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001 Ai Topological Sort

157-better-programmer

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Habits that Make a Great Programmer

Source: https://arpitbhayani.me/blogs/better-programmer Date: 2020-02-28

8 rituals to level up your programming skills! Learn how to code better, think faster, and build complex systems with these actionable tips.

“How to get better at programming?” is the question I had been asked quite a few times, and today I lay down the 8 rituals I have been following, and action items for each, to be good and get better at programming.

Code exhaustively

Doing something repeatedly always helps and writing a lot of code will develop our ability to

  • write code while we think
  • think faster, think better
  • foresee requirement changes and possible logic extensions

Action Items

001-ai-topological-sort.md
tldr.md
002 Temporal Primer
002-temporal-primer.md
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003 Rag Production
003-rag-production.md
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004 Structure Of Llm Chat
004-structure-of-llm-chat.md
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005 How Llms Work
005-how-llms-work.md
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006 Monolith Is Distributed System
006-monolith-is-distributed-system.md
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007 Defensive Databases
007-defensive-databases.md
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008 Bm25
008-bm25.md
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009 Join Algorithms
009-join-algorithms.md
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010 Venting At Work
010-venting-at-work.md
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011 Half Life
011-half-life.md
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012 Multi Paxos
012-multi-paxos.md
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013 Mysql Replication Internals
013-mysql-replication-internals.md
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014 Bloom Filters
014-bloom-filters.md
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015 Clock Sync Nightmare
015-clock-sync-nightmare.md
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016 Kafka Partitions
016-kafka-partitions.md
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017 Product Quantization
017-product-quantization.md
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018 Qkv Matrices
018-qkv-matrices.md
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019 Deleted Production
019-deleted-production.md
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020 How Llm Inference Works
020-how-llm-inference-works.md
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021 Blocking Queues
021-blocking-queues.md
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022 Heartbeats In Distributed Systems
022-heartbeats-in-distributed-systems.md
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023 Cassandra Writes
023-cassandra-writes.md
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024 Redis Replication
024-redis-replication.md
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025 Arrogant People At Work
025-arrogant-people-at-work.md
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026 Cdn Content Replication
026-cdn-content-replication.md
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027 Cant Fix Everything Day One
027-cant-fix-everything-day-one.md
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028 Emotions At Work
028-emotions-at-work.md
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029 Grpc Http2
029-grpc-http2.md
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030 Meetings With No Agenda Are A Waste Of Time
030-meetings-with-no-agenda-are-a-waste-of-time.md
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031 Growth Is Not About Doing Everything
031-growth-is-not-about-doing-everything.md
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032 Career Longevity Vs Job Hopping
032-career-longevity-vs-job-hopping.md
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033 Stay Relevant At Higher Salary Levels
033-stay-relevant-at-higher-salary-levels.md
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034 Why Consensus
034-why-consensus.md
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035 Database Deadlocks
035-database-deadlocks.md
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036 Cpu Cache Locality
036-cpu-cache-locality.md
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037 Eventual Consistency
037-eventual-consistency.md
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038 Dns Udp Tcp
038-dns-udp-tcp.md
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039 Masters
039-masters.md
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040 Empathy Makes Great Engineers Unstoppable
040-empathy-makes-great-engineers-unstoppable.md
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041 Good Mentors Build People
041-good-mentors-build-people.md
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042 Always Have Back Burner Projects
042-always-have-back-burner-projects.md
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043 Before You Push Back Know What Youre Standing On
043-before-you-push-back-know-what-youre-standing-on.md
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044 Be The One They Can Count On
044-be-the-one-they-can-count-on.md
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045 How Much People Bet On You
045-how-much-people-bet-on-you.md
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046 How To Get Leadership To Say Yes To Your Project
046-how-to-get-leadership-to-say-yes-to-your-project.md
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047 Dont Let Your Best Ideas Die In Silence
047-dont-let-your-best-ideas-die-in-silence.md
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048 Be Someone Others Want To Work With
048-be-someone-others-want-to-work-with.md
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049 Dont Fall For Xy Problem Ask Right Questions
049-dont-fall-for-xy-problem-ask-right-questions.md
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050 Biggest Lie Startups Tell Engineers
050-biggest-lie-startups-tell-engineers.md
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051 Promotions Are Proactive Not Reactive
051-promotions-are-proactive-not-reactive.md
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052 Not Enough To Be Right Learn To Be Heard
052-not-enough-to-be-right-learn-to-be-heard.md
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053 No One Ships Alone
053-no-one-ships-alone.md
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054 Not Every Mistake Needs A Correction
054-not-every-mistake-needs-a-correction.md
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055 Build Influence At Work
055-build-influence-at-work.md
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056 Your Soft Skills Arent Soft At All
056-your-soft-skills-arent-soft-at-all.md
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057 Experience Before Forming Opinion
057-experience-before-forming-opinion.md
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058 Curiosity And High Bias For Action
058-curiosity-and-high-bias-for-action.md
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059 Worklog
059-worklog.md
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060 Mistakes And Growth
060-mistakes-and-growth.md
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061 Own It Instead Of Sweeping It Aside
061-own-it-instead-of-sweeping-it-aside.md
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062 Dont Wait Step Up
062-dont-wait-step-up.md
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063 Temporary Fix Is Permanent
063-temporary-fix-is-permanent.md
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064 Interview Bias And What Sets You Apart
064-interview-bias-and-what-sets-you-apart.md
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065 Saying This Isnt My Problem Is A Problem
065-saying-this-isnt-my-problem-is-a-problem.md
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066 Okr
066-okr.md
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067 Miscommunication
067-miscommunication.md
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068 When In Doubt Code It Out
068-when-in-doubt-code-it-out.md
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069 Follow Up Without Annoying People
069-follow-up-without-annoying-people.md
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070 Lead Projects That Land
070-lead-projects-that-land.md
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071 Abstract Thinking Skill Next Decade
071-abstract-thinking-skill-next-decade.md
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072 We Engineers Suck At Task Estimation
072-we-engineers-suck-at-task-estimation.md
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073 Shiny Object Syndrome In Tech
073-shiny-object-syndrome-in-tech.md
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074 3p
074-3p.md
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075 Leverage The Equilibrium
075-leverage-the-equilibrium.md
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076 On Demand Container Loading In Aws Lambda
076-on-demand-container-loading-in-aws-lambda.md
