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by 000ooo000 1096 days ago
Not all programming is equal, and there's a big difference between programming alone/as a hobbyist and programming for profit. I think studying most any topic is likely to give one new or interesting perspectives in programming, but the question is: is the juice worth the squeeze?

If you asked me to describe a 'better programmer' in a professional setting, it would probably be:

* writes understandable code

* knows when to optimise/dedupe /abstract, and more importantly, when not to

* treats it like a craft, but knows that pragmatism is also key

* can communicate about code, explain concepts and just be generally helpful and pleasant to others in or outside the team

Thats IMHO anyway, and those things don't seem to have much to do with math.