Coding without understanding is not coding

What it is ,is best described as a glorified typist. Now while i know many people will disagree with this saying that you need to know what code to copy and where to copy the code to so that it can work. I now point you to a very interesting site 1000000 Monkeys , the basic idea is that if a million monkeys keep on typing some thing good will be born from it.

I am now seeing a very similar phenomenon in the coding industry , where we have a ton of monkeys churning out just as many tons of code but only very little being useful to the rest of the world. It is then the job of the more enlighten and ambitious coders to step in and fix the huge mess that has been left behind.

Now to fix this is a task that i think no one person can solve , it has to be the responsibility of every instructor and mentor out there to teach the students to work on there own and not just cling on to the more experienced to do all the work. After all if no one bothers to learn then what will happen to the new generation when the older generation disappears , the end of the world .

If you are one of those copy and paste / Ask senior programmer types then do the following every time you hit a dead end. Google the problem ( if you don’t know how to do that , have a look at Steven’s awesome guide ) , after googling the problem and getting a answer don’t use it blindly , try to under stand it to the best of your capability’s so that when you use the solution you know if there might be any other problems or side effects.

Also it doesn’t hurt to do a bit of research sometimes and by research i mean picking up a book or asking people , you will be surprised how much you can learn like that.

Remember the more coder’s the better the more monkeys the worse :) , now keep well and keep coding.

~stalkerh