On Wed, 22 Jul 2009, Wayne Lam wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>  I am new in here and i am currently worked in the library too.
> I am always confused that when i read the post in here, there are always
> something i don't understand
> and there are so much to learn.
>  So, the question is, hows everybody learns to be a good coder for
> libraries, what s the secret and what
> kind of technology are most important to learn?

You learn to be a good coder in a library the same way as any other 
environment -- pay attention to the needs of the users and the demands 
made by management.  And all the while, keep up with advancements in the 
field so that you can apply the best solution to a problem.

How you balance those first two things probably depends how receptive the 
management is to ideas that they didn't come up with.  (and you can still 
pull the 'didn't you say something a while back about ...' trick so they 
can still claim credit and you can get the better solution done.)

For the keeping up with advancements, I spend a fair bit of time scanning 
headlines on various news websites, blogs and mailing lists (which was a 
bad procrastination habit even before I started working for Fark), reading 
books, the occassional side project to test out a new language, etc.

... and it's impossible to recommend any specifics without an idea of what 
your overall role and background are.  (are you a librarian who's been 
pushed into the 'systems librarian' role, or a computer science person 
who's new to libraries?  are you working on front ends, backends, systems 
administration?  On windows, unix, linx?  are you writing new software, or 
just customizing existing packages for your library?)

-Joe