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All Programmers Are Self-Taught

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Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#41

Post by bguthrie »

herge wrote: post #38
hammerdr wrote: post #37

College is an interesting beast. It is a great tool to mature bright teenagers into contributing adults for society. It does this in several ways: throws you into a small space full of diverse people, challenges you mentally to an almost breaking point and forges you into the mold of a person you will be for the rest of your life. Oh, and you'll learn some professional skills, as well. For high tech industries, this…

> However, the VIM trick that I picked up at work today is NOT the sort of thing I would have been happy with a professor 'challenging' me on during my courses. University teaches you the things that you cannot learn on your own.

University may expose you to concepts that you might never have encountered on your own. But there's nothing that you can't learn on your own, and in fact the history of learning is full of the contributions of self-educated savants.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#42

Post by tdavis »

There are two classes of programmers: the taught and the self-propelled. You can certainly teach someone to program--what they do after that defines the rest of their career. No CS curriculum will give all the information one needs to be a great programmer, but it's certainly possible to have a long and mediocre career as a taught programmer.

I would wager a majority of the best programmers are also self-taught, though. Not because College is a bad experience or sets you up for failure, but because it's really internal motivation and curiosity that makes a programmer grow, not something they learned in a CS course once upon a time. And you've got to be pretty damn curious to make a career of programming without any formal introduction or education.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#43

Post by BadassFractal »

namidark wrote: post #13

I disagree, I often see people in the CS program who haven't done a lick of programming outside assignments and don't bother teaching themselves anything beyond whats required for class.

Regardless, they tend not to go anywhere meaningful professionally.

I wouldn't be surprised if 10-15 years down the line, these mediocre corporate programmers (they can only survive in a large organization, where you don't have to pull your weight nearly as much as on a 10 person team) they become managers from hell.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#44

Post by ww520 »

That's not true. It depends on the type of classes and the professors. Some professors and TA would go to great length to show how programming are done, especially the intro classes. Of course there's always some amount of self-learning, as in any discipline you can't be spoonfed for all materials without doing it yourself.

You go further with self motivation and self-learning since there're only so many class hours, and there're a lot more topics in programming.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#45

Post by ntkachov »

tdavis wrote: post #42

There are two classes of programmers: the taught and the self-propelled. You can certainly teach someone to program--what they do after that defines the rest of their career. No CS curriculum will give all the information one needs to be a great programmer, but it's certainly possible to have a long and mediocre career as a taught programmer. I would wager a majority of the best programmers are also self-taught, thou…

I would argue that a good CS curriculum makes you a good Computer Scientist. I started really programming my senior year of high school. My code has been steadily improving since then. However if it was not for my CS courses I would't be able to tell the difference between a binary tree and a stack.

Programmers are artists. You can't teach art. Computer scientists are mathematics. Math must be learned.

The two together are Engineers.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#46

Post by geebee »

Interesting... I had a professor who spent a ton of time looking at my code. I almost didn't like asking him a question, because before he'd answer it, he'd insist on reviewing at my code and making me refactor it, and it was always at least a half hour, often well over an hour, before we'd actually get to my question. It was good for me, though, and I knew it - I did ask him to be my senior thesis advisor.

Interestingly, this guy was a math professor, not a CS professor. But he was very particular about code.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#47

Post by vph »

Programming needs lots of training, for which self motivation, self teaching is important.

But to say that all programmers are self-taught is a little short sighted. Beyond the basic syntax, there are difficult concepts and idioms in many languages or programming paradigms that can be quite hard for a person (who is not familiar with such concepts, idioms, paradigms) to discover by him/herself. These things include pointers in C, reasoning about correctness of programs, recursive techniques (dynamic programming, etc.), and many functional programming concepts. Good teachers can make these things a lot easier to learn.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#48

Post by mpercy »

ntkachov wrote: post #45
tdavis wrote: post #42

There are two classes of programmers: the taught and the self-propelled. You can certainly teach someone to program--what they do after that defines the rest of their career. No CS curriculum will give all the information one needs to be a great programmer, but it's certainly possible to have a long and mediocre career as a taught programmer. I would wager a majority of the best programmers are also self-taught, thou…

I would argue that a good CS curriculum makes you a good Computer Scientist. I started really programming my senior year of high school. My code has been steadily improving since then. However if it was not for my CS courses I would't be able to tell the difference between a binary tree and a stack. Programmers are artists. You can't teach art. Computer scientists are mathematics. Math must be learned. The two togeth…

I like this.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#49

Post by doktrin »

richardburton wrote: post #4

I 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. http://bit.ly/groupmeclone The SMS is disabled on that version as…

That's quite inspiring. I would like to be where you are at, skill wise, in a few months time. Overcoming the inertia (and finding time after 12 hour work days), is proving quite the challenge.

How many hours did you spend per day, roughly, and how many all told?

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#50

Post by digitailor »

ntkachov wrote: post #45
tdavis wrote: post #42

There are two classes of programmers: the taught and the self-propelled. You can certainly teach someone to program--what they do after that defines the rest of their career. No CS curriculum will give all the information one needs to be a great programmer, but it's certainly possible to have a long and mediocre career as a taught programmer. I would wager a majority of the best programmers are also self-taught, thou…

I would argue that a good CS curriculum makes you a good Computer Scientist. I started really programming my senior year of high school. My code has been steadily improving since then. However if it was not for my CS courses I would't be able to tell the difference between a binary tree and a stack. Programmers are artists. You can't teach art. Computer scientists are mathematics. Math must be learned. The two togeth…

I'm a self-taught programmer who went to art school and I love this thought-provoking comment.

There's one thing I'd like to point out. You can teach the techniques of art, which are used for creating art. You can teach the techniques of programming, which are used for creating software. You can't teach how to create something that's never been created before.

That goes for creating ground-breaking art, as well as ground-breaking software.

Often, it's a set of disparate and interdisciplinary techniques, seemingly unrelated, that are used together to create the cutting-edge.

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