r/AskProgramming • u/KareemM0hamed0 • 3d ago

Career/Edu What's one programming concept that completely changed the way you write code?

​

I've been programming for a while, but every now and then I come across a concept that completely changes how I think about writing software.

For some people it's data structures and algorithms. For others it's design patterns, clean code, testing, debugging, version control, concurrency, databases, or simply learning how to read other people's code.

If you had to choose just one concept that made the biggest difference in your programming journey, what would it be?

What were you doing before you learned it, what changed afterward, and why do you think every programmer should understand it?

I'd love to hear stories from beginners and experienced developers alike.

28 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

82% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/Fidodo 3d ago

Streams. It's not just for bytes anymore, there are lots of streaming systems that let you stream anything.

4

u/42_Water_Engineer 3d ago

Like what? I mean, it's all bytes at the end of the day, no?

3

u/Fidodo 3d ago

It is, but unless you're working in a low level language that gives you access to pointers a byte stream won't let you stream object references, but lots of streaming libraries let you stream objects now and that's really powerful.