In 2015, our team comes a new programmer, which is also our company’s first female Hong Kong software engineer. After I become a team lead, I need to do lots of hands-on training on her. Meanwhile, I came across Joost’s article “What most young programmers need to learn” and aroused my sympathy.

I would summarize the article below:

  • most of the time spending on supervising is NOT on explaining advanced technologies or the details of engine, but on making them write better code in general
  • code should be clear, understandable and maintainable
  • achieve the above requires self discipline, because it means not stopping “when it works”
    • always write the clearest code you can
    • refactor code if it becomes muddy through changes later in development
    • remove unused code and add comments
      (I strongly agree with this. This reminds me of the first couple of years of my IT career, which needs to be strictly disciplined.)