The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code • Hacker News Board

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#51

Post by GrueFiend » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:20 PM UTC

Knuth hath said: "A person who is more than casually interested in computers should be well schooled in machine language, since it is a fundamental part of a computer."

I agree with that sentiment. The whole "focus on what works" is not the same thing as "understanding what the hell you're doing."

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#52

Post by mcgwiz » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:25 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38

I think the problem is a lot of people jump in, start coding and then never go back and learn about the nuances of a language. Case in point was myself when I was learning Javascript. Sure, I could get the JS to do what I wanted, but it was clunky, used a lot of memory and was slow. Fast forward a few years and I've gone back and read Crockford's books several times, and with more studying, I've gotten much better at…

Well put. I've been programming professionally for 8 years (and as a student for another 8 years prior--HP48G RPN represent!). And to this day, I find myself regularly attracted to articles, books, and blog posts about "basic" lower-division CS topics: principles of object-oriented design, language design, patterns, compilers, etc. It's the same old stuff, but reading it is more enriching and insightful the more real-world programming experience you have.

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#53

Post by logn » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:31 PM UTC

I think you can reduce the list a lot more--and should. I'd choose a single language and learn it well and go from there. And I'd only work the command line features. So Ruby on the command line or JS or Java would be my choices (but only one).

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#54

Post by xster » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #41

I don't know that #1 was a mistake. When getting into any new field, it is very hard to tell what is important and what isn't, what is a solution to the problem and what isn't. If you are in school, sure they'll guide you, but if you are self-learning, there is no really good filter. So learn about everything. Take a breadth-first approach. Some of the specifics you learn will be wrong, useless, or otherwise inapprop…

Agreed. It's easy to look back and know what were needed in retrospect but it's hard to even know which is for what until some time is spent to learn its capabilities

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#55

Post by fourstar » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:01 PM UTC

MojoJolo wrote: post #35

They say you learn best through experience. I learned CakePHP by coding my thesis with it. Now, I wanted to learn python + postgres by planning to port my thesis to it.

Why would you want to switch to Postgres out of curiosity? Also, what MVC framework are you switching to?

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#56

Post by yotamoron » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:56 PM UTC

This is bs. No one learns how to code in one year. You bearly scratch the surface. If a musician or a dancer would write about their experiences after one year of playing/dancing, it would be laughable, yet with programming, for some reason, it is acceptable. You know almost nothing about programming after doing it for one year.

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#57

Post by stinos » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

mcgwiz wrote: post #52

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38

I think the problem is a lot of people jump in, start coding and then never go back and learn about the nuances of a language. Case in point was myself when I was learning Javascript. Sure, I could get the JS to do what I wanted, but it was clunky, used a lot of memory and was slow. Fast forward a few years and I've gone back and read Crockford's books several times, and with more studying, I've gotten much better at…

Well put. I've been programming professionally for 8 years (and as a student for another 8 years prior--HP48G RPN represent!). And to this day, I find myself regularly attracted to articles, books, and blog posts about "basic" lower-division CS topics: principles of object-oriented design, language design, patterns, compilers, etc. It's the same old stuff, but reading it is more enriching and insightful the more real…

yep. When I just started I struggled through GoF's Design Patterns and even sorta tricked myself into believing I understood it. Well, I didn't. At all. 5 years later though it was one of the most insightful and useful reads ever.

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#58

Post by goggles99 » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

You put the cart before the horse (which was actually your first mistake). When you get out of college - get a job, work a while - then start a side business. Your startup success odds will more than quadruple following this advice.

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#59

Post by jsnk » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38

I think the problem is a lot of people jump in, start coding and then never go back and learn about the nuances of a language. Case in point was myself when I was learning Javascript. Sure, I could get the JS to do what I wanted, but it was clunky, used a lot of memory and was slow. Fast forward a few years and I've gone back and read Crockford's books several times, and with more studying, I've gotten much better at…

I agree that learning the nuances of languages is important, but to demand this aspect of learning to someone who is just beginning to code is actually harmful in my opinion.

As students of computer science, we have strong tendency to learn things bottom-up. We take care in learning the fundamentals before applying theories in real work. This is not a bad thing. Better quality codes are shipped and become more maintanable.

But for someone who is just starting out, the bottom-up approach becomes an insurmountable obstacle. As a result, many give up too soon and never end up enjoying the joy of creating real working applications.

Look back to when we first started to code. I wrote some bad BASIC code in high school abusing GOTO and GOSUB everywhere I could. I knew nothing about programming language paradigms or memeory management, but I had a lot of fun coding without reading any book on CS.

Re: The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code

#60

Post by tedmiston » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 9:55 PM UTC

It's easy to worry about every details and learn every piece of tech yourself all at once, but it's a recipe for unstable foundations and disasters of distraction.

Creating small achievements by prototyping simple ideas in unfamiliar technologies gives me small, concrete rewards to celebrate the journey.