# Think real hard
source: https://ift.tt/hAVulo8 tags: #literature #insights #selfgrowth uid: 202212101100 —
When I started programming professionally, I was really excited about figuring out how to become a better programmer. (I still am!) So I asked a lot of people, “how can I become a better programmer?” But nobody gave me very satisfactory answers. They would tell me to play around with obscure programming languages, or study algorithms, or read papers, or do a bunch of other stuff that felt tangential and didn’t really move the needle.
That’s my preferred reading of the Feynman Algorithm: there is no one weird trick.
On the other hand, I have gotten a ton better at programming in the last four years. Not through any specific piece of advice, or any weird trick. Rather, it’s come by constantly trying to learn small new things, make small tool improvements, make my models a little deeper, work a little faster, come up with slightly better ideas. By, literally, thinking real hard, for a long, long time. The Feynman Algorithm works!