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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

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Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#51

Post by UltimateEdge »

gwill wrote: post #29
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #13

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path. Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

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?

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#52

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

SO answers, SEO-driven blog posts and YouTube videos are not good learning tools. They provide shallow answers to specific questions. They don't teach you deeper lessons or give a nuanced understanding, and they don't give the experience of practice. I believe programmers have become worse over time due to depending on them.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#53

Post by pmarreck »

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.

You have to like being challenged.

I've seen incredibly smart people in the coding space (definitely smarter than I) basically "smart themselves out of it" because they felt it wasn't challenging anymore. Or they felt tired of the "wrong" challenge, like "waiting for everyone else to catch up to them." (They were usually involved with bleeding-edge tech that ended up being the norm years later.)

If fascination is motivating, I guess be happy that you're not too smart? ;)

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#54

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

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.

[flagged]

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#55

Post by jesse__ »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #13

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path. Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

I dropped out of CS after a 3 months, had never programmed before. I sat in my mom's basement for 8 months and taught myself the basics of JS and was able to get a job.

Since then, I've spent a metric fuck-ton of time programming (tens of thousands of hours to date). I've worked on compilers, 3D graphics, semiconductors and game engines.

I guess my experience kind of supports both sides of the coin. I was relatively easily able to get into industry with little experience (circa ~2012), although since then I've put in a ton of work to become a good engineer that people with interesting projects want to hire. Take that as you will :)

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#56

Post by althea_tx »

matkoniecz wrote: post #30
bluetomcat wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Are you claiming that this techniques will substantially cut down how much time is required? How much time it would take to achieve level that in 1998 would need 10 years?

Oh please. All of these time estimates, from 24 hours to ten years to 10,000 hours are completely bogus.

The “24 hours” figure is marketing copy designed to unify and differentiate a brand of technical manuals.

The person who coined the 10,000 hours rule (Anders Ericsson) rejects it as an oversimplification of an arbitrary number, noting that half of the violinists in his study fell short of that number. The ten years figure is derived from this flawed rule.

The linked article is well-written, but the comments are giving “kids these days” insecurity and mid-life crisis.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#57

Post by helboi4 »

thebosh wrote: post #27
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #13

I’ve had a number of people approach me, at work and elsewhere, asking how they too can get one of those programming jobs. I always mention the timeline I was on, having started learning as a kid, making it a major hobby, getting a CS degree, internships, etc. and people are surprised and disappointed there’s no quick path. Or is there? Has anyone here done one of those 0 to 1 bootcamps with success?

I did a grad scheme where a consultancy trained me for 3 months and then worked for them under contract for 2 years. I studied humanities at university and had never coded before. The first 2 years were very hard and it felt like swimming upstream the entire time as I didn't have that basis. It was only at the end of the 2 year programme that I actually felt like I could provide value independently. A lot of my knowl…

i feel like we did the same scheme lol

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#58

Post by testcase_delta »

freedmand wrote: post #45
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 im…

I started learning to code this year, and I keep thinking that I would have thrown in the towel if not for ChatGPT. For better or for worse.

The big difference for me is being able to struggle right up until I'm ready to give up, and then ask ChatGPT for insight. Usually my issue is a syntax one, and I have the concepts down (i.e. I was right to solve it using nested if statements, but I forgot I need to put a variable outside a function, for example). This way I get that dopamine hit of being mostly right, and quick feedback on what I need to improve. If not for ChatGPT, I'd be left feeling like I just failed entirely and I'm not getting it at all, which I don't think is the case.

I think the same experience would be achieved with a good teacher, but then I'd need my schedule to overlap, and the feedback on problems would still be often be delayed instead of instant.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#59

Post by bborud »

bluetomcat wrote: post #39
forgetfreeman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're most likely getting downvoted because the modern lets-hot-glue-a-bunch-of-dependencies-together approach notwithstanding programming has gotten significantly more complex over the years. Can you muddle through with youtube videos and SO? Sure, if you want the career equivalent of staggering around in the dark stepping on rakes.

The idea that one needs MIT-level training with SICP and AOCP is elitist and sickening. You start by writing small and useful tools that help you explore the language features. You compare your code to other people's code solving a similar problem. You look for ways to make it shorter, more readable, more efficient by reading SO and watching YouTube.

Nobody says you do. In fact, I agree that a lot of the paths people who have never mentored a programmer their entire life think you have to take are bullshit. (Teaching is not mentoring. Mentoring is mentoring).

However, that doesn't mean that it doesn't take a lot to become a decent programmer. It does. And not just in terms of time, but perhaps most importantly in terms of intellectual maturity.

Re: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

#60

Post by rozap »

freedmand wrote: post #45
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 im…

I kind of wonder if it's similar to how I never learn how to get somewhere if I use Google maps. If I put away Google maps and use my brain then I can learn the route after doing it once.
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