The thing that has changed most for me was recently discovering formal specifications and learning to think about how to model systems first before trying to code them. Seeing how wrong people can write binary search was pretty astounding.

It took quite a lot of things to go right for me to finally try it out but I'm glad I took the plunge. Writing specifications in plain human language is a good start but formal methods have shown me how sloppy my thinking is. It forces you to be rigorous!

I've been having to "unlearn" quite a lot but it's starting to turn around and coming back to where I was is going to be amazing.

10 years ago I would have scoffed and said you didn't need math in order to be a good programmer. I couldn't have been more wrong. If I knew then what I do now!