Advice to young programmers 

 

 

(This is the summary of speech Given by Alex Stepenov (Principal Scientist, 
Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004. ) 

 

 

1. Study , Study and Study 


 

- Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge 
which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and 
everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all the 
wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided. 


 

- You should be habituated to studies...exactly in the same way as you are 
habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The habit of 
study must become a ‘part of your blood’. And the study should be from 
both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something from non-
CS...Something which doesnot relate to your work. This would expand 
your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is extremely 
essential. It doesnot matter whether you study of 20 minutes of 2 hours, 
but consistency is a must. 


 

- You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in 
going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do 
PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand anything 
from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts were not 
clear. Studying ‘Algebraic Geometry’ is useless if you donot understand 
basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go back and re-
read and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts. 
What is the exact definition of ‘fundamental’? The stuff which is around 
for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded as 
more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental 
means. 




 

- Here are few books which I would strongly recommend that every CS 
professional should read and understand. 


 

i. “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” by Albenson 
and Sussman 
I personally donot like the material present in this book and I do 
have some objections about it but this is the best book I have ever 
seen which explains all the concepts in programming in a clear and 
excellent way. 

This book is available online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/







 

 

 

 


ii. Introduction to Computer Architecture: by Hennessy and Patterson. 
How many of you have shipped the programs by writing them in 
assembly? A very good understanding of basics of how a 
computer operates is what every CS professional must have. 

H&P Wrote two books on CA. I am talking about their first book, 
the introductory text for understanding basic aspects of how a 
computer works. 

Even if you feel that you know whatever is written in that book, 
donot stop reading. It’s good to revise basics again and again. 

 


iii. “Fundamentals of Programming” by Donald Knuth. 
The core of CS is algorithms and Data structures. Every CS 
professional must have the 3 volumes of Knuth’s Book on 
programming. It really doesnot matter if you take 30 years of your 
life to understand what Knuth has written, what is more important 
is that you read atleast some part of that book everyday without fail. 

 


iv. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest 
This book should be read daily to keep your concepts fresh. This is 
the best book for fundamental concepts in algorithms. 

 

 




2. Learn Professional Ethics 


 

- As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What this 
means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager but for 
yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of your life. 


 

- The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You don’t 
need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need to write 
quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is good. Thoroughly 
test every piece of code that you write. Donot write codes which are “sort 
of allright”. You might not achieve perfection, but atleast your code 
should be of good quality. 


 

 

- Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard 
about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++ 
compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of the 
routines in the STL, namely the “search routine”, I was a bit lazy and 
instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which was 



difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew that I 
could make the search faster by writing a linear-order implementation, but 
I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10 years of my writing STL, 
exactly the same implementation is still used inside STL and STL ships 
with an inefficient quadratic implementation of search routine even 
today!! You might ask me: why can’t you rewrite that? Well...I cannot, 
because that code is no more my property!! Further, nobody today will be 
interested in a standalone efficient STL ...people would prefer one which 
automatically ships out with the compiler itself. 


 

- Moral is, you should have aesthetic beauty built inside you. You should 
“feel” uneasy on writing bad code and should be eager to rewrite the code 
till it becomes upto the quality. And to the judge the quality, you need to 
develop sense regarding which algorithms to use under what 
circumstances. 


 

 

 

3. Figure out your Goals 


 

- Always aspire doing bigger things in life 


 

- “Viewing promotion path as your career” is a completely wrong goal. If 
you are really interested in studying and learning new things, never ever 
aspire for being a manager. Managers cannot learn and study...they have 
no time. “Company ladder aspiration” is not what should be important for 
you. 


 

- You might feel that you want to do certain things which you cannot do till 
you become a manager. When you become a manager, you will soon 
realize that now you just cannot do anything! 


 

- You will have a great experience as programmers. But if you care for 
people and love people, you will never enjoy being a manager...most good 
managers are reluctant managers. If you see people as people, you cannot 
survive at management level. 


 

- Always aspire for professional greatness. Our profession is very beautiful 
because we create abstract models and implement them in reality. There is 
a big fun in doing that. We have a profession which allows us to do 
creative things and even gives nice salary for that. 


 

- The three biggest mistakes that people usually make are aiming for money, 
aiming for promotion and aiming for fame. The moment you get some of 
these, you aspire for some more...and then there is no end. I donot mean 
that you shouldnot earn money, but you should understand how much 



money would satisfy your needs. Bill Clinton might be the richest person 
in the world; he is certainly not the happiest. Our lives are far better than 
his. 


 

 

- Find your goal, and do best in the job that you have. Understand that what 
is in your pocket doesnot matter...what is in your brain finally matters. 
Money and fame donot matter. Knowledge matters. 


 

 

 

 

 

4. Follow your culture 


 I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it rapidly 
spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an exception for this. This 
cultural change creates a very strong impact on everybody’s life. Habits of 
watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies and listening to pop songs and 
all such stupid stuff gets very easily cultivated in people of your age...but believe 
me, there is nothing great in that. This all just makes you run away from your 
culture. And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture. Indian culture, 
which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and Bhagwatgeeta is really 
great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that. You should understand that 
fundamental things in Indian culture teach you a lot and you should never forget 
them. 

 

Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it’s your life...donot waste it on 
stupid things...develop your tests, and start the fight.