The 'Programming for Scientists' training montage

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As any attentive movie-goer knows, self-improvement can be a great way for the hero to overcome the obstacles in their path and generally do great stuff.  As it is with Rocky Balboa, so it is with programmers, and particularly with Scientist-Programmers.  Finding the time to develop your skills means that everything you do subsequently, you'll do a little better, and over time you become much better at what you do.  We think every Scientist-Programmer should be a little obsessive about self-improvement and here are a few articles that show you how.

In 10,000 hours and the Scientist-Programmer we take a look from a Scientist-Programmer's perspective at the idea of it taking (approximately) 10,000 hours of learning/work to become an expert at something.  How might you go about clocking up these hours?

Stay on target! Ways to help yourself work is an article about productivity.  Everyone can use a little help in being more productive, whether through a different approach to work or simply a software app that helps cut out some of those visits to Facebook.  Here are some suggestions.

Fine-tuning your programming brain is an article about maintaining the most important weapon in your programming arsenal - your brain.   Think about how much better you are on a good day than on one where you're tired and unfocused.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could have a higher proportion of the good days?

Finally,  4 ways to become a better programmer is a discussion of four general ways to improve as a programmer.

The key to improving can often be the realisation that many small, incremental changes add up over time.  This is very true of programming and it's very true of being a programmer.