Question: What metrics do you use to measure your programming progress? For example, if you are a swimmer you can measure how fast you can swim. If you are a salesperson you can measure how many sales you made to know how good of a salesperson you really are. But which numbers do I use to know I am getting better at programming.
Something I use (Please provide feedback if it is a good way to measure progress): I use the number of mistakes made by me to measure progress. I am currently learning Python. So I take a lesson a day in learnpython. After I read the lesson and solve the exercise, I play around with the code and try to create an error. Most of the times they are simple errors like removing " " from strings and seeing what happens. Then I find out why this error showed and what it means.
The Reason of this metric: This way I have seen I get a deeper understanding of the topic such as how the Python interpreter “thinks” when reading the code. So my errors of bugs are my way of measuring how better I am getting.
So, do you think this is a good way of doing measuring progress?
A persons understanding of a concept or idea is very hard to measure.
I think this is why the tech industry has a bad rap for interviews seeming like IQ tests.
Someone can have a great IQ and no common sense when it comes to making a responsive webpage or app
I think art is similar to programming, its very subjective.
You learn a series of rules and techniques then once you know those rules you start to break them. Pushing it to its limits just to see what works and what doesn’t in the instance.
If programming is problem solving you cant really say one way is better or worse than another, so long as both ways work, they are both correct.
Understanding which way would be more optimal for a given situation would be another problem to solve.
I think the only real measure of a persons understand, is yourself and others.
Just like an artist.
Programmers will share their work with other programmers to ask for opinions and find new ways to solve the same problem.
They are always learning new ways, trying new things and making mistakes.
