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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

norvig.com

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#231

Post by williamcotton »

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 had my dad buy me a copy of Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours at a CompUSA and wouldn't you know, it was true! I had https://web.archive.org/web/19970415190140/http://www2.rpa.n... up and running in no time!

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#232

Post by wizzwizz4 »

bsdpufferfish wrote: post #219
NoraCodes wrote: post #96

> Why is everyone in such a rush? Because we live under an economic system that says you must produce value for capital or die. This is all very good advice. AND, I think we would have many fewer bad programmers and many more good ones if fewer Knuths were spending eight to ten hours a day mopping floors at fast food restaurants for $7.25 an hour, or writing garbage JavaScript for fly-by-night startups for $65,000 a…

> you must produce value for capital or die. Can you name any social structure in which this is not true? Even medieval monks who are participating in a completely different society have to do the chores. > Knuths were spending eight to ten hours a day mopping floors I don't believe this happens and I know quite a few eccentric and unsocial smart people. Much more likely is them to spend the next 10 years at a relati…

> and I know quite a few eccentric and unsocial smart people.

Selection bias. People who have been able to distinguish themselves as “smart” are already a narrow sample, as the results of many UBI initiatives suggest.

> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. — Stephen Jay Gould

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#233

Post by nullhole »

williamcotton wrote: post #231
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 had my dad buy me a copy of Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours at a CompUSA and wouldn't you know, it was true! I had https://web.archive.org/web/19970415190140/http://www2.rpa.n... up and running in no time!

Looks great! Reminds me of some of my early classics!

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#234

Post by Nevermark »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #218
Nevermark wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything, man. Everything. From the perspective of pulling some C++ programmer in 1993 into 2024, and dropping them into a large C++ code base consistently written with the latest C++ idioms. (And yes, this is humorous exaggeration. But the name of C++ is apt. A C language dedicated to accumulating features.)

It's a pre-increment operator. If it was called ++C you'd have a point :) I just don't understand how someone could have been working in C++ and not picked up the largest changes even just by osmosis. My code-based "upgraded" to C++11 about a year ago, but I can still read C++17 and am not intimidated by C++20 fragments. YMMV I suppose.

++C = Every time you go to write new code, some new features have already been adopted that you need to get hip with.

C++ = Every time you look at old code, it is already out of date based on new features that were adopted after the code was written.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#235

Post by analog31 »

jeremyloy_wt wrote: post #105
freedmand wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how people’s learning habits will change with AI tools like GitHub Copilot. I used it for several months but randomly got logged out and am now finding myself valuing the slight inconvenience of looking up official documentation (and surprised how much more sluggish I felt for the first week). Going through extra steps to learn something through primary sources and valuing being uncomfortable at times are im…

I personally think learning how to use ChatGPT and the like IS going out of the comfort zone. To make an analogy to music, I see it like brass players at the advent of the valve. It’s a new way of playing the instrument. The old ways and new ways aren’t congruent in all ways, but the new way does seem to have a higher skill ceiling

This has been the case for me. I know that I will have to force myself to use AI, because at present it slows me down.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#236

Post by rudasn »

tempodox wrote: post #157

Yep, thats a reasonable time horizon. After 10 years you can call yourself a seasoned beginner.

I'm self taught, started with IRC bots in tcl in late 90s and making websites with netscape and frontpage in early 00s. Dreamworks and Fireworks too. Got business degrees by mid 00s, but making things with code kept me going.

Got a US remote job early 10s (I'm in the EU), and by mid 10s I was called "software engineer" by my peers and bosses.

I have just fairly recently upgraded my LinkedIn bio from "Web developer" to "software developer", as I can't even call myself an engineer.

Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing other than making a real effort not to do stupid shit (and RTFM).

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#237

Post by julesallen »

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…

Love reading the comments here and how these books changed lives.

For me it was dBASE III PLUS programmer's reference guide from 1987 and it imparted enough knowledge to start a programming career. Read that dog eared thing end to end and still have it in my book collection.

Thank you, Alan Simpson wherever you might be.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#238

Post by growingkittens »

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…

> So much of my career has been shaped by running into developers or just people interested in programming out in the world.

This is probably less common now, but remember not to laugh at young girls in the programming section of a bookstore. In the 90s, that was a pretty standard response: no advice, just incredulity.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#239

Post by ska »

pants2 wrote: post #203
ska wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 10,000 hour heuristic isn't particularly accurate, it's just popular. FWIW, 10 years professional experience seems to be about right, give or take, to make a solid developer. I don't think I've ever met anyone who really got there in 5. Some people shave a few years off by having done it obsessively as a teen also, but at some point that typically overlaps anyway. Of course there is also the old saw about 1 year,…

I have a little over ten years experience, and when I read code that I wrote at 1-2 YoE it's shamefully bad, but after that it starts to get pretty good. I don't think anyone would notice a huge change between my code 5 years ago and today. I've moreso improved on soft skills. Though it probably helped that I had two mentors at a job 2 years in who were ruthless about reviewing my code.

> I've moreso improved on soft skills.

Which, among other things, are also vital.

Oversimplified: 1-2 years of not knowing what you don't know. Then 3-5 learning how to write code, then 3-5 learning how to really write software. Most of that last learning curve happens outside the editor. That's a little to linear and non-overlapping, but the essence is true I suspect.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#240

Post by sandyarmstrong »

janchorowski wrote: post #5
ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the page: Peter Norvig (Copyright 2001—2014)

Originally from 1998: https://web.archive.org/web/19980206223800/https://norvig.co... I didn't want to mislead with a newer date. Sorry if it confuses you.

I had no idea it was originally talking about a Pascal book, thanks for the link! Fun to read old versions and see what changed over time (language recommendations, for example).
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