Best Practices and Where to Learn Them [closed]

Question

After reading this question and it's answers, I've pretty much confirmed what I'd feared was true all along: I am a bad programmer.

Not by direct choice, though... The mish-mash of practices I do have are from the mish-mash of VB6 and VB.net that we were taught in school. Because we were unfortunate enough to be there in the middle of their transition, instead of learning one language fully, we learned two languages half-way. Along with it, we also learned a mish-mash or not-exactly-best practices.

Combine that with my current job where if you even try to remotely follow best practices, you will be fired ('Test environment? What's that? Just upload it to the server and go!', 'You spend too much time and attention to detail. Just get the thing made ASAP so we can move on!'), and learning from experience on the job is just not an option. Heck, one time I just mentioned the word "plan" at a discussion on what to do to get started on the next project, and I was on their shitlist for months. Had to watch my back and make sure not to deviate from their idea of work, for when I did I was literally screamed at in the middle of the office. I was to be fired before a coworker calmed the boss down.

All of this culminates to one very important point. I am going to have to pick up best practices on my own in order to get out of this place. Only problem is, though I've seen many programmers complain that others don't follow them, I've not seen anyplace to go to learn best practices, either. So my question is this: How does one go about learning these things?!

Answer 1

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/recommended-reading-for-developers.html

Answer 2

Well at least you are in a position to learn what NOT to do!

Answer 3

You learn best practices from your own experiences, and from the experiences of others.

As others have said this is often books, blog posts, forums like this one, etc. While i'm not sure we have, as an industry, reached a universally agreed upon set of 'best practices' for every problem, there are at least ways of doing things that have been more successful than not.

One good way I could think of might be to study open-source projects that have been successful in both maintaining and scaling their offering. (This is conceptual, as I've never done it myself...)

And seriously... keep yourself open for a new job. Economy and workplace aside, I feel like I have learned so much more by changing jobs and getting experience with the different ways of doing things.

Answer 4

I'm in a similar boat -- but with a much better workplace. See the answers I got over at this question for some ideas.

Answer 5

A few links that hopefully help give an idea of where one could start:

• Microsoft's Patterns & Practices
• Refactoring
• The Joel Test
• What is ALT .NET? and Altnetpedia

Edit: Corrected bottom links on Alt.net which is a cool community as I recall.

Answer 6

I learned from the school of hard knocks :(. I would recommend you read certain books instead of going to my alma mater.

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing
• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

Answer 7

Most best practices will seem like solutions in search of problems and not sink in until you've seen firsthand what happens when they're violated and also understand what exceptions exist. I'd recommend reading lots of programming blogs, but only after you feel that you've identified a problem with your code (like not being able to understand or modify something you wrote 6 months ago) and are open to solutions.