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Any tips to help a scientist become a better programmer? (iusearchlinux.fyi)

submitted 9 months ago by mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi to c/programming@programming.dev

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Hey there!

I'm a chemical physicist who has been using python (as well as matlab and R) for a lot of different tasks over the last ~10 years, mostly for data analysis but also to automate certain tasks. I am almost completely self-taught, and though I have gotten help and tips from professors throughout the completion of my degrees, I have never really been educated in best practices when it comes to coding.

I have some friends who work as developers but have a similar academic background as I do, and through them I have become painfully aware of how bad my code is. When I write code, it simply needs to do the thing, conventions be damned. I do try to read up on the "right" way to do things, but the holes in my knowledge become pretty apparent pretty quickly.

For example, I have never written a class and I wouldn't know why or where to start (something to do with the init method, right?). I mostly just write functions and scripts that perform the tasks that I need, plus some work with jupyter notebooks from time to time. I only recently got started with git and uploading my projects to github, just as a way to try to teach myself the workflow.

So, I would like to learn to be better. Can anyone recommend good resources for learning programming, but perhaps that are aimed at people who already know a language? It'd be nice to find a guide that assumes you already know more than a beginner. Any help would be appreciated.

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[–] robinm@programming.dev 30 points 9 months ago

Read your own code that you wrote a month ago. For every wtf moment, try to rewrite it in a clearer way. With time you will internalize what is or is not a good idea. Usually this means naming your constants, moving code inside function to have a friendly name that explain what this code does, or moving code out of a function because the abstraction you choose was not a good one. Since you have 10 years of experience it's highly possible that you already do that, so just continue :)

If you are motivated I would advice to take a look to Rust. The goal is not really to be able to use it (even if it's nice to be able able to write fast code to speed up your python), but the Rust compiler is like a very exigeant teacher that will not forgive any mistakes while explaining why it's not a good idea to do that and what you should do instead. The quality of the errors are crutial, this is what will help you to undertand and improve over time. So consider Rust as an exercice to become a better python programmer. So whatever you try to do in Rust, try to understand how it applies to python. There are many tutorials online. The official book is a good start. And in general learning new languages with a very different paradigm is the best way to improve since it will help you to see stuff from a new angle.