Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#11

Post by joelmaat » Tue, May 07, 2013, 12:53 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #10

joelmaat wrote: post #9

Proficient vs. perfect? One summer. Then another one to round it all out. Which sucked, because I spent the next few years having the life beaten out of me by others that were jealous or thought what I did was impossible. The backward point of view of most people and their attitude of negativity and jealousy toward anyone that's good at what they do is maddening. I'm sick of being around idiots. Now, it's likely I'm…

Are you saying that the people around you made being smart a bad thing and also are responsible for you to regress from a genius developer to an average one?

My regress to an average (or worse) developer did happen all at once, but I guess I'd say yes, because it was due to this same reason (jealousy/BS). Before "the event," many constantly did everything to get in my way and this slowed my progress down considerably. Years ago, I was on the cutting edge nearing greatness, but this BS eliminated any chance of me actually achieving that.

Also in there is my tendency to procrastinate, which also slowed me down, but I don't procrastinate much when it comes to writing code and working.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#12

Post by LarryMade2 » Tue, May 07, 2013, 1:52 PM UTC

phaus wrote: post #4

keenahn wrote: post #2

A month to get started, years to master (and most never will master).

Two questions, if you don't mind. Do you program at work? When you say it took a month to get started, were you creating anything more complex than a simple command line program that does basic math or prints strings? The reason I ask is because I haven't had much of a problem understanding the syntax of any language or figuring out fizz buzz or other simple tutorials, but I still struggle to create things that someo…

"...but I still struggle to create things that someone might actually want to use."

There, that's one of the problems programmers have to get over. Don't always try to create things that people might actually use, make up stupid stuff. Fiddle around try out silly ideas, proficient is partly having experience in coding a lot.

Doing different stuff, though maybe useless to the rest of the world, helps build style and practices creating better code. And at times though that you develop new ideas an methods for doing things.

So you got a nice no-content site, can you expand on it no-content-ness, make it a great... no.. an utterly fantastic no-content site? (then again, there are a ton of no-content sites you would be competing with :-)

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#13

Post by chc » Tue, May 07, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

orangethirty wrote: post #6

In which language?

Whichever language you were using when you became a proficient programmer, one would assume.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#14

Post by throwaway-xxx » Wed, May 08, 2013, 1:37 AM UTC

I am an Indian developer. I read somewhere that average IQ of the Indian population is 80. So my IQ is probably 80. How long will it take me to become a ninja/rock star programmer. I want to make a plan for becoming an expert.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#15

Post by onlyup » Wed, May 08, 2013, 6:59 PM UTC

I'd say a few years.. but probably because that is the way the learning was structured. I learnt in college.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#16

Post by madlee » Thu, May 09, 2013, 4:25 PM UTC

dirktheman wrote: post #7

Full time? The amount of hours? I've been writing code for almost 10 years now, but I don't code full time. It also depends what your definition of 'proficient' is. I can build anything I can think of, but compared to most professional programmers here I feel like I barely scratched the surface of software development. In his book 'Outliers' Malcolm Gladwell states that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to get really goo…

I think the 10,000 hour rules is a good rule of thumb, but it of course also depends on the kind of programming you are doing during that time. But assuming you are doing a variety of things and actively trying to expand your skill set, and assuming you code an average of 2000 hours a year, it should take about 5 years to become proficient.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer?

#17

Post by dominic_cocch » Thu, May 09, 2013, 8:15 PM UTC

You can learn to make a "Hello World" program in almost any language within hours, but it will probably take a few months before you can write something useful without any outside help.

I started with C# and it took me about 5 months to feel like I could do anything worth while. I've picked up JavaScript and Python since. For me, working 40 - 50 hours per week on the language I was learning, it took about 2 years to feel like I could make something someone else would use.

My learning has slowed with time, as I imagine there's less to learn, but I never feel perfect. I hope I never do, because learning to program has been incredibly rewarding and fun. Once I get tired of a language or my learning slows too much, I find another to play with.