3 ms·
Print out espeed's answer. Put copies on your desk, tape them to your refrigerator, tape them over your bed. Put laminated minature copies in your wallet. I st
by niels_olson 16y ago
Print out espeed's answer. Put copies on your desk, tape them to your refrigerator, tape them over your bed. Put laminated minature copies in your wallet.
I started learning this stuff... my god... 10 years ago.
It took me over a year to figure out that line 1 was the best first step OS (a question I didn't even ask until 4 years in).
It took me four years after that to figure out that line 2 was the best second step (I am on chapter 18 of Mark Lutz's Learning Python, very easy read, the only problem is to not get impatient).
It took 3 years to figure out that line 7 (including line 8) was the best way to go for databases.
10 years ago was the first time I read Greenspun's stuff and decided to march down this path (lines 6 and 10). I still use vim as my primary editor, but I'm learning emacs. Most valuable starter tip on emacs I ever got: you should have hundreds of files open.
That is a great answer.
- eliben 16y agoI think you're overreacting. It's hard to me to imagine that you were somehow slowed in your learning progress by using Windows instead of Ubuntu, MySQL or SQLite instead of Postgres and Vim instead of Emacs. This is because the first and foremost important thing about learning to program is the desire to do so. The early hackers programmed by directly banging hexadecimal machine code into computers without screens. Were they not programmers? Sure they were. Don't put too much stress on the tools - just program.
- niels_olson 16y agoI have another, unrelated, career (military physician) and I'm married, with two kids. So I'm doing this on scant marginal time, and the knowledge gained one day decays quickly unless I can get back in there and cement it the next day. A more efficient path would have been very valuable.