13 ms·

How I Became a Programmer in ~12 Weeks

• adambyrtek 15y ago
  Congratulations, now do yourself a favor and read this: http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html
  • deleted 15y ago
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  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    I think the people who need to read that article and pay attention to its words are the ones getting teary-eyed over my use of the word "programmer."
• juddlyon 15y ago
  Excellent story and impressive discipline. What was your prior experience with computers or technology in general?
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    Nothing meaningful for programming really. I knew enough about MS Office to be dangerous.
    • gcp 15y ago
      I was a computer geek from way back, had a few BBSes in the late 80s (yes, I'm a child of the 80s & 90s), learned QBasic & VisualBasic back in the day, and tinkered with Python for a few years off and on... mostly off. Other than that, nope. This ought to be worth something too, though.
• creativityhurts 15y ago
  The article shows us that nowadays anyone can easily start learning a programming language or even a framework, that the internet is an incredibly useful library for those who seek knowledge and that tabloid headlines like "How I became a programmer in 12 weeks" still get our attention.
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    • creativityhurts 15y ago
      I'm sorry but you can't become a _programmer_ in 12 weeks. You can become a pretty good code wrangler, you can put togeter a decent website or an application but you still have around 10 more years to go (as shown above/below http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html).
      • lubutu 15y ago
        Suggesting that it takes ten years to become "a programmer" is absurd. An experienced programmer, perhaps, but as soon as you can write and reason about programs (inferring what they do without a compiler), I would call you a programmer. Whether you're good is another matter, though a talented programmer can outpace one a decade their elder.
        • devs1010 15y ago
          This just goes back to the "people as resources" (which is code word for developers are widgets) garbage that constantly comes up within organizations, etc, it wouldn't surprise me at all if creativityhurts is a manager of some sort. People are unique, not drones, some have a naturally higher aptitude and interest in programming than others as well as other factors such as intelligence. IMO a programmer who loves what they do and spends time working on their craft outside of their 9-5 job can quickly outpace a more experienced programmer who has little passion and just does it "because its their job". I've seen this first-hand that some people with years and years of experience just don't have that enthusiasm for software development, as soon as you talk to them about a concept that they aren't already familiar with through sheer rote memorization they either lose interest completely or just can't seem to catch on. That said, obviously if you take 2 developers who have similar attributes as far as aptitude, intelligence and enthusiasm but 1 has 10 years more experience than the other, than yes, of course, the one with more experience is going to be better overall.
• salem 15y ago
  I'm sure the work ethic gained from 10 years in the USMC helped
  • krmmalik 15y ago
    Yeah. I have to say that work ethic here seems to be far more instrumental in his progress over and above anything else
  • gwern 15y ago
    Let's not confuse correlation with causation; I once looked around for studies showing experimental interventions which actually increased work ethic (specifically, I was looking for studies on the Big Five construct 'Conscientiousness') and didn't find any. So, I'm sure the work ethic that let him join and last 10 years in the USMC helped.
    • count 15y ago
      Lets not confuse an absence of evidence as an evidence of absence - just because there's no study yet that shows that 10 years in the USMC helps with work ethic, doesn't mean that 10 year in the USMC does NOT help with work ethic (unless you mean to say in your survey of the lit. you found something claiming the opposite of the op's claim). That said, I'm inclined to agree with your last statement...
      • gwern 15y ago
        Well, in general terms, if the USMC (or the Army, or the Navy, or...) really did build up work ethic - a personality trait that correlates quite a bit with income - why do veterans seem to do so poorly, even veterans who never experience the confound of war? Because personality traits are, like IQ, very tough to alter. (This is why that psilocybin-increases-Openness study got so much play.)
        • jebblue 15y ago
          >> why do veterans seem to do so poorly What are you saying that we do poorly at? Your comments are more "confounding" to me than any war situation I was ever in.
• kunley 15y ago
  Then he didn't become a programmer. He became Django programmer.
  • libria 15y ago
    He learned some Python, Django, HTML, CSS, Javascript and wrote programs. Can "programmer" not encompass both people getting their feet wet and 20 years experience mastering multiple languages?
