I'd like to meet the person who would buy a book titled "Teach yourself computer programming in 10 years."
I would, especially if it were written by Peter Norvig.
I await it's publication and sales figures.
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#52Isn't it odd and curious and such like that the chunks of time bandied about are units of ten? Coincidentally equal to the number of fingers on our hands. 10 years. 10,000 hours. I'd be willing to bet my granny's dentures that if we had eight fingers on each hand those numbers would be 16 years and 65536 hours (well, I mean it would still be 10 and 10,000 but you know what I mean). Also, did you know that in many cul…
Why is that a reason to not take it serious? It's an order-of-magnitude estimate, like Carl Sagan's "billions and billions" of stars, or the Bible's "40"
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#53Isn't it odd and curious and such like that the chunks of time bandied about are units of ten? Coincidentally equal to the number of fingers on our hands. 10 years. 10,000 hours. I'd be willing to bet my granny's dentures that if we had eight fingers on each hand those numbers would be 16 years and 65536 hours (well, I mean it would still be 10 and 10,000 but you know what I mean). Also, did you know that in many cul…
After reading Outliers I think of 10000 hours as approximately five years of full-time work, which is a much easier quantity to think about.
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#54(2001) should be added to the title on HN. It is quite interesting to see things just get reposted again and again.
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#55When I was learning how to program, I asked the friend who was teaching me the rudiments "How long does it take to learn how to code?" He replied "Eight hours." "Eight hours?" "Yep, eight hours, every day. It's pretty much just like driving a bus. The hard part is keeping your ass in the seat." Fifteen years and a master's degree later, his advice remains remarkably accurate.
A more appropriate title to the post might be "Become an expert programmer in 10 years."
We seem to focus on the poles: no coding skills vs. expert coding skills. You can teach yourself to code in less than 10 years, you just might not be an expert.
The "learn to code" debate might be more productive if we allowed for definitions of competency at the stages leading up to expert. The post does a good job of defining the characteristics of expert competency. What does it mean to be an intermediate? How many hours should you expect to invest to get there?
In most domains, the learning curve ramps up sharply for the first few years and then plains off for a longer period. For example, you might move up 80% of the learning curve in 3 years with an intense effort, but the remaining 20% of the journey might take 7 additional years ... or a life time.
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#56I'd like to meet the person who would buy a book titled "Teach yourself computer programming in 10 years."
How about "Learn Python the Hard Way"?
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#57Isn't it odd and curious and such like that the chunks of time bandied about are units of ten? Coincidentally equal to the number of fingers on our hands. 10 years. 10,000 hours. I'd be willing to bet my granny's dentures that if we had eight fingers on each hand those numbers would be 16 years and 65536 hours (well, I mean it would still be 10 and 10,000 but you know what I mean). Also, did you know that in many cul…
Imprecision (one significant digit) + Benford's law (most numbers start with 1) means most numbers needing citation are of the form 10^n. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law
Interestingly, this would be true even if we had 8 fingers per hand. If we had 16 total fingers, 16 (base 10) would be written as "10" (base 16). 15 (base 10) would be a one digit number in base 16.
On the other hand, you'd rather have six fingers. Base 12 would be great because it has whole thirds! Also 12 is divisible by four numbers (2, 3, 4, and 6). 10 is divisible only by only 2 and 5, and fifths are much less common than thirds.
That's why 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard is a nice way to measure things (though the rest of the imperial system, excepting maybe Fahrenheit, has no excuse!)
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#58Isn't it odd and curious and such like that the chunks of time bandied about are units of ten? Coincidentally equal to the number of fingers on our hands. 10 years. 10,000 hours. I'd be willing to bet my granny's dentures that if we had eight fingers on each hand those numbers would be 16 years and 65536 hours (well, I mean it would still be 10 and 10,000 but you know what I mean). Also, did you know that in many cul…
After reading Outliers I think of 10000 hours as approximately five years of full-time work, which is a much easier quantity to think about.
Such a rule-of-thumb needs a crucial caveat (said by others better than I'll say it here): You need N years of steadily, deliberately advancing full-time work.
There's a fundamental difference between gaining 10 years of experience, and gaining 1 year of experience 10 times.
It's harder than one might think to sustain continual real advancement over such a period; generally the employer paying the bills needs us to occasionally "take one for the team" and do scut-work for a while, simply due to normal business unpredictability; or the work dries up completely and you have a hiccup while you start somewhere new.
A source of work where opportunity continuously keeps up with ability is a precious thing.
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#59I think many want to learn so quickly because we need to run faster and faster just to stay in place within the technology fields....just look at all the new things we see on hacker news each day
Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
#60Relevant Marcus Aurelias quote: "Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it w…
Can't even begin to think how much I agree with this. It kind of reminds me of another great quote:
"Everyone on this planet is given the same 24 hours in the day. The question is: what do you choose to do with yours?” - Anno Sensei