Chapter 1. Before You Begin…

One of the major goals that I have with researching software design is the hope that we can take people who are "bad programmers" or mediocre programmers and, with some simple education and only a little experience, bring them into being good programmers or great programmers.

I want to know – what are the fundamental things you have to teach somebody to make them into a great programmer? What if somebody's been programming for years and hasn't gotten any better – how can you help them? What are they missing? So I've written quite a bit about that in this book, particularly in Part Seven -Suck Less.

However, before somebody can even start on the path of becoming a better software developer, one thing has to be true:

In order to become an excellent programmer, you must first want to become an excellent programmer. No amount of training will turn somebody who does not want to be excellent into an excellent programmer...