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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#41

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

monkeynotes wrote: post #37
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.

> At 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week - 10,000 hours of practice will take 250 full weeks to achieve. That’s about 5 years of nearly non-stop programming. Isn't this basically a software job? Like, get a junior role and work your way up over 5 years doing 40 hrs a week.

If the only programming you do is generic commercial work, you won't get very good, especially if it's at the same job or on the same kind of project.

You can learn more about programming by giving yourself new and challenging projects at home. Doing both personal and professional work is the fastest way to progress while learning lessons from both. (commercial work teaches you the "professional" side of software engineering, which has almost nothing to do with programming)

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#42

Post by monkeynotes »

bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

All of what you just said is an exact modern version of the same shortcuts. Net difference is probably minimal whether you had a crap book or watched a pile of YT in short order or short cut through someone else's project, or SO.

Comprehension takes time. Thinking for yourself, making smart architectural decisions, working in an ambiguous stack, and so on.

The nature of the shortcut for experience is the same. Experience crushes anything you learned elsewhere. My best engineers are senior engineers with a fuck load of experience for a reason.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#43

Post by ricardo81 »

wild_egg wrote: post #20
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

Yes! That's the one. Struggled to source it.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#44

Post by atticora »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #22

I think you never learn programming as it becomes more of an art at the upper echelons. For the fundamentals I would say 2 - 3 years of dedicated work is enough.

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.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#45

Post by freedmand »

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.

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 important for my evolution as a programmer.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#46

Post by Erratic6576 »

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.

Absolutely, but I need a teacher for that

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#47

Post by bborud »

bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Actually, no. What you describe is a superficial culture in which people mistake instant gratification for actual knowledge and experience. That might work if you are content to end up being a lifelong junior dabbler, sitting the end of a Jira-pipeline and doing what you are being told. It is not how you become a principal or someone people call when they have problems for which there doesn't exist obvious blueprints.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#48

Post by dukeofdoom »

It's never been easier then now. For example, if you want to learn how to make games...

There's a guy on youtube called clearcode. He will teach you how to make games, in a Bob Ross voice...pretty much from scratch. You can also use ChatGPT to help you out.

The resources for learning are so much better. Socratic method of just asking questions is now possible with AI.

I think Sam Altman said that he is seeing x3 productivity increase from AI helping out programmers.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#49

Post by jesse__ »

atticora wrote: post #44
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #22

I think you never learn programming as it becomes more of an art at the upper echelons. For the fundamentals I would say 2 - 3 years of dedicated work is enough.

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.

Amazing answer

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#50

Post by quonn »

tester457 wrote: post #12
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 fu…

> 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.

It may be like that for some, but generally in the 90s computers were widely available and those interested were usually allowed by their family to use them as needed.

There were tutorials. There were digital manuals. It was not that different.

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