4 ms·

Are you the exception or the rule? I'm not "blaming" self-taught engineers, I actually support self-taught (instead of blowing $100K on a traditional school).

Are you the exception or the rule? I'm not "blaming" self-taught engineers, I actually support self-taught (instead of blowing $100K on a traditional school). But I'm wondering a few things: a) is this universally known for all self taught engineers? Like, are bootcamps explicitly telling people: "Look, we're just giving the operational basics, there's a lot you have to cover on your own". b) Is it easy for self-taught engineers to find the correct resources to bridge these gaps? In traditional software university, you have a career path and courses and books "pushed" onto you. So there's no way around that. I HAD to learn Prolog and the Logic paradigm cause otherwise I'd not pass. How do self-taught engineers manage to learn these things today? --- Also, I'm not implying this is only an issue with self-taught people. Maybe our field is becoming more complex and even universities are "ditching" the theoretical concepts in favor of more "practical skills".

pentaphobe 3y ago
Perhaps also an exception, but most of the best devs I met in my teens and early 20's were self-taught. Most were working for large companies before college age Some eventually went on to complete CS degrees after many years in industry, but seemingly only as a formality, out of curiosity, or for a break from the grind
marginalia_nu 3y ago
I'm self-taught as well. Dunno if I'm the one to say, but I'd consider myself in the upper-quartile of programming breadth as a result. There are lots of talented programmers though from a host of different backgrounds. I've mostly learned from books, man pages and a string of interesting problems[1]. I think in general you tend to learn in a different way if you learn through self-directed problem solving. Like you get much deeper understanding of the theory, because that's the only way to get anything done. It's a much harsher standard than having to pass a test. Though I think there's a lot of survivorship bias involved in making self-taught programmers competent. The ones who didn't have a knack for it are doing something else now. [1] e.g. 15 years ago I built a 6502 emulator with a weird fantasy base 3 architecture, which eventually included a C compiler for this weird architecture. (I guess I was Terry Davis before it was cool.) More recently I'm working on an internet search engine I've built from scratch in vanilla Java bespoke index, bespoke crawling, bespoke everything.
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pentaphobe 3y ago

Perhaps also an exception, but most of the best devs I met in my teens and early 20's were self-taught. Most were working for large companies before college age Some eventually went on to complete CS degrees after many years in industry, but seemingly only as a formality, out of curiosity, or for a break from the grind

marginalia_nu 3y ago

I'm self-taught as well. Dunno if I'm the one to say, but I'd consider myself in the upper-quartile of programming breadth as a result. There are lots of talented programmers though from a host of different backgrounds. I've mostly learned from books, man pages and a string of interesting problems[1]. I think in general you tend to learn in a different way if you learn through self-directed problem solving. Like you get much deeper understanding of the theory, because that's the only way to get anything done. It's a much harsher standard than having to pass a test. Though I think there's a lot of survivorship bias involved in making self-taught programmers competent. The ones who didn't have a knack for it are doing something else now. [1] e.g. 15 years ago I built a 6502 emulator with a weird fantasy base 3 architecture, which eventually included a C compiler for this weird architecture. (I guess I was Terry Davis before it was cool.) More recently I'm working on an internet search engine I've built from scratch in vanilla Java bespoke index, bespoke crawling, bespoke everything.

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