding it that way and I told him that it was how I always coded it. Then he showed how he did it and his way was very different from how I did it. So, he showed that I was letting practice become permanent and that I was coding the same way whenever I see a similar problem. So, my cousin reminded me that there may be more than one way to solve a problem and that we should consider the best way.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Just a Guy Passing By by Eric Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.