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077 Sql Has Problems We Can Fix Them Pipe Syntax In Sql
077-sql-has-problems-we-can-fix-them-pipe-syntax-in-sql.md
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078 Nanolog A Nanosecond Scale Logging System
078-nanolog-a-nanosecond-scale-logging-system.md
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079 Best Resource Is Mythical
079-best-resource-is-mythical.md
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080 Wtf The Who To Follow Service At Twitter
080-wtf-the-who-to-follow-service-at-twitter.md
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081 Know A Lot
081-know-a-lot.md
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082 Out Of Syllabus
082-out-of-syllabus.md
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083 Negotiate The Offer
083-negotiate-the-offer.md
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084 Never Bad Mouth Your Ex Exployer
084-never-bad-mouth-your-ex-exployer.md
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085 Culture Fit
085-culture-fit.md
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086 Quantification In Resume
086-quantification-in-resume.md
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087 Hiring Is Unfair
087-hiring-is-unfair.md
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088 Questions For Interviewers
088-questions-for-interviewers.md
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089 Collaboration Communication
089-collaboration-communication.md
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090 Out Of Vicious Interview Cycle
090-out-of-vicious-interview-cycle.md
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091 Pitch Projects Not Ideas
091-pitch-projects-not-ideas.md
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092 Read Design Docs
092-read-design-docs.md
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093 Read Rca Docs
093-read-rca-docs.md
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094 Start Generalist
094-start-generalist.md
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095 Do Not Rely On Summaries
095-do-not-rely-on-summaries.md
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096 Structure Your Design Interviews
096-structure-your-design-interviews.md
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097 Title Inflation
097-title-inflation.md
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098 Find Your Own Project
098-find-your-own-project.md
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099 Six Pointers To Crack Coding And Design Interviews
099-six-pointers-to-crack-coding-and-design-interviews.md
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100 Keep Yourself Unblocked
100-keep-yourself-unblocked.md
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101 Genetic Knapsack
101-genetic-knapsack.md
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102 Pseudorandom Number Generation Lfsr
102-pseudorandom-number-generation-lfsr.md
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103 How Indexes Work On Partitioned And Sharded Data
103-how-indexes-work-on-partitioned-and-sharded-data.md
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104 Some Data Partitioning Strategies For Distributed Data Stores
104-some-data-partitioning-strategies-for-distributed-data-stores.md
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105 Data Partitioning
105-data-partitioning.md
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106 Leaderless Replication
106-leaderless-replication.md
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107 Conflict Resolution
107-conflict-resolution.md
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108 Conflict Detection
108-conflict-detection.md
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109 Multi Master Replication
109-multi-master-replication.md
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110 Monotonic Reads
110-monotonic-reads.md
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111 Read Your Write Consistency
111-read-your-write-consistency.md
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112 Handling Outages Master Replica
112-handling-outages-master-replica.md
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113 Replication Formats
113-replication-formats.md
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114 Replication Strategies
114-replication-strategies.md
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115 Master Replica Replication
115-master-replica-replication.md
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116 Durability
116-durability.md
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117 Isolation
117-isolation.md
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118 Atomicity
118-atomicity.md
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119 Consistency
119-consistency.md
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120 Architectures In Distributed Systems
120-architectures-in-distributed-systems.md
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121 Mistaken Beliefs Of Distributed Systems
121-mistaken-beliefs-of-distributed-systems.md
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122 Fork Bomb
122-fork-bomb.md
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123 Chained Operators Python
123-chained-operators-python.md
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124 Taxonomy On Sql
124-taxonomy-on-sql.md
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125 The Weird Walrus
125-the-weird-walrus.md
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126 Fully Persistent Arrays
126-fully-persistent-arrays.md
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127 Persistent Data Structures Introduction
127-persistent-data-structures-introduction.md
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128 Constant Folding Python
128-constant-folding-python.md
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129 String Interning Python
129-string-interning-python.md
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130 Recursion Visualizer Python
130-recursion-visualizer-python.md
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131 Flajolet Martin
131-flajolet-martin.md
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132 2q Cache
132-2q-cache.md
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133 Israeli Queues
133-israeli-queues.md
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134 1d Terrain
134-1d-terrain.md
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135 Jaccard Minhash
135-jaccard-minhash.md
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136 Ts Smoothing
136-ts-smoothing.md
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137 Lfu
137-lfu.md
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138 Morris Counter
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139 Slowsort
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140 Bitcask
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141 Phi Accrual
141-phi-accrual.md
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142 10x Engineer
142-10x-engineer.md
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143 Decipher Repeated Key Xor
143-decipher-repeated-key-xor.md
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144 Decipher Single Xor
144-decipher-single-xor.md
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145 Python Iterable Integers
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146 Inheritance C
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147 Rum
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148 Consistent Hashing
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149 Python Caches Integers
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150 Fractional Cascading
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151 Copy On Write
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152 Midpoint Insertion Caching Strategy
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153 Fsm Python
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154 Bayesian Average
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155 Sliding Window Ratelimiter
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156 Idf
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157 Better Programmer
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158 Python Prompts
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159 Rule 30 Cellular Automata
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160 Function Overloading
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161 Isolation Forest
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162 Image Steganography
162-image-steganography.md
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163 Long Integers Python
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164 I Changed My Python
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165 Benchmark And Compare Pagination Approach In Mongodb
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166 Mongodb Cursor Skip Is Slow
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167 Fast And Efficient Pagination In Mongodb
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168 Making Http Requests Using Netcat
168-making-http-requests-using-netcat.md
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  • One significant contribution to a project every two weeks

