Keynote: "Am I A Good Programmer?" - Kate Gregory - CppNorth 2022

CppNorth Twitter: / cppnorth
CppNorth Website: cppnorth.ca/
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Keynote: "Am I A Good Programmer?" - Kate Gregory - CppNorth 2022
Slides: github.com/CppNorth/CppNorth_...
CppNorth 2022 video sponsors:
think-cell: www.think-cell.com/en/
Adobe: cppatadobe.splashthat.com/
Am I a Good Programmer? But how can we truly know if we're good at software development or not?
Evaluating programming skill is notoriously difficult. I'll walk you through some thoughts that might help, and tell you how to get better at C++ and at programming in general (just in case.)
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Kate Gregory
Kate Gregory is an author, sought-after conference speaker, trainer, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and partner at Gregory Consulting. Kate has been using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++ compiler. She is an early adopter of many software technologies and tools, and a well-connected member of the software development community.
Kate is one of the founders of #include whose goal is a more welcoming and inclusive C++ community. She also serves on the board of directors of Cpp Toronto, a non-profit organization that provides an open, inclusive, and collaborative place where software developers can meet and discuss topics related to C++ software development.
Kate is one of the lead organisers of CppNorth!
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#Programming​ #Cpp​ #CppNorth

[@ultradude5410]

“Be prepared to live with some discomfort while you learn, but it’s not the price of admission.” This is the kind of stuff I’m here for! Amazing talk as always!

[@TomaszWiszkowski]

"The best way to be a 10x developer is to make 10 developers twice as good as they used to be." Gold.

[@patlefofort]

Just like in sport, the best players and the ones that make their teammates better.

[@metal571]

Kate Gregory never fails to impress. Thanks for uploading

[@superscatboy]

Agreed, she's an unreasonably good speaker

[@kamilziemian995]

I agree.

[@nrviognjiocfmbkirdom]

This reminded me how toxic and messed up my current work environment is. Thank you!

[@Yupppi]

The people asking advice is a fascinating social process. People have all kinds of intuition based reasons they choose who to ask for help. They rarely ask from the person they know is just knowledgeable and good at something. They rarely listen to the person that can build their answer based on known facts and conclusions, mechanics and processes, and is willing to mention the reasons why they give the advice. They often ask from the person others ask from or who has some status. Like a social media influencer. And the shorter and easier the answer, the more likely they are to listen and take it. Like they might know a person who's really into cars and someone who's into psychology, and they ask the person who's into psychology about their car (because that person has a car too). Maybe it's because they expect not to understand the car enthusiasts answer or think the answer's gonna be too in-depth, the car enthusiast might educate them on what's the problem and how to deal with it instead of telling them just to get part X from the local car shop. And sometimes there's a couple of people who are present hearing the question and give their two cents, and the person asking takes the advice that's not reasoned, just thrown out there, and the other people think "well that's not gonna end up in success unfortunately" and see it unfold a bit later. But the social processes decide that had to happen. Or someone gives advice and a reason, but someone is set to do it one way, ends up failing and following the advice, sometimes with "should've listened, you were right".

[@arjunkapoor2031]

Great talk, thank you for uploading this on KZbin.

[@mosesalero8918]

This talk is really great. Glad I found this.

[@jesperjuhl6494]

Thank you for a great talk :)

[@selvakumarjawahar]

Amazing Amazing talk!!! Thank you.

[@krofikS4]

Great talk! What makes it even more impressive is that it lasts exactly one hour minus few seconds of clapping at the end 👏👏👏

[@szalbuque]

Thank you for this great keynote!

[@TheLavaBlock]

unique keynote. thank you for this

[@jplflyer]

Kate: Brilliant as always. Thank you.

[@shitshow_1]

I'm an University student, Great talk and it's so relatable ! Thanks for sharing this video 👍

[@chmod0644]

One of the great public speakers of our time. One of the great teachers.

