Programming how do?

[legendman3]

Okay so i am probably going to be as vague as , but i was wondering how you guys remember what to type?


I call myself a programmer, i can look at the code see what the problem is and figure out how to fix it, but i have a really really hard time remembering what to type.


Do you just constantly program so much that you remember? Do you have the language doc open all the time? WHY CAN'T I LEARN!


I mean i was active for a few months here and played around with the language(i left over summer because, you know summer im a teen) alot but i get back now and all i can remember are the basic callback functions and it me off when i can't remember a language i enjoy.

[Roland_Yonaba]

Pratice makes perfect

From my own experience, I can understand that you can lose your memory of an API commands, or a programming language syntax, if you have not been practicing for a long long time.
But I highly doubt that your programming skills can just slip away. If you have any, though

First of all, IMHO, programming skills is all about solving ability. It doesn't depends and it shouldn't be about a specific programming language. And this ability cannot be lost, because thy are just meant to be use in everyday-life.

I call myself a programmer, i can look at the code see what the problem is and figure out how to fix it, but i have a really really hard time remembering what to type.

To me, that is somewhat self contradictory. It is true that some programming languages were built so that they can be easily readable by a human mind. Those called high-level languages for instance. However, if you can understand somebody's code, just reading it, then sneak into the code. Profile it. When you see some command you never got, open a manual, and try to figure out. It helps understand a lot. And remember, of course.

To summup, yes, you can forget how to program. But not the general problem solving skills that lie at the core of programming, though you can forget how to implement them into computer instructions.
But hey, even in this case, most of the programmers would grab look for user manual, seek for some source code, sneak into the language reference, and the end up highly capable to steam again.

[Inny]

Live in the documentation. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here:

mTt24.png (227.47 KiB) Viewed 907 times

This is why most professional programmers have two monitors. One for code, and one for documentation. You start to develop a sense for what the functions are that you want to use, and where they appear in the manual, and it's a quick pull down to it to read the parameter list. Other functions start to get committed to memory. For instance, most if not every programmer knows how printf works, and probably doesn't need to review documentation, unless it's to check what the syntax is for printing something specific like floating point numbers to a certain precision (in lua, we call printf string.format, and it's %.2f by the way).

[OmarShehata]

There's nothing wrong with looking up code all the time, as mentioned above, especially if you're using frameworks/API's because you're not expected to memorize other people's code. For example, whenever I do some string manipulation, I have to look up the respective functions in the documentation or take a look at where I used them elsewhere because I don't use them often.

What are you are expected to know though, is the syntax of the language. You should be able to open a blank file and program something that calculates factorials or something of that nature without having to look up anything, because it's just using the basics of the language that are variables, if statements, for loops etc..

[meoiswa]

Stuff
Image
Wall of text

You have that huge monitor and you program in VIM? ._.

[legendman3]

To summup, yes, you can forget how to program. But not the general problem solving skills that lie at the core of programming, though you can forget how to implement them into computer instructions.

This line right here.

[legendman3]

Okay thanks guys.

[Inny]

You have that huge monitor and you program in VIM? ._.

It's a 15" laptop screen. It only looks big because I'm using small fonts and smaller theme for the tiny titlebars.

And besides, I like vim. It works very well for me.

[Roland_Yonaba]

-_- Mine is 15"... -_-

[kikito]

This is tangentially related, and just launched:

http://www.khanacademy.org/new-and-note ... ygZ2A8rytQ