    • kunley 15y ago
      He hasn't made any hard choices, he just picked what is most available and put the pieces together. Frankly he'd have bought me if he made his hands dirty with some obscure 8bit assembler. There he'd have to really THINK his way out. At least some sweat during rolling his own data structures and algos around them would make him something in a shape of a programmer, but not this. Of course what he's done is cool, learning anything new is worth some pat on the back. But this is a newsfeed on hacking, and Lords, it ain't hacking. Let's call things what they are, ok? There's also the problem that some people like him start calling themselves programmers on the job market and when we're trying to hire them, they occur to be only Django programmers with very limited abilities. Practice makes perfect, but they didn't do it yet. Have some interviewing experiences like that. Not funny.
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        • gradstudent 15y ago
          Are you confusing Hacker News with Reddit? (for context, below is mattdeboard's deleted comment) "Well, thankfully, I didn't write this for you. I wrote it for the people -- I suspect the vast, vast, vast majority of the HN readership -- who are not expert programmers, or even professional programmers, but they want to be."
          • 15y ago
• wallflower 15y ago
  Quoting a self-help talking head here: "It's not important to get things right/perfect. It's important to get things going" Congratulations and realize that the nth step in learning is realizing that you can always learn more.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    Thanks, and I agree. All I know is that I know practically nothing.
  • oz 15y ago
    "It's not important to get things right/perfect. It's important to get things going" Not realizing that fact held me back for years. When I wanted to learn / do something, I would obsess over finding absolutely the best tutorial / process. Then I would obsess over the right learning environment. Always worrying about the incidentals, and ignoring the essentials. HN has helped me a lot in this regard. Reading about big companies and how 'imperfectly' they started out, as well as the whole 'Lean Startup' concept has done much to change my mindset. What is important is starting. Thanks for sharing.
    • wahnfrieden 15y ago
      I used to do that too - find the best practices and right ways of doing each new thing I came across in my projects. Although it wasn't efficient, I'm still glad I did, since it's a luxury that I don't as often have time for now as a professional. Having covered a lot of these things when it was still just a hobby has paid off, now that I can use it all again.
• hotelinspector 15y ago
  Snarky comments making me think people just got annoyed by the title and didn't read the post. A lot of good advice for people who would like to program rather than be programmed but aren't in a place to take a cs degree.
  • wattjustin 15y ago
    Agreed! I am only about 5 weeks in to learning Python with no previous experience and doing it very much part time as I work full time but there are some great tips in this article. Don't let the title throw you off here.
• johnobrien102 15y ago
  I highly recommend the O'Reilly School of Technology courses on Python if you are looking to learn Python. They are self-paced, reasonably priced, and provide some great tips on best practices. And the ability to have someone actual give you feedback and test you I find helps me keep moving forward learning to program.
• jwblackwell 15y ago
  I think this shows just how much can be achieved if you work hard and give something your absolute focus. Call him a programmer or not, it seems he has learnt enough to program professionally and by most definitions, that makes him a programmer.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    Thank you.
• keithnoizu 15y ago
  Hmm, I started programming over a decade and a half ago, writing my own little game engines in dos, and a nice little x-mode GUI. I've worked as the software architect for a moderately popular (top 2000 alexa) social networking websites, I've worked at fortune 500s, I've been on the dev side, the test side, the pm side, and worked as an IC and as a lead/manager. I still don't really consider myself as being anywhere near being complete in the task of becoming a "programmer." But kudos on taking your first few steps. Its not a bad vocation.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    If you program computers for a living, guess what? You're a computer programmer. Congratulations, you made it.
• kreek 15y ago
  I envy that the author learnt programming and web development now as opposed to even a few years ago. Without devolving into "in my day I walked ten miles in the snow just to compile"; it's just so much more pleasant now. Stack Overflow, Heroku (and similar), GitHub, PDF Books. Obviously it takes time and effort to get better everyday but the learning curve is a bit flatter now.