  • Solve at least two programming questions (from Codechef

    , Spoj

    or HackerRank

    ) every week, till we solve at least 300 questions

Code consistently

If we don’t do something repeatedly, it becomes extremely hard to get good at it. Writing code consistently helps us

  • define the programmatic and algorithmic flow quickly
  • build a habit of programming and thinking analytically

Action Items

  • make one small contribution to anyone project every three days

Once a while build a complex system

Solving programming questions is about developing logic but things become a little trickier when we build a complex system, as it requires us to take our programming skills to go up a notch. Some examples of complex systems are - a Library management system, a Twitter clone, an Instagram clone, etc. Building a complex system

  • widens our tech stack
  • makes us keep our code flexible, extensible and reusable
  • helps us understand how to split our code into independent segments that work in harmony

Action Items

  • build one complex system every 4 months

Once a while build something inspired by the real world

After we spend some time writing programs and solving problems, things become monotonous and do not seem to challenge us anymore, so to spice things up a bit we should model something from the real world, like

  • projectile motion
  • double pendulum
  • solar system simulation

There are lots of libraries and framework like p5.js that makes visual programming simple.

Action Items

  • once every 6 months model a physical phenomenon

Read super exhaustively

It is not only writing code that improves our programming skills but it is reading some quality code written by expert programmers that make the difference. Reading code written by experts improve our programming vocabulary and by doing this we

  • learn the best programming practices
  • discover the new programming paradigms
  • find ways to properly structure our code for extensibility

The best way to start doing it is by picking up an open-source project and start skimming the code. It is okay to not understand it in the first go but it is important to skim it a few times and get acquainted. After a few skim, everything will fall in place, the code becomes familiar and we start to understand the flow and business logic.

Action Items

  • pick an open-source project every 6 months and skim its code once every two months
  • pick a tiny open-source utility, from an experienced developer, every month and skim it

Collaborate with a stranger

There is always someone sitting on the other side of the globe, who knows a thing or two more than us. Look for them and collaborate on a project. The developer community is filled with super smart and super enthusiastic developers who love to share and collaborate. Use websites like Dev.to, Hashnode and Twitter to find and interact with like-minded people.

Action Items

  • collaborate on a project once a year

  • be active on platforms like Dev.to

    , Hashnode

    and Twitter

Fundamentals go a long way

A programming language is just a tool to express business logic. While learning a programming language we should try to understand the constructs and paradigms used - for example: Functional programming, Polymorphism, Event driven programming, Actor model, etc. It is important to do so because we could pick constructs from one language and use it in another to solve our problem. For example: picking Functional programming (Callbacks) from Javascript and using it in Python to create generic action functions.

Action Items

  • learn one design pattern every month and build a simulation around it
  • pick a language construct and implement it in some other language

We think before we code

Writing code before putting in some thought is degraded the code more often than not. The code written like this lacks simplicity, reusability, and extensibility. Spending some time thinking about problem statement or task at hand and having a rough execution plan always helps.

Action Items

  • always define the scope of implementation, create an execution plan and then code

Conclusion

These rituals have helped me get better at programming with time and in parallel, I pick at max 3 and act on the action items. Programming is simple but being better than most is difficult. Doing it consistently makes one get better by the day.