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

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

norvig.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 323 posts

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#11

Post by forgetfreeman »

bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

You're most likely getting downvoted because the modern lets-hot-glue-a-bunch-of-dependencies-together approach notwithstanding programming has gotten significantly more complex over the years. Can you muddle through with youtube videos and SO? Sure, if you want the career equivalent of staggering around in the dark stepping on rakes.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#12

Post by tester457 »

bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

You're downvoted but learning material has improved a lot since then. Spaced repetition + today's resources should remove a couple years from the 10.

People can even practice programming on their phone with termux. Anyone can program anytime instead of having to wait to use the family computer for just an hour like back in the day. It's so easy to get mileage in.

The complexity of frameworks has increased, but the fundamentals haven't changed and the learning material on the fundamentals is more available and free.

This medium article[1] argues there is a decline of genius.

> I think the most depressing fact about humanity is that during the 2000s most of the world was handed essentially free access to the entirety of knowledge and that didn’t trigger a golden age.

But I believe we are in a golden age, innovations are made every year, life keeps getting better. Change is so frequent that it has become mundane and we don't appreciate it.

Many people are taking advantage of the quality of learning resources, and it's speeding up the development of everything.

[1] https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopped-mak...

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#13

Post by teaearlgraycold »

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path.

Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#15

Post by yonaguska »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #13

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path. Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

The only people I've seen do the bootcamps with success were already very smart and/or coming from technical or heavy math backgrounds.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#16

Post by sonabinu »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #2

Great article. At 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week - 10,000 hours of practice will take 250 work weeks to achieve. That’s about 5 years of nearly non-stop programming. Realistically, it takes closer to 10 years to achieve that goal.

This is true in any profession. Building intuition comes from doing more and more with incrementally difficult challenges. There comes a point at which one can make connections and apply what you know from one area into another, and creativity kicks in.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#17

Post by skeeter2020 »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #13

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path. Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

Haven't done one, but have hired out of them. Limited data conclusion: just like traditionally trained developers it's hit or miss. Best results: some other "classic training" (like physics or chemistry or engineering) with a desired career change == advanced junior with an accelerated learning curve. If you want to add motivated newbies to the parts of your software where pure programming is not as critical they can be great hires; the standard deviation is huge, but not sure if it's any larger than say a 2-yr diploma grad.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#18

Post by jebarker »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #11
bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

You're most likely getting downvoted because the modern lets-hot-glue-a-bunch-of-dependencies-together approach notwithstanding programming has gotten significantly more complex over the years. Can you muddle through with youtube videos and SO? Sure, if you want the career equivalent of staggering around in the dark stepping on rakes.

Exactly. The newer teaching materials and resources are great, but they don't change the advice in the article about how to learn programming. In fact, they might make it harder in some ways because of the temptation to take shortcuts.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#19

Post by skeeter2020 »

yonaguska wrote: post #15
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #13

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path. Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

The only people I've seen do the bootcamps with success were already very smart and/or coming from technical or heavy math backgrounds.

Glad to see at least another perspective more or less echo my experiences/observations. You can't discount motivation, and bootcamps are filled with either those chomping to learn and explore, or those looking for the next goldrush. Adding to the challenge of differentiating is sometimes they are the same person.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#20

Post by wild_egg »

ricardo81 wrote: post #10

I can't source the video that I watched 5-6 years ago [0] but it made a point about the increasing numbers of programmers and how the majority had less than 5 years of experience. It made sense in the context of IT/web continually having a larger involvement in our lives. [0] https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc?si=A4qBR2YdX-0CV2bM thanks to comment by wild_egg Can safely say after 20 years that there's maybe a bunch of info…

> I can't source the video that I watched 5-6 years ago but it made a point about the increasing numbers of programmers and how the majority had less than 5 years of experience

I believe that was in this Bob Martin talk — The Future of Programming

https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc?si=A4qBR2YdX-0CV2bM

Post reply on HN