Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 128 posts

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

#111

Post by zachlatta »

I started back in the third grade, when I was 7. I, like many of my friends, played Club Penguin. I wanted to make a website dedicated to Club Penguin, so I taught myself HTML (and eventually CSS) and hacked something together. That soon led to the introduction of JavaScript and eventually C++ and Java. My parents weren't huge fans of computers, so they severely limited my access to computers, limiting my ability to learn at the time.

I taught myself Objective-C in the 6th grade after I bought my first laptop with money I made from doing contract web development work for local businesses. I made a few simple iPhone apps and and started to appreciate the beauty more than before.

In the 8th grade I started to find school severely lacking and enrolled as a computer science major at a local community college. The courses weren't great, but I learned how to get through a textbook, which I've learned to appreciate.

I got my first proper job at a small (3 person) startup when I was 15. I'm still at this job and have loved every moment of it. We're set to ship our first product sometime next week.

Answers to your specific questions:

* How did you learn to code?

Coding, running into an issue, fixing it, repeat. Books. MIT OpenCourseWare. Community college. And some MOOCs.

* When did you start learning?

Back in the 3rd grade, when I was 7.

* At what point did you start working professionally?

I started doing contract work in either the 4th or 5th grade. Got my first full-time job at 15.

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

#112

Post by stevekemp »

angularly wrote: post #28
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #18

My parents bought me one of these when I was in basic school: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum I was happy playing games for a few weeks and then it broke. It took one month to fix, so meanwhile I was left with the BASIC manual it came with. I read it to withstand the cravings and when I got the computer back I was already more interested in coding than playing games.

I started with a ZX81 around age 12, one or two models before Spectrum. It didn't have any games, but making games was a big motivation for me when getting it. Hell it didn't even have a tape station or any way to store your programs. So I would turn it on and type in some basic code from various computer magazines - usually some simple game - which would then be lost as soon as the computer was turned off again. It…

I got hooked on programming because the ZX Spectrum 48k my parents bought the family, at age about 12, came with a broken tape deck.

Instead of playing any of the bundled 12(?) games we had to wait for shops to open to get the drive swapped, and instead I read the thoroughly comprehensive manuals. Initially playing in BASIC, then later hand-assembling via the opcode table at the back of the book.

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

#113

Post by S4M »

crntaylor wrote: post #13

I'm self-taught and a relatively late starter. I've also never studied computer science in a formal setting (i.e. at a university). I started programming when I was studying for a PhD (in mathematics) around 2006-07. I was 23 at the time. That was mainly in Matlab and Fortran. My code from those 3-4 years is, frankly, pretty horrifying. When I got my first job in industry (quant at an investment bank in 2010) I had t…

I'm in the same situation as yours, except that I quit finance to work in data science, and I taught myself some basic javascript/html.

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

#114

Post by fredsanford »

I am almost completely self taught.

In 1988 after a back injury knocked me out of construction work, I started with 16bit intel assembly language on an old XT. I was guided by listings from Byte and Dr. Dobbs magazine and the fine folks on FidoNet and RIME/Relaynet. I eventually learned C, tried qbasic and turbo pascal and eventually settled on C++.

I was initially driven by the desire to write a game similar to the first NES Zelda game, but for multiple people. I got it somewhat working so 2 computers could play with stick figures over a serial or parallel cable. My lack or art skills torpedoed it, but... It was what kept the fire burning for almost 2 years.

I eventually learned Perl (to help out a friend of a friend with his business web site), Python (again for a FoaF), Rexx, shell scripting, awk and a few others that coincided with a move to Linux in the late 90s when OS/2 died. The draw of games kept me in Windows machines from 3.0 to Win7...

If not for Joseph Carnage, Jerry Coffin, Bob Stout, Doug Azzarito and the others on the BBSs, I would not be what I am today. Almost all gave their time selflessly in helping me learn to think and function as a professional programmer.

