How To Become A Good Programmer @@

A friend of me asked me about a question that "HOW MANY BOOK I READ TO BECOME AN EXPERT"

For me, Reading books can be helpful and, for some people, may be the best way for them to learn. However, they are not necessary to becoming an expert programmer - at least, once you get past the stage of reading your first couple of language manuals.

I’m a self-taught programmer. I learned to program by trying to write programs that I was interested in, asking questions and getting advice from more experienced programmers as needed. I started working at 16 and went full-time after high school.

I don’t try to remember things I’ve read (including code), at least, not at the detailed level - I can always go back to the book later if I think that there might be something applicable for building a solution. Instead, I get a feel for what the book has to offer so that I can determine in the future whether or not it could be useful. Once in a great while, there will be something there that I can apply immediately and regularly - in which case, I learn it by using it.

A lot of what makes someone an expert programmer isn’t that they can remember long lists of algorithms and such, but that they have enough experience to be able to find and apply appropriate solutions to whatever problems they may encounter. As needed, they can learn new stuff - languages, APIs, paradigms, etc - and become productive using that new knowledge.

If you don’t like reading books and don’t find them particularly helpful, then maybe you simply need to learn a different way to do it. Perhaps you can learn best by working with someone who is more experienced? Maybe tutorials and examples are the most helpful?

In the end, no matter what else you do, the only way you’ll really get better is to do a lot of programming. I think it is better to write either programs that are interesting and/or practical, than it is to work on contrived examples (although working through a tutorial can be a good way to get started).