[@peregrin71]

Thanks Kate, always like the human aspect in your talks (something often undervalued in code/programming/design). Also from helping people on stackoverflow I've learned one other important non-metric : Being good at competitive coding doesn't make you a good programmer. In fact in my opinion competitive coding sites do more harm then good (which could be an interesting topic by itself).

[@montebouwer4343]

Good talk

[@andrewdunbar828]

Man I can really relate to the Git comment!

[@moderncpp]

a cppcon with no single line of cpp code. Great talk!

[@kxmode]

I don't have an hour to watch, but I would like to get the cliff notes, if possible, or the presentation slide.

[@gregcons]

There's a link to the slides github way up at the top after the link to the conference website

[@masheroz]

I need to read that blog about string vs string_view!

[@WilhelmDrake]

I wish Kate Gregory would be my mentor.

[@OlaInTheClouds]

Around 37 minutes: "Make 10 programmers twice as good", surely better than employing a 10x IMHO

[@lpnp9477]

Well now I just feel like I'm not a good programmer nor am I funny nor can I sing and don't realize it :(

[@rhiannonwalmsley1878]

As someone with adhd i feel attacked by "Leaving half done projects in your wake" lmao its fine at work, but i basically never finish personal projects, rip me

[@gregcons]

There are lots of reasons for not finishing things. Sometimes you just wanted to try a particular technique, framework, tool or whatever to see what it's like, and when you found out what it's like you didn't complete your photo album or todo list tracker or whatever. So what? You finished the "project" which was to try that thing. Losing interest is hard to distinguish from accomplishing your mission some times. But if you give up and say "I guess I can't do that after all", if you reach a point where you realize you made a bad decision at the beginning and there's no fixing it, if people say "how about we take it from here" time and time again, then you know, those aren't good things, right? You're not obliged to finish everything you start, and you get to decide what "finished" is, but yeah, think about why you don't work on that thing after a certain point and if that tells you something. That's all. Remember, you're the one evaluating you. What I think isn't relevant.

[@rhiannonwalmsley1878]

@@gregcons thanks for the reply, I didn't actually see this when you originally posted it. But yeah, that makes sense. I don't think I've ever been lifted off a project so that's something at least. Tbh with typical intro projects I think they can be hard to finish because they are quite boring and can seem pointless at least to me. I mean who needs yet another todo list app It's a weird feeling having gained some level of programming proficiency from lots of barely started projects. It's like you sit down once day and you realise you can do all of this stuff despite the illusion of not really having learned it. At least for me, anyway. Feels like i downloaded it from the matrix or something

[@cataclysmwarshulduar]

@@rhiannonwalmsley1878 This is where I am right now. Its a bit of a rut. I think the problem is that I am in yet another plateau of the learning curve. I can "write code". I can grok through reasonably hard code like Redis and probably write my own (which I am currently doing). The problem comes when you want to want to get that final 20% (more like 50% imo with documentations, tests and actually squeezing every bit of optimization like actually understanding Redis's ziplist). I find that learning is not linear, which means making the next progression requires a lot of work. I think it also helps to help a circle of friend that have similar interests to you. None of my peers are very interested in the "idea" of programming (like reading up FP stuff, discussing language design, etc etc) so it's hard to get motivated and evaluate yourself. i am also trying to write more but man, writing is HARD. I think the problem is that I have not been educated in technical writing, because some kind of system will surely help here.

[@bobweiram6321]

No one got the joke, 1420 is not 420. 20:55

[@kamilziemian995]

No, I'm not. I'm a bad programmer. In fact, I'm not even programmer, I'm just a noob with a compiler.

[@Arekadiusz]

So true my bro :(

[@yuka1367]

Haha, people are trying to hide the code they wrote. Nobody can see the quality of their work. Programming is totally different from jobs like gardening.

[@antonw8134]

I’m not a good programmer in Carbon. ;^}