Reading Comprehension Will Make You A Better Programmer : So ...

Writing is also hard, and you’ll find plenty of instances where the authors come up short. The burden is on you to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re right and the author is wrong. If you’re not bending over backwards to try to say “well, maybe the author was using it in the context of..”, you’re not giving them much credit, and might not be putting enough thought into the process. When you find yourself saying “this code is awful!”, try thinking of how you would do it yourself. Sometimes you find that you come up with a better way than the author. Sometimes you’re led right back to the same solution as the author.

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This is where a programmer’s critical thinking skills will shine.

Granted, it’s difficult to determine the ramifications of question such as, “What would the impact of using this non-standard syntax be if I made 300,000 library users adopt it?”. However, thinking on such a big scale can only help you as a programmer, and the bigger you think, the more you help yourself.

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Granted, Feynman and Hamming weren’t reading the work of others, they were interpreting their own work. However, programming provides plenty of opportunities to ask yourself these kind of deep analytical questions. You just need to know the right questions to ask.

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