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Notes -
Approach it like a craftsman.
I dive into things head first, willing to make mistakes. After I fumble through my first attempt with middling success, I'm left with usually some notion of where i could have done better. Sometimes I have a clear picture of how that is, other times I need to do some research first. Then i do it again with my new knowledge.
Repeat for 20 years.
Eventually you will organically run into the usual problems. The state of your program getting corrupted by refences to objects not being well managed. Using function calls that aren't thread safe in a multithreaded environment. Variables being initialized in the debug environment but not the release one. Your code descending into spaghetti hell because you used one kluge too many.
These are the normal problems neophyte code slingers encounter. Sometimes being forewarned by the elders helps. But in my experience most people need to learn these lessons the hard way. The best way is to code early and often on pet projects. Finishing them is optional, but gratifying.
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