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All Programmers Are Self-Taught

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Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#61

Post by richardburton »

iamandrus wrote: post #33
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…

Congratulations on your first app. It's a good feeling indeed. :) I recently wrote a ton of Node.js example scripts (chat, group chat, notifications, interaction with PHP, etc), because I had never worked with Node before. I knew PHP, a bit of Rails, and C, but it really feels good to learn a new language or way of programming. I didn't need books or anything, just a bit of example code. Obviously, since I knew JS, N…

Thanks a lot! Node looks really clever. Right now I am learning C as I am really interested in computer vision. It is a massive leap above my current skill-set but you have to start somewhere.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#62

Post by richardburton »

doktrin wrote: post #49
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?

I would guess I spent at least 40+ hours a week for about 6 weeks. That is when I started having a much higher number of "ah-haaaa" moments. It must be very hard if you hard if you have a full-time job.

Is there something that you really want that is not available? That could be the driver you need to get you excited about firing up terminal.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#63

Post by suprememoocow »

Interesting article. I tend to agree with the author. In fact, I would go further and claim that while I've met many very good programmers who learnt they're craft at university or college, it's probably safe to say that all the truly great programmers I've met have done at least 10,000hrs of self-taught programming before they even left school.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#64

Post by jerfelix »

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…

>> The SMS is disabled on that version as I have no intention of subsidising peoples' group-messages

If you are interested in advancing that project, you may want to consider sending the SMS messages via email, which would be free. Each user would need to define their gateway when they set up their account. Many carriers have SMS gateways, and an easy way to translate a phone number into an email address that delivers by SMS.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#65

Post by swalsh »

qw wrote: post #52
bguthrie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with self-education is that it's too easy to ignore those subjects because they don't seem interesting or relevant. Someone who is interested in web programming may not see the need for learning assembler, but most of those who learned it would probably say that it was not a useless experience.

I consider myself a mostly self educated person. the total sum of my college experience probably totals just over a year at various intervals. The majority of my education comes from reading books, watching lectures online, and just plain doing things wrong. I don't typically learn something purely for the practical benefits. I have a drive to learn. When I learned assembly, it was only because I was interested in learning more.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#66

Post by henrikschroder »

The first thing our teacher said in my introductory course in CS was that the only difference between a good programmer and a bad programmer is the amount of code they've seen. And from that follows that the only way to become a good programmer is to look at a lot of other people's code.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#67

Post by freshfey »

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…

Congratulations on your work, pretty cool! I'd love to talk to you about the process you went through, any chance to reach you through email?

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#68

Post by omaranto »

bguthrie wrote: post #41
herge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In some idealistic sense it's true there is nothing you cannot learn on your own, but in practice there is loads of stuff no-one ever learns except by doing a PhD.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#69

Post by einhverfr »

qw wrote: post #52
bguthrie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with self-education is that it's too easy to ignore those subjects because they don't seem interesting or relevant. Someone who is interested in web programming may not see the need for learning assembler, but most of those who learned it would probably say that it was not a useless experience.

I have been trying to teach myself spherical trig on my own. I am struggling but the big issue I think is actually that with my ADD, I struggle to do some kinds of problems. I figure I will get it though. Why am I doing this? Because it is a challenge.

I would probably benefit from some mentoring, but that's not forthcoming.

I think a lot of this is the same for coding. You can learn whatever you want to/need to on your own. What a university gives you ideally is a level of mentoring and collaboration that can bring you to the next level (yes that includes, say, learning assembly, something I have taught myself the basics of but never gotten to the point where I feel comfortable in it).

For all this though, I agree that college is supposed to teach you the one think you can't learn on your own: critical thinking. I don't see how one can learn critical thinking on one's own, or at least not well. Not saying it can't be done outside of college. Just saying it can't be done in isolation.

From the sound of the original article though, it sounds like the author didn't feel like he was getting this, and that's kinda scary.

Re: All Programmers Are Self-Taught

#70

Post by RyanMcGreal »

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…

> You can't teach art.

Art (like programming) is the creative application of technique, and you can teach technique.

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