Ask HN: How many "self-taught" programmers and how did you do it?

1) Self taught. Books, mags, studying code others wrote.

2) In 1972 the community college near me had public accounts available to any person who walked in off the street and said they wanted one. Learned APL from a used textbook.

3) Was working a comm tech at a finance company (also self-taught btw) and started using computers + code I wrote to solve problems at work. Had been coding for fun at home on Apple ][, C/PM and Mac. Figured I could be coding for a living, so left and found work programming. Been doing it professionally since 1987.

I know I'm going to get some backlash for this comment so hold on to your hats. By going for a degree you're going to the route most often travelled by most developers, you'll spend three or four years trampling over territory frequently covered and thoroughly documented, you may be required to specific materials and use specific languages. Three to four years is a long time and during that time many things may have happenned in the IT industry, you may also find that your enthusiasm might have dwindled somewhat. And then you'll be faced with the biggest dilemma...

How do I get a job?

Sure, having a degree might add some weight to your CV/Resume but it will not have the same weight as three to four years of experience in a skillset that is modern and relevant.

The problem with the approach of avoiding the degree route is what some might see as a lack of depth/insight into computer science. And that really all depends on what career you want. If you want to build mobile Apps and Websites then you probably don't need the in depth computer science knowledge. On the flipside, if you want to get into games programming or device driver programming or programming of computationally intensive tasks then you need to know that computer science stuff.

People here might say that the computer science you'll learn from a degree is invaluable, but honestly it's mostly boring junk that most people sat in an lecture hall of three-hundred people will struggle to get through because of the tediosity of it's presentation. In educational institutes you (the student) are expected to go out and seek the answers to the lecturers questions - makes sense right? But you're doing the work there, and most of the time students don't know why they need to know what's been asked of them.

A few final points: most of the self-taught programmers I've known have been head-and-shoulders above their CS counterparts. They have had an insatiable appetite to learn and most have learned from a young age.

I started programming at a very young age, and actually wanted to study Physics at University because I was slightly tired of computer programming by that age... little did I know I was going to make a career out of it.

The older I get, the more I agree with your point. That's why I'm planning to complete a bachelors degree in CS, IT, or CE. It does make a difference.

1) my father taught me to code in BASIC, some programmign classes in the college; then books, internet, rtfm, coding for myself (in the beginning) and coding as a paid job 2) when I was 12, in 1985 on a 48kb home-computer hooked to the TV-set 3) quite early

I'm a self-taught programmer. When I was 8 I would check out BASIC books from my school library and type them into our Apple IIe during recess. My parent's got me a programmable graphing calculator with BASIC to encourage me, and I was married to it for a few years.

Later my parents got a 486 and I got into the wide world of DOS/W3.11 gaming.

In high school I learned how to build computers and install linux. I bought C++ Primer Plus but I never made it past Chapter 4 or so. C++ was way too complex for me. I drifted away from programming.

When I was about 27, I got a job as an entry level Linux sysadmin and built all sorts of systems. I touched a lot of code and changed and wrote all kinds of scripts, rekindling my interest in programming. After I got canned, I ditched administration and poured my efforts into web development.

I impressed a web design freelancer enough to get him to use me on his bigger projects. We were going to start a business together but I got cold feet and pulled out. I've been bouncing around different web development jobs ever since.

I don't see much value in Computer Science and don't personally value such degrees very much. It might become useful to me at some point but every time I start to look at CS course work, my eyes glaze over and I want to just go build something. So much of it seems to just boil down to "be careful what you put in your loops".

What's going to get you jobs is being able to do stuff. Knowledge is secondary to action. Get out and do stuff. What's going to allow you to retain your sanity is knowing how to do stuff without adding unnecessary complexity. So go over every project and do a post-mortem, buying books to shore up your understanding.

You don't need someone to teach you how to program. You just need the drive to teach yourself.