  • tryitnow 15y ago
    I second this. Although my story is different. I would put my toe in the water and try to learn to program, but it all just seemed so absurd to me, so I pursued other areas of study. Then earlier this year I started doing Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial and things just started clicking. Now I am teaching myself Ruby on Rails and I am looking for explore other more difficult languages (just for fun, I don't want a career as a developer). For whatever reason, Ruby just got me more interested in programming. Now I am dipping my toes into SICP, which I would have never have guessed I would be interested in. I think once you get your hands dirty with something relatively easy like Ruby on Rails, you start seeing the need for all the other computer science concepts and languages and that piques your curiosity. However, I can say that teaching myself a little coding has really helped out in my day job, I notice I think differently about problems. My thought process is much more structured.
  • marquis 15y ago
    There's also a lot more to learn and possibly more confusing. In 'my day' it was just CGI with MySQL, Apache and perl, then comes Java, then along came PHP then Python, Ruby, now there is JQuery and Redis and Hadoop and.. and on HN now you see a hundred new frameworks each saying 'we're great, use us!'. While I welcome that there are easier ways to actually learn all these things and the amazing communities, I'm not sure it's really easier to actually just get started. Oh, and you've got Reddit and Facebook and HN sucking up your time and a fast internet connection to procrastinate on Netflix and Youtube.. I could go on.
    • kreek 15y ago
      Very true that there are so many choices now. Easy to suffer from analysis paralysis before you even get started. I answered a questionnaire for Manning in exchange for a free book recently. I wanted to learn something new so that cut out a few topics. However, I still sat staring at their catalog for an eternity before deciding on one that was interesting/potentially useful (Lift in Action).
• jaetldev 15y ago
  I fundamentally agree with Norvig's idea about how long it takes toward being a programmer. But this approach sort of makes sense - or just maybe I am reading too much into the software-commodity angle. Either way - I cautiously approve this. This is similar to how modern warfare utilizes recruitment-training-deployment to weed out the unworthy from the able. Adapt or perish. Nothing wrong with that. The worst thing that can happen is that the developer in question may realize that he is just not that capable and venture into some other areas. I realize I am reading HN but sometimes programming is treated as too much of a sacred cow.
• devs1010 15y ago
  I did something similar when I got started and yeah it got me a job but that was just the beginning, now, about 2 years later, I'm still learning and pushing myself to learn lower and lower level things about software development (as I started with high-level, dynamic languages) as well as more about design patterns, etc. Its definitely true that there's always more to learn so never be complacent. Its definitely possible to learn and apply the basics of CRUD development in a few months but IMO this is only the tip of the iceberg to having a fulfilling career in software development.
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• rorrr 15y ago
  Algorithms are not even mentioned. Data structures are not there either. Sorry, you're a django coder, not a programmer.
  • scottschulthess 15y ago
    Writing django apps requires the use of algorithms and data structures. He just didn't talk about them.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    I answered the questions people asked. Are you for real?
    • meanJim 15y ago
      I applaud you for all the things you've achieved, it's pretty commendable ( always like to hear stories about people working hard and getting stuff done ). But the truth is, it wouldn't hurt to go and take the time to re-visit the topics he mentioned and tie up loose ends. It would help your career regardless of what was said here. 2 cents.
      • spacemanaki 15y ago
        What's ridiculous about your comment and rorrr's trollish one is that he probably already has (re-)visited them. He writes that he watched 13 lectures of the MIT intro to computer science OCW class. That definitely touches on data structures and algorithms.
    • sskates 15y ago
      Have you made money as a result of code you've written? If so, you're a professional programmer. I wouldn't worry about whether you conform to a checklist an arrogant troll (I don't use these words lightly, but check his comment history) wrote on an internet forum. Hats off to you for doing it, especially under so much pressure.
  • adbge 15y ago
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• scottschulthess 15y ago
  Learn a language, not a web framework for god's sake. Learning frameworks is harder than learning programming languages, IMO, especially after you lean one language. You should learn both.
  • ineedtosleep 15y ago
    Though I tend to agree with you, I think it goes both ways depending on how restrictive your framework is (and whether or not you work well with restrictions).
