Based on my experience this summer as the third programmer at a small startup, I have to disagree. If you already have something of a background (i.e., you know

Based on my experience this summer as the third programmer at a small startup, I have to disagree. If you already have something of a background (i.e., you know enough to at least hack together something that works) and are willing to work hard, a startup can be an incredible place to learn. It provided 1) good example code I could conform to, 2) the knowledge that other people would be reading and working with my code, and 3) an environment where everything I did mattered to the product. For me, this was an unbeatable learning-by-doing environment.