Another tip for becoming a better programmer

I had more than the two tips on becoming a better programmer than I gave in the last post but I had run out of margarita. Now, being replenished with tequila and fresh lime by The Invisible Developer, here are two more. He often tells me that I should refer to myself as a developer and not a programmer because that is beneath me. I have never pretended to be cool. I started with punched cards as a programmer and a programmer I will remain. At least until the second margarita.

If you aren’t familiar with github, you could have gone to Chris Hemedinger’s super demo at SAS Global Forum. We use github for version control and it is indispensable for that. When you have several people working on the same program, I can edit files, you can, too, and we all upload and download the latest versions without copying over each other’s code. If you are on a project with more than one developer, once you have used a git repository, you’ll fight anyone who tries to take it away.

Because it is so good for sharing, github is used a lot for open source projects and for people just making their code publicly available.

The main thing I learned that I didn’t know is that there is a https://github.com/sassoftware

I had just assumed since SAS is a private company and definitely not open source that there would not be much available. I was wrong.

Whatever language you use, there is probably a github for it.

Here is a funny thing. When I first started learning JavaScript, I scavenged github to find examples of people making simple games like tic-tac-toe , Memory or mazes. I’d modify the code to do what I wanted and I thought all of these people were so much smarter than me.

After I learned a bit more, sometimes I saw functions or libraries in the code that didn’t do anything and I realized that a lot of these people had done the exact same thing as me – copied someone else’s code and modified it for their purposes.

Start by copying code from github, but don’t stop there

If you ask me – and even if you don’t, I’m going to tell you anyway – it is absolutely fine to download code from someone else’s repository on github and tweak it a little for your own purposes. However, don’t stop there! Dive into it. Figure out what each function does, try to understand their logic.

A better person than me would have their own public git repository. Oh well, I have a bucket of private ones for work and I’ve been writing this blog for 11 years, so that will have to do. YOU should definitely have public repository, though. Changing the subject here …

Git Repositories that are NOT python, R or Viya

The top repositories almost all entail either integrating SAS and Python (not surprising because it is open source) or Viya or Visual Analytics (presumably because it is expensive and SAS wants to promote it). There are also a smattering of SAS-and-R repositories in the top hits and repositories for SAS and iOS and SAS and Android. I’m not interested in any of that at the moment.

Right now, I am super-swamped but I should have some free time over the summer, so here are my personal interests I am marking for later. With 116 repositories, any SAS aficionado should find something of interest, and remember, this is just the sassoftware repository. There are additional repositories of individual users, like the last one I noted below

SAS Studio Tasks is an area I’d like to learn more about, as in writing your own custom tasks.

Data mining is an area I am ALWAYS wanting to brush up on more . This library of flow diagrams for specific data mining topics looks really cool.

Not a SAS Institute repository, this one from Michael Friendly is on macros and looks super cool.

As I mentioned above, I started using github for JavaScript code and there are TONS of repositories for just about any language that would tickle your fancy (what exactly IS a fancy, anyway?)

I have more tips but it will have to wait for another margarita and since my grandchildren are spending the weekend and just invaded my office, that will have to wait.