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What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

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Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

andywood wrote: post #32
jedsmith wrote: post #18

It's interesting that this question implied the negative -- not what's the difference between , not even what are the strengths and weaknesses of , but: > What pieces of the whole are missing? The implication being that without a formal CS education, it is an impossibility to obtain a whole. As if whole matters; how does one obtain whole , anyway? This is a very loaded question and perspective that betrays a serious…

I'm also saddened to see such a misguided stereotype on the front page here. It's damaging in the same way as the old question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" To my mind, this question, and the answers given, would only begin to make sense if it were phrased "What skills do people who are not interested in Computer Science commonly lack?" And pointers ? Really? That would make sense if the question was "What…

[deleted]

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#42

Post by cubicle67 »

pookie25 wrote: post #16
guelo wrote: post #8

My hypothesis is that a CS education would be most useful after you have already spent 5-10 years in industry. Unfortunately for most people life just isn't structured in a way to allow for full time education later in life.

self taught programmers lack talent and the ability to get accepted into a good CS program

one of the thing's I've learned is that the assumptions I make nearly always come back and bite me. I think that's what's happening to you here.

The assumption you appear to be making is that a self taught programmer is one who tries but fails to gain acceptance to a CS course, so then has to teach themselves.

I'd classify myself as self taught because I've been writing code since my pre-teen years in the 80's. I also did an engineering degree which helped give me a much better theoretical grounding

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#44

Post by andywood »

This category "self-taught programmers" is an insidious over-generalization. Used in this context, it seems intended to conjure the image of an undisciplined hack who learned how to cobble code together from an "In 21 Days" book.

This belies the fact that programming and computing have a long and rich tradition of attracting brilliant individuals who, despite taking alternative paths, still manage to go very deep by virtue of their own drives and all-consuming interests.

I've worked closely with many dozens of CS grads in my career. I haven't detected much correspondence between "has degree" and "knows what they are doing." I've seen an overwhelming correspondence between "is truly passionate about programming/computing topics" and "knows what they are doing."

I would have somewhat more sympathy for the dichotomy implied by this question, if all CS grads graduated at the top of their class from a very good CS school.

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#45

Post by jedsmith »

orijing wrote: post #11

There's a much wider range of ability among self-proclaimed self-taught programmers. Some may be "self-taught" to the level that they have completed and understood the entire Art of Computer Programming (those released already, anyway). Some may be "self-taught" to the level that they can write a couple for loops in PHP and Javascript. It's a hard question to answer because "self-taught" spans too wide a range of ski…

I agree with your point of view, but TAOCP isn't really a work to be completed, and I'm willing to wager that anybody who says they have completed it flipped through it and put it back on the shelf.

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#46

Post by aero142 »

bugsy wrote: post #37

There's a comment there where someone says you go to school to learn how to learn. Clearly self-taught programmers already have this part mastered. It leads me to wonder why we aren't asking, "What skills do school-taught programmers commonly lack?"

The most common I have seen is to obsess over code as an ends in itself. Writing pretty code when the solution doesn't really require it. The other is premature optimization, where all code must be fast, regardless of whether the problem requires it. These both lead to lacking a "get it done" attitude that I've seen in the self-taughts.

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#47

Post by andywood »

jedsmith wrote: post #35
andywood wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also saddened to see such a misguided stereotype on the front page here. It's damaging in the same way as the old question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" To my mind, this question, and the answers given, would only begin to make sense if it were phrased "What skills do people who are not interested in Computer Science commonly lack?" And pointers ? Really? That would make sense if the question was "What…

In fairness, once pointers clicked for me, a heaping pile of computing made sense. I banged my head on x86 assembly for a few weeks when I was 14, went back to C and got pointers, then reapproached assembly later and was delighted at how easily it fell into place. It's my personal belief that a firm grasp of C and any processor's assembly -- protected-mode Intel is a can of worms, there's easier architectures like AR…

I wasn't disagreeing with the importance of pointers at all. And I agree strongly that a firm grasp of C and assembly is extremely valuable. My disbelief was with the notion that self-taught programmers wouldn't understand pointers. I was saying that the only way you could get away without knowing pointers would be if you'd avoided programming in asm/C/C++/etc.

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#48

Post by jedsmith »

danilocampos wrote: post #34
[deleted] wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I didn't know you were self-taught — I wasn't projecting, but literally confessing my agreement toward the bias you described. As to the parent, envy is typically felt from a position of disadvantage or inferiority.

Missed the connection between your reply and the second paragraph of your parent on first read. I responded initially to your combination of comments with that oversight in mind -- connected inferiority to inclined to disagree to me -- so I owe you an apology. Forgive me.

Re: What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?

#50

Post by burgerbrain »

dfranke wrote: post #22

I thought "category theory" was a very strange thing to include in the list, so I searched down and found this equally strange comment: "I wish I had time to spend a year learning category theory to better understand how to structure things to be compositional". This is akin to saying, "I wish I had time to spend a year studying fluid dynamics so I can learn how to fly a plane".

More like: "so I could learn how to make a plane"
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