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Ask HN: Resources to teach good programming to a script kiddie
1 point by danmaz74 on Dec 22, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I'm working remotely with a programmer who is very smart and good at hacking his way around problems, but lacks some basic concepts that are fundamental to write good programs: A good grasp of modularization, what is a side effect, why global variables are bad, and so on.

I was looking for a book or online course that could help him learn these concepts:

* without being too boring (ie a basic intro book - he already knows how to program in php, javascript, ruby, SQL) * without being too difficult/theoretical/advanced (ie not your typical university coursebook)

Any suggestions? I learned all those things a looong time ago, and a couple of hours of research on Amazon and The Google didn't bring out anything that looked what I was looking for. Thanks!



I don't know what your definition of good programming is, but you yourself are the single best resource for teaching it. General, high-level considerations aren't going to cut it in this scenario. You need to take his actual work and turn it into units of learning by showing him how you would have implemented something differently, asking him how he arrived at specific implementation details, quizzing him on long-term support issues that could arise, etc.


Thanks for the answer, but unfortunately I don't have the time to do so. Actually I do teach his occasionally, but I don't have the time to do some systematic teaching - which is what he really needs.




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