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    Yeah of course it's harder, because it's built on top of a platform you don't understand. It's easier to make good design decisions in Python if you come from a background rich with C experience, right? Because you understand what's going on under the hood. Without that experience -- like me -- you just fumble around like a big stupid klutz until you realize one day that you need to learn the lower level stuff. So naturally when you're talking about dealing with an abstraction layer built on another abstraction layer it's going to be even hard to understand. That's why I say don't learn the framework. Learn the language, the concepts, the principles. It will make understanding the complexities easier to untangle.
• sheeps 15y ago
  Nice post, very inspiring. I have been dabbling with Ruby and other languages for a year, but have never had this sort of discipline. For a couple years I have wanted a programming job but have always had serious doubts about whether I can really "hack it" as a professional. I don't know any programmers personally (well, one friend on the other side of the country in SF, heh), and I look at job openings and their requirements / desired experience all seem so intimidating. :-/
• oz 15y ago
  My mantra for the past 2 weeks has been that there's never been a better time to learn to code, simply because the resources are so abundant and available. I'm self-learning web development right now. Between HTML Dog, W3 Schools and Google, I have more than enough information. I wanted to play around with WordPress-fired up a VirtualBox VM with Fedora, and an hour later had completed the 'famous 5-minute install.' When I begin to take on client work, most sites can be hosted on a cheap Linode or Bluehost. Most of the information you need is free. Infrastructure (if you need it) costs peanuts. You have nothing to lose. Why not start now?
  • wattjustin 15y ago
    Awesome attitude! If it's something you want to do, you'll make time to learn.
  • ggwicz 15y ago
    Exactly. As a 17-year-old I've been able to run my own little freelance business. The internet = opportunity if you use it right.
    • dlf 15y ago
      Awesome. I wish I was doing this at 17. Ten years later I'm making up for lost time. Congrats for getting after it early!
      • mseebach 15y ago
        To offer a counter-point, I was running a consulting business at 17 (OK, a little later) went from hack to hack and didn't even know I was failing to learn and improve myself. Ran up debt, and went through what in retrospect looks a lot like bouts of depression. Now, I'm going on 30 in my first "real" job and I feel like I'm making up for lost time. There's no magic right way to do it.
        • ggwicz 15y ago
          I don't do something unless the profits are clear. I once had $3,000.00 stolen from me, so I've learned early on to avoid anything too risky. And I'd rather make pennies doing something I love than dollars doing something I hate. It's absolutely different for everyone! But I'm confident you've probably learned a lot from your endeavors and have more respect for money. It's an interesting thing when you first start dealing with money...yikes...sometimes we have to learn the hard way.
• ricardobeat 15y ago
  > I was a computer geek from way back, had a few BBSes in the late 80s (yes, I'm a child of the 80s & 90s), learned QBasic & VisualBasic back in the day, and tinkered with Python for a few years off and on... In every single one of the "how I learned to program in X days" stories, the author had some previous experience. I wouldn't count running a BBS and learning 3 programming languages as "no previous experience".
  • jwallaceparker 15y ago
    Agreed. Learning any programming language, especially as a youth, puts you in a completely different class from someone who has no prior exposure to computer programming and its core concepts.
  • shioyama 15y ago
    I was going to post something similar. Glad to see I'm not the only one who felt that line stood out.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    "learned" was DEFINITELY an overstatement. I knew they existed is more accurate.
    • troels 15y ago
      I'd argue that it still predisposes you very strongly. If nothing else, just in the abstract sense that you are familiar with the computer and don't see it as some scary or magical thing.
      • mattdeboard 15y ago
        No argument there.
      • shortlived 15y ago
        My college roommate ran several BBSes but ended up being pretty dumb with computers in college. It always made me scratch my head.
• neilk 15y ago
  As far as I'm concerned, you can become a programmer in 12 hours. That's easily enough time to learn enough Python so you could start writing programs that satisfy your own needs, if they were simple enough. Of course, there is no upper limit to how good a programmer you can become. We can only (maybe) set lower limits.
• cantbecool 15y ago
  I don't understand it. Some of the people posting comments on this topic are acting extremely pompous. The word 'programmer' on a resume does not mean you're in a elite club or society. It means what the job title implies: a programmer is someone who writes computer programs. There are all different variations of skill level though, just like in any profession.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    I am very surprised confused and disappointed at the parochialism here.
