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Are you confusing Hacker News with Reddit? (for context, below is mattdeboard's deleted comment) "Well, thankfully, I didn't write this for you. I wrote it for the people -- I suspect the vast, vast, vast majority of the HN readership -- who are not expert programmers, or even professional programmers, but they want to be."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
Are you confusing Hacker News with Reddit? (for context, below is mattdeboard's deleted comment) "Well, thankfully, I didn't write this for you. I wrote it for the people -- I suspect the vast, vast, vast majority of the HN readership -- who are not expert programmers, or even professional programmers, but they want to be."
I am so envious (when I read stuff like that) - I have been plodding along for 30 years now and am still learning how to program :(
The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I think a lot of people either didn't read the article or just skimmed it. For those of you who are citing Peter Norvig's essay, I also thought of the essay when I read this; it's one of my favorites. I've read it several times because it is humbling and inspires me to rise to the challenge of really becoming a great programmer. If Matt reads it he might feel sim…
My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do dif…
The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I think a lot of people either didn't read the article or just skimmed it. For those of you who are citing Peter Norvig's essay, I also thought of the essay when I read this; it's one of my favorites. I've read it several times because it is humbling and inspires me to rise to the challenge of really becoming a great programmer. If Matt reads it he might feel sim…
My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do dif…
The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I think a lot of people either didn't read the article or just skimmed it. For those of you who are citing Peter Norvig's essay, I also thought of the essay when I read this; it's one of my favorites. I've read it several times because it is humbling and inspires me to rise to the challenge of really becoming a great programmer. If Matt reads it he might feel sim…
My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do dif…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do dif…
> Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? Yes, all of them. I have them every day. Today's was Solr's facet.limit/.prefix/.mincount methods as it relates to what I'm working on. Nothing stands out because it was a huge bolus of information. > What would he do differently? Nothing. > What guidelines would he give to someone else in a similar position? http://mattdeboard.net/2011/11/23/how-i-became-a-programmer/ > Ho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do dif…
No, it isn't a puff piece, he's not going on about how awesome he is, he is just saying "Hey look, you can get a entry job programming without learning how to program for 4 years.", and then goes on to say how he does it. If he spent all of his time documenting everything so you could be satisfied then he wouldn't of turned up where he was, and in no way was he actually planning on writing that blog post until tons o…
> I was a computer geek from way back, had a few BBSes in the late 80s (yes, I'm a child of the 80s & 90s), learned QBasic & VisualBasic back in the day, and tinkered with Python for a few years off and on... In every single one of the "how I learned to program in X days" stories, the author had some previous experience. I wouldn't count running a BBS and learning 3 programming languages as "no previous experience".
I understand his perspective. I dabbled in programming as a child and teen, and then was an advanced user, running Linux on my desktop for years. At the time I started actual programming, I knew what a 'for' loop was, but not how to write one in any language - even Bash. I didn't know what an array was, or say, the difference between C and C++, to say nothing of functional and object oriented concepts.