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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#11

Post by foxpurple »

tempodox wrote: post #6

I agree with the article, ~10 yrs will give you a good start if you stay with it. When asked by others how much it would take, I try to avoid giving a number like that because it might discourage them. Who knows, had I heard or read that number early in my involvement, it might have discouraged me. However, my innate curiosity and fascination for the field made the time fly by without me noticing it. If you're in dou…

The number means nothing anyway. What do you get at 10 years that you didn’t have at 9 or don’t yet have from 11.

You can have a well paying job as a programmer in only a few years.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#12

Post by BossingAround »

The title is a bit misleading to me.

10 years is not to "teach yourself programming," it's to "become an expert in programming."

Most people do not want to learn programming to become experts, most people want to learn programming to get a job. After getting a job, some will plateau right away, others will plateau after some time, and others still will keep learning even after years and years.

The problem is "how long until I become employable," not "how long until I become an expert".

The answer to the former is months of deliberate practice. The answer to the latter is [tens of] years of deliberate practice.

Books with titles like "learn C++ in 24 hours" target the former. And, I would say that the number of jobs that require the mastery of the craft is not large.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#14

Post by 0xfaded »

tchalla wrote: post #9

The power of compounding which comes from discipline is one of the most underrated concepts. There's one caveat to "keep at it for x years"; deliberate practice. You have to work towards being aware of gaps, identifying them and improving them. In addition, the amount of effort required to go from 0-40 is different from the one required to go from 50-70 or 80-95. The recognition and acceptance that a 100m sprint is d…

Learn linear algebra properly and this will ring true. If you know the math, it's trivial to pick up control, computer vision, back propagation, optimization, I'm sure many others.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#17

Post by herodoturtle »

BossingAround wrote: post #12

The title is a bit misleading to me. 10 years is not to "teach yourself programming," it's to "become an expert in programming." Most people do not want to learn programming to become experts, most people want to learn programming to get a job. After getting a job, some will plateau right away, others will plateau after some time, and others still will keep learning even after years and years. The problem is "how lon…

I agree with everything you said.

Not sure about this though:

> I would say that the number of jobs that require the mastery of the craft is not large.

Perhaps the number of jobs that require mastery is less well known? i.e. Not advertised as often / not vacant as often.

I suppose I'm splitting hairs here in one's definition of "not large", by in my circles (~25 years of dev working experience) there are quite a lot of "jobs" requiring mastery, but they certainly do become available less often (or rather, they're usually quietly filled without much public notice).

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#18

Post by KingOfCoders »

I've learned programming as a kid in a department store watching other kids hack in BASIC.

Writing code for 40+ years I still make mistakes, don't know a lot of things, make the wrong decisions sometimes and learn every day - currently fighting Rust lifetimes.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#19

Post by tempodox »

foxpurple wrote: post #11
tempodox wrote: post #6

I agree with the article, ~10 yrs will give you a good start if you stay with it. When asked by others how much it would take, I try to avoid giving a number like that because it might discourage them. Who knows, had I heard or read that number early in my involvement, it might have discouraged me. However, my innate curiosity and fascination for the field made the time fly by without me noticing it. If you're in dou…

The number means nothing anyway. What do you get at 10 years that you didn’t have at 9 or don’t yet have from 11. You can have a well paying job as a programmer in only a few years.

> The number means nothing anyway…

Yep, that's why I put the “~” in front of it and called it a start, not the end of the journey.

> You can have a well paying job as a programmer in only a few years.

Absolutely, if that's the extent of what you want out of it, you could achieve that and call it a day. But programming is also a field that's ever evolving. If you catch yourself thinking, “I've learned everything I ever need to learn”, then chances are that you'll find yourself left behind at some point in the future.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#20

Post by Aeolun »

BossingAround wrote: post #12

The title is a bit misleading to me. 10 years is not to "teach yourself programming," it's to "become an expert in programming." Most people do not want to learn programming to become experts, most people want to learn programming to get a job. After getting a job, some will plateau right away, others will plateau after some time, and others still will keep learning even after years and years. The problem is "how lon…

> the number of jobs that require the mastery of the craft is not large

The number of jobs that benefit from mastery of the craft is essentially equal to the number of jobs.

I do not enjoy finding the work of a bunch of people that studied enough to get hired and no more.

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