Comments on: Natural Born Programmers

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:32:07 +0000

I was thinking “Surely to god there is a pattern with Odd & Even numbers”. I have usually used the modulus operator to determine whether a number was even or odd, but the first bit is always set when a number is odd, and thus you can simply use the AND asm instruction, or use the & operator, which I imagine is more efficient(not by much I assume). At least when it comes to C\C++, there probably isn’t much of a difference when it goes through the optimizer, or you’re working with virtualized code.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:10:49 +0000

I don’t think humans divide a number by 10 and then check whether the remainder is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, or 0. I think humans look at the “string”, take the last “character” and compare that with the known odd or even digits.

To be fair, the program should also start with a string. Then the idea of comparing the last character with “1″, “2″, “3″, … instead of converting the string to a number and doing % 2 makes a lot more sense.

So in this case smart people and good programmers converge.

By: thereality

thereality — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:32:12 +0000

Not all programmers are smart. Many are just computer geeks who take programming course in college. And then they get hired just because of their certificates.

It’s obvious that most smart kids woud rather become engineers, doctors, architects, scientists and such. Only a few love programming.

So who are these programmers? Most of them are just computer geeks who get paid to program because no one else can. A good programmer can do more than just write code.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:47:20 +0000

I’ve been making my own homebrew snes game for a few months and now I totally understand why I’m throwing like a gazillion enimies on screen and it DOESN’T SLOWDOWN. And I’m looking through my codes and I’m thinking “Isn’t that the most obvious choice of coding?” or stuff like “How did those old programmers not see that?”

By: WarpedJavaGuy

WarpedJavaGuy — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:30:07 +0000

OK, stay tuned for a follow up post early in the new year!

WarpedJavaGuy – January 18, 2008

As promised, here is my follow up post where I delve even deeper into the odd and even number problem and discover a pattern that is common to both humans and machines. A natural born programmer already knows that. I am not one of them. But I am pleased to have learned about them here

By: Maximus

Maximus — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:03:06 +0000

I would like to see a continuation of the topic

By: Sakkraya

Sakkraya — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:19:43 +0000

Programming is a skill, some gain it naturally some with some effort some with lots of effort and some never! Smart, good and better all sounds relative, once smart, good or even a known as a brilliant programmer can be the worst in a different situation depending on what they do, the team they work with and the tools and the complexity of the domain and so on.

Btw I don’t know whether I am naturally gifted or smart or even good at what I am doing but I enjoy what I am doing and other finds it appealing time to time. This seems like a series of questions which needs some boundaries to find some sensible answers.

Just my 2cents! Good day all.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:40:39 +0000

Nonsense! Natural programmers already know the answer because they’ve experienced the question(s) before. Experience!
Sound familiar.
Some people are faster learners than others. Also people’s thought processes vary from person to person.
A natural programmer might be a person gifted in certain thought processing, giving them a specific advantage. However that doesn’t mean that the way they think is the be all end all. Otherwise why don’t we find the answers to so many other programming and non-programming issues in life.

By: Stano

Stano — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:36:00 +0000

A natural programmer already knew the answer to the problem before they got to the code example. The good programmer obsessed about the java byte code. A natural programmer is scale free. They can zoom in and out of a system architecture when needed, get the bigger picture, or get down and dirty with the bytes. Talk to a natural programmer about a proposed system, and they will have a solution to mind as you are talking. That’s the difference.

By: Laszlo Marai

Laszlo Marai — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:38:25 +0000

First of all it is not smart doing something without getting to know your tools (think computer). Then smart people tend to like simple solutions. The first solution is anything but simple. It involves a lot of work. If you’re smart you can even generalize the algorithm without knowing too much like this. I use a decimal number system and I check the last digit if it’s even. Computers use a binary number system under the hood (everybody know this knowadays!) so I’ll check for the last binary digit. Which gives the solution of ANDing the number with 1.

Smart people do know if they don’t know enough and then they look for more information. Dumb people just do it their way because they think that they’re smart enough.

Well, unfortunately this isn’t always true There are a few smart guys, I knew two of them. who prefer doing over thinking too much. The “let’s make it work somehow, we’re already late” type. One of them was a mathematician consultant (crypto field) he didn’t know sh*t about programming.