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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#191

Post by zozbot234 »

miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

I wonder who's going to write the "Teach yourself Rust from scratch in 21 days" book. If C and even C++ can be learnt effectively as a first programming language, there's little reason why Rust couldn't be. And if not Rust, maybe Golang could play that role.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#192

Post by AidanSW »

ipaddr wrote: post #119
AidanSW wrote: post #118

Just doing something for 10 years doesn't make you an expert, I started coding 11 years ago- as a kid. But my knowledge became so diffuse across topics I was interested in that I never really became an expert in any of it.

You became an expert in learning a variety of topics

Maybe, or maybe I became used to and ossified in bad strategies. I hope not, but I think I have learned that learning has to be intentional. Meaning for me, writing stuff down, trying to find out other solutions to the same problem rather than just going with whatever my first idea is, etc.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#193

Post by paulddraper »

hinkley wrote: post #163
miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

I miss CompUSA. I still firmly believe that the move to transparent bags is what killed them. For me it ruined my annual tradition of buying Christmas presents while family was next door in another store, but I’m sure for others it was being treated like a criminal. Those magnetic readers aren’t great but they aren’t in your face. Once I stopped going in routinely I stopped going in at all.

Really? It hasn't killed Costco yet.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#194

Post by AidanSW »

RyanOD wrote: post #133
AidanSW wrote: post #118

Just doing something for 10 years doesn't make you an expert, I started coding 11 years ago- as a kid. But my knowledge became so diffuse across topics I was interested in that I never really became an expert in any of it.

This is the story of my life. I know a little about pretty much every topic ever.

Yeah, it's nice feeling like I have a foundation in enough topics that I actually feel like I would know vaguely where to start looking to solve most problems. Definitely not an expert though.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#195

Post by paulpauper »

arp242 wrote: post #139

24 hours? Oceans of time! I had "Teach Yourself C++ in 10 minutes". I had done some MSX-BASIC, but after we got a "real" PC I wanted to learn a "real" and modern language. This is what they had at the local bookshop. The "10 minutes" is done by explaining what C++ is and then it declares "there, in the last 10 minutes I explained things and you now know what C++ is". Ehh... I didn't understand a lot of it. Chapter 5…

Teach yourself in one minute: copy paste the "hello world" example from wikipedia

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#196

Post by sn9 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #191
miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

I wonder who's going to write the "Teach yourself Rust from scratch in 21 days" book. If C and even C++ can be learnt effectively as a first programming language, there's little reason why Rust couldn't be. And if not Rust, maybe Golang could play that role.

The Rust book is basically that. An hour per day would probably get you through it in good time.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#198

Post by itronitron »

miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

Unfortunately "The C Programming Language" has enough typographical errors in it to seriously undermine it's utility as a book with which to learn programming.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#199

Post by noneeeed »

miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

One of the hills on which I am prepared to die on is that "The C Programming Language" is the best programming language book I've ever read. Every developer should read it and learn C at least once, even if they promptly forgot it all.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#200

Post by mentos »

miiiiiike wrote: post #155

I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA in 1999. The guy at the checkout looked at it, laughed, and told me about this article. When I was 16 I was looking at programming books at Borders and a guy handed me a copy of "The C Programming Language"; changed my life. So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world. Th…

For me it was "Visual Basic Professional 3.0 Programming by Thomas W. Torgerson" from Barnes and Nobles in 1997. I had downloaded Visual Basic 3.0 from 100 different email attachments on AOL and wanted to learn how to make punters/progs.

I remember transcribing code from the book to attempt to play a sound file when my program opened. I remember being stunned when it actually worked!

What an honor it has been to make a career in software development since.

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