Use Open Source to Hone Your Programming Skills

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I’ve been writing software for many years. And I’ve realized lately that the more I engaged with (wrote in, integrated with, etc.) open source technologies, the better the code I write gets. Which got me wondering: correlation or causation?

Reading Code Makes You Better

I learned early on in my programming career that the more code I read, the better my code became.  I learned that when I had to maintain other people’s code, simple and clean almost always beat fancy or complex code – even if there were comments.  On the other hand, when I took enough time to understand the complex code, I usually learned new tricks.  Either way, I improved. This led me to push for code reviews in shops where we weren’t doing them. 

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