“How to be a programmer:” This is a 40-page PDF essay from Robert Read. “I have attempted to summarize as concisely as possible those things that I wish someone had explained to me when I was twenty-one… Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the word to remove errors, but the meaning that matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it… beginners have to learn to poke at the code to make it jump.” I've skimmed it, and he seems to hit good topics, although it might be on the wordy side… have printed it out for the bus ride home. [via Slashdot] [JD on MX]