Funny how often I forget how powerful this can be sometimes. One nuance I would add though is reading straight through may not be the most effective strategy. Recall or testing is a super important aspect of transferring from short->long term memory. Reading a bit then playing with examples, or explaining the concepts to co-workers/friends can really help with the learning process.
Speaking of cloud technologies and reading source code, I’ve tried looking at the Python code that underpins gcloud, gsutil and bq command line utilities that come as part of the google sdk.
I don’t get it. Is this poor code or am I just not smart enough?
I doubt it's just objectively poor code. If there is even an objective way of evaluating code. There are probably abstractions that could be added or removed to make things simpler. Perhaps comments could be clarify some things. Thinking, writing, and implementing takes time, though.
I also doubt you're just not smart enough. Understanding code that you didn't write and does something non-trivial takes a lot of time. Days or weeks if you want a strong understanding of a complex application.
It feels like time is the constraint to most things in software, and in life. Deciding how much time you want to spend is very personal. The blog post suggests a 30 minutes per day of reading docs. If it's important to you, maybe 30 minutes or longer of reading code per day would be worthwhile.
4 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] threadI don’t get it. Is this poor code or am I just not smart enough?
I also doubt you're just not smart enough. Understanding code that you didn't write and does something non-trivial takes a lot of time. Days or weeks if you want a strong understanding of a complex application.
It feels like time is the constraint to most things in software, and in life. Deciding how much time you want to spend is very personal. The blog post suggests a 30 minutes per day of reading docs. If it's important to you, maybe 30 minutes or longer of reading code per day would be worthwhile.
Yes.
>am I just not smart enough?
Yes.
Note: this is true for any person, with any code. It does not get better.