    • vkatluri 15y ago
      It's probably because you scare them. Here are people who have spent several years in school to gain a certificate that shows they know how to program. You may never be a competition to them in the job market but the knowledge that someone spent close to 12 weeks (not even a semester) and was able to land a basic job programming is probably rubbing their sense of entitlement the wrong way. Me personally, I have a M.S. in Computer Science but I work with a group of people, who, with sheer will and hard work, are in much better programming situation than I am. Not everybody gets to, or needs to, write a compiler or an operating system. Most of the applications are crud applications. Just because you are not of Linus Torvald's caliber doesn't mean that you are not a programmer.
      • cantbecool 15y ago
        I share your sentiment. It's disrupting their entire way of thinking regarding the programming field. It would be amazing to get to the level of programming enlightenment to be able to create a compiler or kernel, though. That's a goal of mine with-in a decade.
      • jarek 15y ago
        I am certain most HN readers who are expressing negative sentiments here and who have spent several years in school feel very threatened by a Django coder.
• rpeden 15y ago
  My experience is similar to his. I have a business degree and worked in accounting, but decided I'd like to get back into programming after dabbling in it when I was younger. I wrote some Rails apps as side projects and put them on Github, which ended up helping quite a bit. What made the difference in the end was good social skills. I met the CTO of the company I work for at a Ruby meetup, and had a good conversation with him. I ended up applying for a position he was trying to fill, and after an interview and a review of my projects on Github, I ended up with a development job without having any formal experience. I've been at it for over a year now. So, this is definitely doable as long as you're committed to learning a lot, and are able to sell yourself well enough to convince someone to give you a chance.
• nhoss2 15y ago
  The hardest part to that for me is the "get to know people" part. He already had a mentor before he started learning. How would one get a mentor in the first place? How do you get to know other people?
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    To be fair, the friend/mentor in question started out as a dude on a small private forum I used to frequent. The forum had an AIM chatroom and he made fun of me mercilessly me for years for making stupid decisions. Go to meetups and lurk IRL IMO. Just start small conversations. Say hi, ask what someone's working on, what the program is they have open, if they read HN or Reddit or whatever. Let them know you admire their work and ask for help.
• latchkey 15y ago
  I absolutely admire you. There are so many people in this world who pretend that something is preventing them from learning or doing something and you went out just did it. You may (or may not) be the best engineer in the world, but I'd hire you in a hot second just because you have the tenacity to make it your mission to figure something out. Sometimes, 90% of writing code is just sticking with a problem until you get it. I've given 100's of interviews to people who are either fresh out of school or have been programming for a while now. The vast majority of these people have no gumption to actually create a github account or do any sort of experiments outside of what tasks they are given at work. It is very sad to me that most of these people just want to collect a paycheck. The learning never stops, keep it up.
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  • Mvandenbergh 15y ago
    What I think is great is that he learned enough to get an 'in' in a relatively short time. Obviously getting from knowing some Python and being able to work with Django to being a master developer will take years, but it is so much easier to do that if you already have a fulltime programming job. If you're trying to learn all the skills that a great developer needs in your free time, you'll realistically be able to spend no more than 4-5 hours a day at it over any sustained period. If your fulltime job is software development, even if it isn't hardcore by HN standards, then you will grow your skills so much faster.
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• cfarnell 15y ago
  From his blog a year ago: "... have just started back to school for computer science. I’ve been poking clumsily at programming for a few years, but only in the past few months have I actually started to take ideas of my own and successfully bring them to life. ... While I don’t think I can study an algorithm and announce its big Oh complexity, I’m getting there. ... going to school does take time away from my actually programming and self-learning about computer science in general." Twelve weeks not exactly starting from scratch.
  • bretthoerner 15y ago
    He's talking about the past, not the last 12 weeks. I believe that post a year ago was very much inside the 12 weeks he's talking about.
    • cfarnell 15y ago
      In the article he says he learned programming from 2/11 to 5/11. I am glad he is successful but clearly his experience is far more than twelve weeks, so it is a bit disingenuous. That is too bad because it is a great story and needed no exaggeration.
