Are you a Cargo Cult Programmer?

Jesper and I have been doing a lot of learning lately. We're both learning C#, and in doing so, reading a lot of books,  blog posts, and other resources.

Specifically, we've had several discussions about the book CLR Via C#. This book goes into great depth about how C# works, and some depth on how best to use C#. This is the type of book to read when you want to know why to solve a problem a certain way, instead of just solving it that way because, you found some code online, and it seems to work. The goal is to really understand why, not just how. There is a reason they teach math in school. They could have just given us a calculator our first day of first grade. Why didn't they? Its important to know the why.

Anyway, while reading a book review on Jon Skeet's website, I ran across the concept of a "Cargo Cult Programmer." I was intrigued. I followed Jon's link to the  original blog post which explained the concept. A Cargo Cult Programmer is someone who just cares about how, and not why. I have been guilty of this in my career but I strive to improve and this is one place I'm working hardest.

Anyway, I thought that Cargo Cult Programmer blog post was a good read so I thought I'd share.

More Helpful .NET Websites

I'm still learning .NET while working on my current project at work. I'm using Silverlight and learning .NET and specifically C# and XAML to support that end. I've recently run across two really helpful sites and thought I'd share them here.

A colleague showed me  101 LINQ Examples which is a nice site from Microsoft that shows LINQ examples from simple to hard. I have found this useful.

The next link, Parameter Passing in C#, is an excellent article on how parameters work in C#. This information explains details about passing value or reference types by reference or value. It was here that I learned about the ref keyword which is pretty damn cool.

I hope you find this usefull.
-Marshall