25ish years later, I'm still doing things in Python and C++ and trying to wrap my head around Haskell along with various and sundry things that fall in my lap and need doing. :)

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

#115

Post by FennNaten »

1/ At first I learned by self-teaching thanks to books and thanks to the great resources available on the internet. Mostly web development. When I decided to go professional, I attended a 8 month training with .Net followed by a 4 month internship, to be sure that my skills were compliant with what the market needed.

2/Grew up in the countryside, without access to computers. So I'm a late bloomer: I started programming around my 20, while doing a degree in biology. Enjoyed it so much that I first thought about doing a mixed cursus, then completely put aside my degree.

3/Started to program professionally 4/5 years after having written my first line of code (did some short internships and some programming for friends before that, but I consider it to be professional programming only from the point when I joined a company).

I've now been working for three years, still learning in the background to grab a maximum amount of software engineer and CS skills. Been promoted recently to team lead.

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

#116

Post by vicaya »

stiff wrote: post #78

If you are serious about programming and have any possibility of doing this at all, by all means get a CS degree at the best university you can access. I have worked with or interviewed a few programmers without any university degree and time and time again their confidence in how getting a degree is a total waste of time was directly proportional to their ignorance of basic facts from various areas of CS and inabili…

"by this point as a recruiter I would just not hire a person without a degree"

While the variability of self-taught is higher than those with a CS degree, there are plenty of self-taught (without CS degree) software engineers who rise to the top of hard core software engineering companies (e.g. Microsoft, Facebook, VMware etc.), besides high-profile college drop-outs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

I suspect that your recruiter position expose you to lower than average quality candidates, as most good engineers never needed a recruiter -- they are simply referred by their friends and colleagues.

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

#117

Post by ekm2 »

vicaya wrote: post #116
stiff wrote: post #78

If you are serious about programming and have any possibility of doing this at all, by all means get a CS degree at the best university you can access. I have worked with or interviewed a few programmers without any university degree and time and time again their confidence in how getting a degree is a total waste of time was directly proportional to their ignorance of basic facts from various areas of CS and inabili…

"by this point as a recruiter I would just not hire a person without a degree" While the variability of self-taught is higher than those with a CS degree, there are plenty of self-taught (without CS degree) software engineers who rise to the top of hard core software engineering companies (e.g. Microsoft, Facebook, VMware etc.), besides high-profile college drop-outs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. I suspect tha…

While the variability of self-taught is higher than those with a CS degree, there are plenty of self-taught (without CS degree) software engineers who rise to the top of hard core software engineering companies (e.g. Microsoft, Facebook, VMware etc.), besides high-profile college drop-outs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

I am not sure if Mark Zuckerberg can be described as self taught,especially if you consider his high school's CS curriculum.

http://www.exeter.edu/documents/COI/COI_Final_2013_14.pdf#pa...

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

#118

Post by ixacto »

Self-taught here. I started with a intro to CS text in java then oracle's java reference book. If you really want to learn programming these books will help though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming

and

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

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

#119

Post by dzink »

Started in a rural town in eastern europe in 1998 when the internet first came to town. Didn't even have a computer of my own. Just figured if I could make things that the world can see from the middle of nowhere and with no money at age 13, nothing could beat that.(I'd seen censorship in my country so that was a big selling point)

Volunteered at internet cafes, so I could use their machines at night and learn html/css/js via the web (no software required). Started a web dev business soon after and ran that for 5 years before coming to the US. There was no school for this kind of stuff anywhere nearby and I was too young to go to college in my country so there you have it. I got my CS degree in the US years later.

In reality most CS programs can't teach you even a quarter of what you need to know to be a great developer. Tech moves too fast to be teachable. The best just learn faster, and dig deeper than the rest on their own via web communities, head-to-wall action, and resources available to everyone.

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

#120

Post by phaus »

stiff wrote: post #78

If you are serious about programming and have any possibility of doing this at all, by all means get a CS degree at the best university you can access. I have worked with or interviewed a few programmers without any university degree and time and time again their confidence in how getting a degree is a total waste of time was directly proportional to their ignorance of basic facts from various areas of CS and inabili…

Both links to Amazon go to the same book. What was the other book that you were suggesting?
Post reply on HN