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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#221

Post by heads »

calibas wrote: post #28

> The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. I think this is the really important part, you have to challenge yourself and go outside of your comfort zones to keep learning.

Nothing beats that feeling of starting the day thinking “I have no idea at all how to do this” and finishing the day with a proof of concept for 80% of the system.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#222

Post by ozim »

tombert wrote: post #188
bluedino wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA Some of those books were laughably bad. But thing I miss from back then, was the feeling that the book was going to be the key to getting you started writing whatever crazy idea you had for a program in your head. I think the last time I had that feeling was walking out of Microcenter with a new MacBook and an iPod Touch, ready to make the next…

I actually didn't think that the Sams books were so bad, albeit a bit misleading if you think you're really gonna grok C or C++ in 24 hours. I learned C first in high school because I found a pirated copy of "Learn C in 24 Hours" online, and I actually felt that they did a reasonably good job getting me started, though if I recall correctly some of their examples with pointers and memory management were actually inco…

For me that is a nice discussion on its own - for me there’s multiple levels of knowing X - so anything,

Yes in 24h you are not going to learn enough to contribute to Linux kernel - but also will be ahead of something like 80% of general population.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#223

Post by layer8 »

itronitron wrote: post #198
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.

The first edition maybe?

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#224

Post by miiiiiike »

esafak wrote: post #215
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…

Wow, what a checkout guy!

He also had a bunch of thoughts on the CD burner I was buying.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#225

Post by neilv »

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.

The CompUSA that opened in Cambridge, MA, had a guard who insisted on checking your purchases after the registers, like you were a criminal, or implying it was a crime-heavy area.

Not the kind of insult or atmosphere anyone should have to put up with, and, further, the generally affluent people of Harvard and MIT, which the store was located right between, weren't accustomed to it.

I called this out in 2000, when I made Web page about assembling PCs, during the rise of Web ecommerce retail. https://www.neilvandyke.org/cheap-pc-2000/

> I actually spent a lot of time checking out the local vendors, but was generally dissatisfied, and used them only as a last resort. If you're in Cambridge, MA, USA, some vendors I looked at: PCs for Everyone (informative Web site, but long waits at their showroom, and they didn't have a floppy drive after I'd waited 30 minutes), MicroCenter (large superstore, mailorder generally has better prices, didn't have advertised CD-RW drives in stock, the three of the four things I bought there were somehow defective), BestBuy (very poor component selection, guards at the entryways), and CompUSA (smaller version of MicroCenter, guard at front door insists upon comparing every shopper's purchases to their receipt as they leave). So much for brick&mortar service.

> UPDATE 2018-12-10: MicroCenter brick&mortar has risen to the challenge, and is now my overall favorite source for PC parts.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#226

Post by gwill »

UltimateEdge wrote: post #51
gwill wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been programming professionally for 8 years now and came out of a bootcamp. I had taken some programming courses in high school and college for fun but my knowledge was very limited. The bootcamp stayed true to the name. Core hours were 9-5 but many of us would get in early (usually 7am) and leave late (sometimes 10pm). I would also go in on weekends, sometimes taking Sunday off. I intentionally went to one in a…

Did your peers in the bootcamp have a similar experience?

It differed quite a bit. There were a handful that put in the same effort as I did and the few I've kept contact with are doing quite well. I'd say that just over half of the students stuck to core hours and most of them didn't make it through the bootcamp at all. I recall that many of those that stuck to core hours and graduated had some programming knowledge already or were exceptionally smart.

About a quarter of those that graduated in my cohort are in the IT field, but are project managers or something similar.

The bootcamp was in 3 phases and you had 2 chances to test out of a phase or you'd be kicked out. Of my starting cohort of 16 people, 12 of us completed the bootcamp. Our cohort grew to 22 people though because there were people that had repeated phases to complete it.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#227

Post by miiiiiike »

bluedino wrote: post #185
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 bought a copy of "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" at a CompUSA Some of those books were laughably bad. But thing I miss from back then, was the feeling that the book was going to be the key to getting you started writing whatever crazy idea you had for a program in your head. I think the last time I had that feeling was walking out of Microcenter with a new MacBook and an iPod Touch, ready to make the next…

I know exactly what you mean. Felt like the world was opening up.

I don't know who it was, it might have been one of the guys my dad worked with, be they said "You won't be able to write a game with a book like that, but you might be able to write a phone directory." Didn't phase me.

I remember someone asking me later on if I was going to write a game. I just looked at them blankly and said: "I'm going to write a phone directory".

I just learned today that "Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours" was co-written by Jessee Liberty, one of my all-time favorite technical book writers. "Programming C#, 2nd Edition" was a great book.

I loved tech stores too. I still have all of the Apple pamphlets that CompUSA had sitting next to the display units.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#228

Post by [deleted] »

reactordev wrote: post #149
atticora wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. I've been coding for a living for 41 years and have a feeling I'll get the hang of it real soon now.

If only they would stop changing the rug out from under ya, am I right? Just when you finish with one API, they go and release a new one.

[deleted]

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#229

Post by nottorp »

jansommer wrote: post #178
nottorp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ChatGPT will give you the correct answer together with math examples. Actually, back in the days, google would have given you a tutorial with the correct answer together with examples too. You don't need LLMs for this, just honest search. But honest search is gone. I wonder how long till ChatGPT gets entshitified too...

Yes, Google isn't so good nowadays, or my problems have become sufficiently advanced to not be a quick search away. What might save us from ChatGPT enshittification are the freely available LLM's. Probably won't be long before we can have a code companion running locally. It's probably already here

> my problems have become sufficiently advanced

In my experience if you search for an advanced topic it's likely to drown you in beginner's tutorials for anything even remotely related.

My pet peeve is i do embedded linux on custom hardware, and every time i need to check something i'll be up to my neck on tutorials telling me how to enable, say, spi on a raspberry pi in user space. Even if I was explicitly searching for a totally different SoC and a recent reference for the kernel functions :)

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#230

Post by smburdick »

peterfirefly wrote: post #216
smburdick wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resent Gladwell to this day, possibly because I was assigned to read him in high school. He is quoted too much -- the 10,000 hours thing is just a meme at this point, for me anyway.

Not to mention the whole Igon Value Problem.

How can AI be unethical? There's eigen-values everywhere!
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