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I think adults seriously overestimate most kids' sense of long-term planning, commitment, self-awareness and grit. When I was 18, with 4 years of programming ex

I think adults seriously overestimate most kids' sense of long-term planning, commitment, self-awareness and grit. When I was 18, with 4 years of programming experience, chances were terribly tiny I would spend my time in a structured fashion continuing to improve my skills and then start a career early. More likely I would just sit around playing video games and reading interesting-sounding wikipedia articles, and maybe coding up the occasional fun toy or two until I got bored and ditched it. Until I started starving, and then go "Well f*&k. Should have thought about that." And I probably wouldn't think about that unless someone is dragging my ass into a college/job.

Ologn 13y ago
Right. I could even see someone spending months to learn Java in a structured fashion. But how many people are going to sit down and spend months studying in a rigorous fashion things like the theory of computation, or complexity theory, or lambda calculus, or graph theory? Recently I had to make a hash from a list of numbers, and thought to use a Gödel number for the hash. How many self-taught programmers will do this? I mean, how many self-taught people really sit down and learn a decent amount about even slightly complex things more immediately practical than pushdown automata, such as about critical sections and mutual exclusion?
- FLUX-YOU 13y ago
  They might learn it if everyone required knowledge like that to get a job. Are junior level, self-taught staff really going to be hired to fix those problems? Maybe at Google, but not everyone's Google. Most of the self-taught crowd are gunning for web dev or design positions or bolting on some skills to do useful things and never need to make their own 'tools for the job'. If you're on your last leg for a shot at a career (like I am), there's a pretty big pull to get the minimum knowledge first so you're useful to someone and then go for advanced CS topics once you can pay your bills. A decent position allows saving for a CS degree.
- bcbrown 13y ago
  I do. It's paid amazing dividends for my career. I studied Physics in college, spent a couple years writing test automation, and am now a software engineer. I'm almost-completely self-taught, and have spent the past two years going through all the undergrad CS curriculum. All I have left are Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, and Advanced Algorithms and Data Structures. I use textbooks for when I want to dive deep into the details, and Coursera lectures for higher-level overviews of topics I don't need to know in detail, such as Networking or Compilers.
- selimthegrim 13y ago
  I was a chemistry major at Caltech but got the opportunity to learn about mutual exclusion by taking the CS department's operating systems course.
aantix 13y ago
It's not work if you tackle a problem you actually care about. Getting a child excited about data structures, algorithms, and coding conventions will be difficult. Have them dream up a guide, and let them fumble through the implementation while seeing the fruits of the labor unfold before them. Now that's excitement. And learning. Without ever feeling the need of forced discipline.
- sokoloff 13y ago
  “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
I think you seriously overestimate adults, and underestimate the value of actually having fun for once.

Ologn 13y ago

Right. I could even see someone spending months to learn Java in a structured fashion. But how many people are going to sit down and spend months studying in a rigorous fashion things like the theory of computation, or complexity theory, or lambda calculus, or graph theory? Recently I had to make a hash from a list of numbers, and thought to use a Gödel number for the hash. How many self-taught programmers will do this? I mean, how many self-taught people really sit down and learn a decent amount about even slightly complex things more immediately practical than pushdown automata, such as about critical sections and mutual exclusion?

FLUX-YOU 13y ago
They might learn it if everyone required knowledge like that to get a job. Are junior level, self-taught staff really going to be hired to fix those problems? Maybe at Google, but not everyone's Google. Most of the self-taught crowd are gunning for web dev or design positions or bolting on some skills to do useful things and never need to make their own 'tools for the job'. If you're on your last leg for a shot at a career (like I am), there's a pretty big pull to get the minimum knowledge first so you're useful to someone and then go for advanced CS topics once you can pay your bills. A decent position allows saving for a CS degree.
bcbrown 13y ago
I do. It's paid amazing dividends for my career. I studied Physics in college, spent a couple years writing test automation, and am now a software engineer. I'm almost-completely self-taught, and have spent the past two years going through all the undergrad CS curriculum. All I have left are Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, and Advanced Algorithms and Data Structures. I use textbooks for when I want to dive deep into the details, and Coursera lectures for higher-level overviews of topics I don't need to know in detail, such as Networking or Compilers.
selimthegrim 13y ago
I was a chemistry major at Caltech but got the opportunity to learn about mutual exclusion by taking the CS department's operating systems course.

aantix 13y ago

It's not work if you tackle a problem you actually care about. Getting a child excited about data structures, algorithms, and coding conventions will be difficult. Have them dream up a guide, and let them fumble through the implementation while seeing the fruits of the labor unfold before them. Now that's excitement. And learning. Without ever feeling the need of forced discipline.

sokoloff 13y ago
“If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

I think you seriously overestimate adults, and underestimate the value of actually having fun for once.