• spacemanaki 15y ago
  The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I think a lot of people either didn't read the article or just skimmed it. For those of you who are citing Peter Norvig's essay, I also thought of the essay when I read this; it's one of my favorites. I've read it several times because it is humbling and inspires me to rise to the challenge of really becoming a great programmer. If Matt reads it he might feel similarly (if he hasn't already). But do you really think Norvig would suggest that someone at his level is not a programmer? By my count, he's done about half the things on Norvig's list already and could be within a tenth of the fabled 10,000 hours (12 wks * 7 days * 8-16 hrs = just over 1000 hrs). I agree that the title might have been misleading given how much prior experience he had, but seriously, this is one of those "if you don't have anything nice to say" moments. If he received that many emails from some random comment on HN that means there are a lot of people reading this thread right now who are in the same boat as he was and as the people asking for help are. What kind of community are we (I mean we as programmers and we as HN) if we denigrate Matt's efforts and these kinds of blogposts? There are going to be more and more programmers in the world as the pace of computing accelerates and people are exposed to gadgets and technologies that excite them enough to peek under the hood. We should be encouraging them and welcoming them and telling them "yes, programming is awesome!"
  • viscanti 15y ago
    My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do differently? What guidelines would he give to someone else in a similar position? How did he find an appropriate mentor? What was he surprised to learn? What can he do now that he couldn't do when he started? There's so many things he could have documented that would have been helpful. He didn't write any of them. Instead, he made the implementation details seem mystical and gives the opinion that "hard work" (whatever that is) is the only key.
    • 15y ago
• ralphos 15y ago
  Credit to you for sticking with it for 12 weeks and being successful. I had been attempting to learn how to program (Ruby) for the past 6 months (from a ZERO programming background) and in the beginning I honestly could not do more than one week learning 'intensively' before I had to take a break to let all the new concepts and information settle in. Perhaps it's just my style but I've found learning a little bit everyday is more effective in the long run than cramming it into a condensed period of time. It's surprising how you can take a break from a piece of code and have everything come together when you look at it again. That said, learning how to program in 'X weeks' sounds great and I wish I could have done it!
• kamaal 15y ago
  You can certainly be a programmer in 12 weeks, but you will be different programmer than what we are expecting here. You can also learn programming by reading 'Learn programming in 30 days'. But that is a very different kind of programming than what most people are expecting in this thread. You can learn enough programming to begin to understand how to work with software. It gives you a start. It also works if your job is extremely trivial. And I think the target audience for the book is those kind of people. Coming to programming as a profession, in that case there are a lot of aspects that influence your full time profession, among that is giving your full learning every detail of programming and related ecosystem. Other aspects are productivity, management, analytical skills, UI design, requirements gathering, people skills. Also there are many other things required to win in practical software environments like working under tough deadlines, learning to deal with frequent stress and burnout. Keeping in touch with rapidly changing tech scenario, tools and languages. The list goes endless. I haven't covered even a percent of what I wanted to write. Your regular data structure and algorithm sauce is probably 1% of what is required to win in practical software development today. There are 99% of other things which are not taught in books, colleges and universities. You have to learn them through experience, by working. So just in case you think you have spent 10 years learning all the secret recipes in computer science books but are not good in other areas. You are no better than the 'Learn programming in 30 days guy'. Because if has problems in a set of areas, you have equal number of problem with another equivalent set. This is something I have seen among so many bright, people with great academics, who don't make it big in the industry. They just don't understand so many practical aspects of the industry. Just like how 12 weeks programming guy doesn't understand all aspects of practical programming.
  • prophetjohn 15y ago
    I get the point of this post, even if it seems a bit of a tangent from the what the author is saying, but >>in case you think you have spent 10 years learning all the secret recipes in computer science books but are not good in other areas. You are no better than the 'Learn programming in 30 days guy'. and >>Your regular data structure and algorithm sauce is probably 1% of what is required is just false. Sure, studying classical CS concepts is not all there is to software development and success in the software development industry, but your comment largely renders advanced degrees, like PhDs, about as useful as some poorly written Java book with regard to success as a software engineer.
