All Programmers Are Self-Taught
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All Programmers Are Self-Taught
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Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#2if my program compiled and my unit tests demonstrated correctness, that was enough.
...
Your professors taught you unit testing? In terms of learning the "practical" side of programming, I think that right there gives you a leg up on most CS students.
Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#3Carnegie Mellon is quite a stronghold of this. They don't teach much coding -- they hand you the books, give you projects and grade the results. If you produce workable code, mostly you win :-)
It's telling that CMU is considered such a great tech school. Even the best don't know how to teach programming (yet?).
Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#4I have been trying to learn to code for about 3 years. Recently - I succeeded (in getting started!).
I had been on courses, bought books, read tutorials etc. but at the end of each forced exercise I still could not build a decent rails app. Then, after coming back from the US 6 months ago, I decided I wanted a GroupMe clone for the UK. So I built one.
The SMS is disabled on that version as I have no intention of subsidising peoples' group-messages but the fact is it WORKS and finally learnt to code.
The controller is fat, the model is thin, there are no tests, there are lots of lengthy if-else statements, there are lots of bugs but I do not care because I finally learnt to code.
I have built little scripts for managing my kindle (https://gist.github.com/1404068) and scripts to get my Instragram pics (https://gist.github.com/1399696) and I love it.
I feel like I can finally call myself a rank amateur nuby Hacker. It feels good.
Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#5[deleted]
Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#6if my program compiled and my unit tests demonstrated correctness, that was enough. ... Your professors taught you unit testing? In terms of learning the "practical" side of programming, I think that right there gives you a leg up on most CS students.
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Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#7if my program compiled and my unit tests demonstrated correctness, that was enough. ... Your professors taught you unit testing? In terms of learning the "practical" side of programming, I think that right there gives you a leg up on most CS students.
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Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#8I agree with the premise. However, the whole world runs on sloppy, inelegant, and downright ugly code. I strive to write pretty code but the truth is it doesn't matter that much. Just getting it done and out the door counts for so much more.
Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#9Very true. As a current CS student, I couldn't agree more.
From what I've seen thus far, most school assignments are pretty easy to stumble through without really understanding what you're doing. As much useful stuff as I've learned in class, it's been personal projects that have really solidified things and taught me the most valuable lessons.
Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught
#10Carnegie Mellon is quite a stronghold of this. They don't teach much coding -- they hand you the books, give you projects and grade the results. If you produce workable code, mostly you win :-) It's telling that CMU is considered such a great tech school. Even the best don't know how to teach programming (yet?).
On the contrary, I don't really think that it is the University's job to teach "programming". University traditionally focuses around teaching the skills to do research. Higher level skills such as analysis and problem solving. Consider learning history. It is expected that you "know" how to write an essay. You may be critiqued on it, but it is not the primary motivation for your study of that subject.
My personal opinion is that university is not a place to learn tools (i.e. programming), but to learn to apply knowledge to form solutions to complex problems. We learn about algorithms, data structures and techniques because that is what we need to know to learn to solve hard problems. Programming, while not separate from this (i.e. you can hardly build anything without knowing how to use a screwdriver) is something that is assumed knowledge. Teaching it at university would waste valuable time in courses that are already too packed to give rigorous treatment of all topics covered.