Ask HN: Going from programmer to engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Going from programmer to engineer

#31

Post by prophetjohn » Sun, Jun 17, 2012, 4:43 PM UTC

keyle wrote: post #24

DanWaterworth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a computer, it can do anything. Period. Anything? I assume you mean it can compute anything, right? So you could write a computer program that determines whether two distinct programs do the same thing? Or whether a batch job will ever finish? Or whether you could substitute the variables in a equation with integers in order to satisfy it? Or a hundred other tasks that have been proven impossible?

Of course it can't do anything. The computer just hasn't found the person to tell it how to do it yet.

No; the halting problem (etc.) is unsolvable. We're not just waiting for someone to figure out how to solve it.

Re: Ask HN: Going from programmer to engineer

#32

Post by yitchelle » Sun, Jun 17, 2012, 6:13 PM UTC

Dude, you will need to jump in, and preserver with it. You said "my ideas I usually get stuck and flail and call it quits", quitting means that you will stop learning. As soon as you quit, the game is over. Persistent is one of the key ingredient to gaining the knowledge.

I think that you should join an open source project that uses the same framework that you want to learn. There are plenty of projects from github, source forge, bitbucket, google code etc. That way, you get access to already code that is working, and able to get some guidance from the folks already working on the project.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Going from programmer to engineer

#33

Post by yashchandra » Sun, Jun 17, 2012, 6:26 PM UTC

You can ask yourself a few questions and get started accordingly. For example, what languages are you interested in ? PHP ? Python ? Java ? Pick up 1 of them. Since you mentioned Django,I assume you are working with Python. But then, play around with at least 2 frameworks. May be try Flask (micro-framework in Python) which I am falling in love with. Build the same app in both frameworks. I personally did User management/registration app in both Django and Flask. Start small. Build layers on top. There is no one way of course but building a few small apps just for learning will help tremendously.

Re: Ask HN: Going from programmer to engineer

#34

Post by krigath » Sun, Jun 17, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

Stuck learning Objective-C? This should kick you off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xqn5IHbusA

65 really simple to follow tutorials, most of which are 6-7 minutes long. He does tutorials on pretty much everything; from iOS to go kart building.

Re: Ask HN: Going from programmer to engineer

#35

Post by overgryphon » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 8:22 PM UTC

One small step at a time. It doesn't matter what platform, framework or language, you pick a project and figure out what simple thing you can do to start.

You make mistakes, fail, backtrack and all of that is necessary to reach your goal. Amateur or not, everyone gets stuck and flails around for awhile. The difference between the person who has a few app a few months later and the person who doesn't is whether they kept going when they got stuck.