Over the weekend I was visiting a friend, who has his own website. He uses PHP on the site, but he is not a programmer. The site is his hobby and he has only learned enough PHP to get the job done. Simply put this is not his occupation.
While visiting he was in the middle of writing a small script which queried articles out of a database and displayed them according to the categories they were assigned to. Everything was working correctly, but the processing time was slower than he would like. He asked if I could take a look and see if anything could be done to speed things up. While optimizing some of the PHP and SQL code; I was showing him different functions which are built into PHP and MySQL, (these functions will always execute faster than the ones you write yourself).
As I was standing over his shoulder pointing out the different problematic areas, he asked me how I was able to keep all that information in my head. I simply replied that it is my job, it’s what I get paid to do. After going back and forth, what he actually wanted to know was how I memorized all the different functions, which parameters they accept, and in what order. This is not the first time I have been asked this question so I decided to actually think about how it all happened.
I once read the book ‘On Writing’ (by Stephen King), it is a book about how to become a writer. I don’t really remember a lot about the book, but I do remember one thing. He said that if you want to be a writer, you need to write everyday. It does not have to be anything great, just write something. I attempted to do this, but it became a chore and I soon stopped writing.
After thinking about the question my friend asked (I admit I have a horrible memory) but just like King said, do it everyday. I learned PHP simply by writing code everyday, by using PHP constantly, and little by little things sink in and stay. I never sat down with the manual and made an effort to memorize things, it just naturally happened over a period of time.
When I first started, I remember the fascination I had with writing something that made a computer do what I wanted. It was almost like an addiction, once I got it to do one thing, I wanted write something more complicated. Granted over the years it takes more, but I am now writing more complicated code and when it works, I get that same feeling.
So if you want to become a coder that is able to write scripts off the top of your head, or be able to ’see’ the code before you even begin, do it everyday. It does not have to be ground breaking or a completely new idea, just write something. If you find that writing code everyday becomes a chore, then you may want to try your hand at something else, maybe become an author.
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