• crikli 15y ago
  I can play a few Megadeth riffs and I've written two very shitty songs. This does not make me a musician or a songwriter. It makes me a dude who can create noises that resemble music. The OP groks the basics and has learned how to use Django. This does not make him a programmer. It makes him a dude who can create code that resembles a program.
  • digitist 15y ago
    Perfect analogy for this asinine, laughable post. The author is a hobbyist, not a programmer: would anyone here actually trust or hire this guy with his "1000 hours" of mostly semantic knowledge to develop a real world application? I think we should incite him to build and submit a production application for community review--perhaps he can develop it in ~1 week.
  • Mvandenbergh 15y ago
    Sure, but if you were currently paid to make music then I think people would consider you a musician. You might be a shitty musician, an inexperienced musician, or whatever, but if you actually made your living doing it then I don't think that people would begrudge you the title.
    • bubbleburst 15y ago
      > ... but if you actually made your living doing Wait till all the share prices drop to 0. Remember the punk days ? Every dumb-ass who could play, played. How many of them are still playing ?
    • phektus 15y ago
      People would say that he's more of an entertainer than a musician. This sort of debate also occurs in musician circles.
  • Fliko 15y ago
    A musician is someone who can communicate to other people via musical instruments. You are a musician, you just might not be a very good one. Similarly a songwriter is someone who creates songs, so you are a songwriter, you just might not be a good one.
• hfthrowaway 15y ago
  I'll share my story here. I graduated with a non-CS degree and zero programming experience. It took me about 3 months to land my first programming gig (freelance), then an internship a few months later, and now I'm a junior developer at a great hedge fund. I'll point out that I optimized for getting a full-time job as fast as I could. I have college loans to pay off, so I couldn't afford to spend months learning CS thoroughly. I learned enough to get past interviews, and focused the rest of my time on other high ROI things like networking/coding projects. Critically, I now have the luxury of having an income, and have both my day job and side projects to fuel my learning of the finer details.
• 1point2 15y ago
  I am so envious (when I read stuff like that) - I have been plodding along for 30 years now and am still learning how to program :(
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    Sorry if you got the impression somehow that I don't think I'm still learning to be a better programmer, just like you.
    • 1point2 15y ago
      :) Thanks man - all the best for your future.
• giis 15y ago
  >I put myself in a position where I had no room to be lazy or complacent. I think above all else that made me work 10x harder. I didn't play video games, I didn't watch TV, I didn't sleep all day. All I did all day every day was code, hack, program and develop. That's the great thing to do. Just shutdown the door to outside world and focus on things in hand.I have done that once.Would love to do it again.(Past experience http://giis.co.in/LFY.png http://giis.co.in/LFY.png )
• itmag 15y ago
  While some here would probably see you as just a glue coder who lacks true understanding, I at least want to applaud you. You've established a beach head in the realm of coding; all the fancy understanding of eg recursive combinators, malloc() optimization, JOIN semantics, inheritance vs composition, etc, will come later. Come on, we all started in PHP or QBasic. It took most of us years to become sweet ass code ninjas. What this guy has done is impressive.
• fduran 15y ago
  Oh John, I wouldn't call him a pilot, you know, he flies people in his small airplane and gets paid for it but he doesn't know how to fly helicopters or jets and he didn't study fluid dynamics, so he's a "Cessna pilot".
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    "You're more of a wing wrangler."
• norvig 15y ago
  Let me say that in my opinion, Matt DeBoard has certainly earned the title of "programmer." Welcome to the club, Matt, and you have my appreciation for the hard work you put in. It sounds to me like you're going about it in the right way; I encourage you to keep it up, and I encourage others to do the same (that is: find a way that works for them, not necessarily copy your approach). Please pay no attention to the negativity. As spacemanaki and others have pointed out, Matt is not a complete programmer yet, and he has more to learn. But I think he knows that, and remains open to learning, which is the important point. I've got more than 12 weeks under my belt, but I still feel like I'm learning all the time. My thoughts are summed up by the character of chef Gusteau in the movie Ratatouille: "Anyone can cook." This very pointedly does not mean "everyone can cook" -- it takes a combination of interest, aptitude, and long study to become a chef, and most will not make it -- but it does mean that there is no one route to achieving competence, then expertise, then mastery.