"Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" by Peter Norvig http://norvig.com/21-days.html
10 years to 'expert'. Far less for 'competent'.
Ask HN: Amount of time needed to become a competent programmer?
11–15 of 15 posts
Re: Ask HN: Amount of time needed to become a competent programmer?
#12Programming is an art, the more you practice, the better you get. The amount of time required is totally subjective, but you need to have worked on a couple of projects before you can call yourself an experienced programmer. You can read hundred different programming books but none of the theory books will teach you more than just the syntax of the language/ programming paradigm. There is a huge difference between th…
>You can read hundred different programming books but none of the theory books will teach you more than just the syntax of the language/ programming paradigm.
Huh? That's not true. I wouldn't call a book that teaches you a programming language a programming book. Art of Computer Programming is a programming book, and I guarantee that you'll learn more than just a programming language from it. Or Introduction to Algorithms. Or books about operating systems, or computer graphics. These are all programming books.
Re: Ask HN: Amount of time needed to become a competent programmer?
#13I've been programming iOS/Obj-c for about 3 years. I was shipping apps after the first few months. I had income in the first year. The income wasn't particularily easy, I was very strategic about the types of apps I created. I was also lucky to rank well on some keywords.
As for Swift vs Obj-C, I don't know if theres enough resources for swift yet. Also most libraries/open source stuff will probably be Obj-c.
Re: Ask HN: Amount of time needed to become a competent programmer?
#14Programming is an art, the more you practice, the better you get. The amount of time required is totally subjective, but you need to have worked on a couple of projects before you can call yourself an experienced programmer. You can read hundred different programming books but none of the theory books will teach you more than just the syntax of the language/ programming paradigm. There is a huge difference between th…
>You can read hundred different programming books but none of the theory books will teach you more than just the syntax of the language/ programming paradigm. Huh? That's not true. I wouldn't call a book that teaches you a programming language a programming book. Art of Computer Programming is a programming book, and I guarantee that you'll learn more than just a programming language from it. Or Introduction to Algor…
Okay then don't call them a programming book, call them a language book.
What I had meant to say was that just reading a python book won't make you a programmer, it goes in the same way about any other definition of programming books you may call, one has to practice to gain perfection regardless of which books are called programming ones and which ones aren't.
Re: Ask HN: Amount of time needed to become a competent programmer?
#15To address your Swift question, please don't try to learn Swift. It is not worth it, at least not at first. The main thing that matters (is difficult to learn) is the Cocoa Touch library, which was made with Objective-C for Objective-C. So, if you try to start with Swift it will be much more difficult. Once you're comfortable with Cocoa Touch you can decide whether you want to look at Swift or not. You'll be fine learning Objective-C.