Alex Stepenov's "Advice to young programmers" Talk

[Rakesh 'Arky' Ambati]

Advice to young programmers

(This is the summary of speech Given by Alex Stepenov (Principal
Scientist,Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004. )

1. Study , Study and Study

- Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge
which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and
everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all
the wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided.

- You should be habituated to studies...exactly in the same way as you
are habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The
habit of study must become a `part of your blood'. And the study should
be from both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something
from non-CS...Something which does not relate to your work. This would
expand your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is
extremely essential. It does not matter whether you study of 20 minutes
of 2 hours,but consistency is a must.

- You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in
going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do
PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand
anything from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts
were not clear. Studying `Algebraic Geometry' is useless if you do not
understand basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go
back and re-read and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts.
What is the exact definition of `fundamental'? The stuff which is around
for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded
as more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental
means.

- Here are few books which I would strongly recommend that every CS
professional should read and understand.

i. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Albenson
and Sussman I personally donot like the material present in this book
and I do have some objections about it but this is the best book I have
ever seen which explains all the concepts in programming in a clear and
excellent way.

This book is available online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

ii. Introduction to Computer Architecture: by Hennessy and Patterson.
How many of you have shipped the programs by writing them in
assembly? A very good understanding of basics of how a
computer operates is what every CS professional must have.
H&P Wrote two books on CA. I am talking about their first book,
the introductory text for understanding basic aspects of how a
computer works.

Even if you feel that you know whatever is written in that book,
do not stop reading. It's good to revise basics again and again.

iii. "Fundamentals of Programming" by Donald Knuth.
The core of CS is algorithms and Data structures. Every CS
professional must have the 3 volumes of Knuth's Book on
programming. It really does not matter if you take 30 years of your
life to understand what Knuth has written, what is more important
is that you read atleast some part of that book everyday without fail.
iv. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest
This book should be read daily to keep your concepts fresh. This is
the best book for fundamental concepts in algorithms.

2. Learn Professional Ethics

- As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What
this means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager
but for yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of
your life.

- The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You
don't need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need
to write quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is
good. Thoroughly test every piece of code that you write. Do not write
codes which are "sort of alright". You might not achieve perfection, but
atleast your code should be of good quality.

- Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard
about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++
compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of
the routines in the STL, namely the "search routine", I was a bit lazy
and instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which
was difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew
that I could make the search faster by writing a linear-order
implementation, but I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10
years of my writing STL, exactly the same implementation is still used
inside STL and STL ships with an inefficient quadratic implementation of
search routine even today!! You might ask me: why can't you rewrite
that? Well...I cannot,because that code is no more my property!!
Further, nobody today will be interested in a standalone efficient
STL ...people would prefer one which automatically ships out with the
compiler itself.

- Moral is, you should have aesthetic beauty built inside you. You
should "feel" uneasy on writing bad code and should be eager to rewrite
the code till it becomes upto the quality. And to the judge the quality,
you need to develop sense regarding which algorithms to use under what
circumstances.

3. Figure out your Goals

- Always aspire doing bigger things in life

- "Viewing promotion path as your career" is a completely wrong goal. If
you are really interested in studying and learning new things, never
ever aspire for being a manager. Managers cannot learn and study...they
have no time. "Company ladder aspiration" is not what should be
important for you.

- You might feel that you want to do certain things which you cannot do
till you become a manager. When you become a manager, you will soon
realize that now you just cannot do anything!

- You will have a great experience as programmers. But if you care for
people and love people, you will never enjoy being a manager...most good
managers are reluctant managers. If you see people as people, you cannot
survive at management level.

- Always aspire for professional greatness. Our profession is very
beautiful because we create abstract models and implement them in
reality. There is a big fun in doing that. We have a profession which
allows us to do creative things and even gives nice salary for that.

- The three biggest mistakes that people usually make are aiming for
money,aiming for promotion and aiming for fame. The moment you get some
of these, you aspire for some more...and then there is no end. I do not
mean that you should not earn money, but you should understand how much
money would satisfy your needs. Bill Clinton might be the richest person
in the world; he is certainly not the happiest. Our lives are far better
than his.

- Find your goal, and do best in the job that you have. Understand that
what is in your pocket does not matter...what is in your brain finally
matters.Money and fame do not matter. Knowledge matters.

4. Follow your culture

I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it
rapidly spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an
exception for this. This cultural change creates a very strong impact on
everybody's life. Habits of watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies
and listening to pop songs and all such stupid stuff gets very easily
cultivated in people of your age...but believe me, there is nothing
great in that. This all just makes you run away from your
culture. And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture.
Indian culture,which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and
Bhagwatgeeta is really great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that.
You should understand that fundamental things in Indian culture teach
you a lot and you should never forget them.

Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it's your life...do not
waste it on stupid things...develop your tests, and start the fight.

-- 
arky

Rakesh 'arky' Ambati
GPG Key ID:  0x92BCF7D4 
Blog [ http://arky.in ]
Member FSUG-Bangalore [ http://bangalore.gnu.org.in ]
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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