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In 3 years, a very intelligent person should be almost ready for an absolute entry-level position. In a year or two you should be ready to intern. A more like

In 3 years, a very intelligent person should be almost ready for an absolute entry-level position. In a year or two you should be ready to intern. A more likely timespan, if you want to produce good developers, is five years with four years of study and one year of internships (in 3 month chunks). This is the co-op model adopted by Waterloo and it produces excellent entry-level developers. If you want to be a reasonable developer, you cannot get away without being expert at least one low-level language (C or C++), one high-level language (Python, Ruby, LISP, etc), some knowledge of OS fundamentals (threads, processes, filesystems), some knowledge of concurrency (threads, locks, message passing), understand how to design your own language and build a compiler or interpreter (Flex/Bison, lex/yacc, etc), and a good base in discrete math (at the minimum, ideally some knowledge of numerical analysis and probability would be very useful as well). This is exactly what you'd learn in four years of full-time study at a good university. Why do you expect to become a good developer in 6 months by yourself when extremely intelligent people need four years of being taught (and being taught by a good teacher will normally accelerate your learning by 10x) to reach the entry-level stage? You are being too hard on yourself. A year is nothing. Give yourself a few more years if you really love it and can afford to do so.

FLUX-YOU 13y ago
>If you want to be a reasonable developer, you cannot get away without being expert at least one low-level language (C or C++), one high-level language (Python, Ruby, LISP, etc), some knowledge of OS fundamentals (threads, processes, filesystems), some knowledge of concurrency (threads, locks, message passing), understand how to design your own language and build a compiler or interpreter (Flex/Bison, lex/yacc, etc), and a good base in discrete math (at the minimum, ideally some knowledge of numerical analysis and probability would be very useful as well). Okay, so I think when the OP was talking about 3-6 months for a developer job, they were referring to web dev. That is where I have seen the most "6 months to a position" stories. You certainly don't need all of that knowledge to put together a crud app or a front end with all of the frameworks and templates available. You do need that knowledge when your app/site suddenly explodes with millions of users and your backend has gone thermonuclear due to being unoptimized. In this case, the body of knowledge for a web developer is much smaller: HTML/CSS/JavaScript/A few frameworks. This is much more appropriate for the 1-3 year span. Some quick google searches: http://learnwithjeff.com/blog/2012/08/21/how-to-get-a-job-as-a-developer-in-less-than-six-months/ http://learnwithjeff.com/blog/2012/08/21/how-to-get-a-job-as... http://www.codeconquest.com/what-is-coding/programmer-6-months/ http://www.codeconquest.com/what-is-coding/programmer-6-mont... http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-web-developer/ http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-web-dev... Note: I know these are basically blogs with probably zero credibility here, but I've had a few conversations which basically said the same thing + 6 months extra time to be conservative.
- zenbowman 13y ago
  For those of us who were around during the 2001 web bust, we know that those "web dev" jobs will quickly disappear when the bubble bursts. That's exactly what happened to the "HTML and XML developers" around 2003, and it'll happen again to the "HTML and JavaScript developers" in 2016. If OP is serious about learning to program, then he should give himself more time and learn those other more valuable skills which will make the change of career worthwhile, and not worry so much about mastering the latest fad technologies, demand for which will almost certainly evaporate within a few years. Demand for computing is going to skyrocket, and if want computing to be a field of genuine professionals, its time we start holding ourselves and other engineers to a higher standard.
  - FLUX-YOU 13y ago
    Even if it's slated to go boom, it's a position that pays and is a relevant resume mark. While doing web dev, study the 'real' stuff or specialize. Not all web dev positions will disappear if the market goes boom again, if it's even destined to go boom again. We're ALL rolling the dice at that point anyway. But the point of the 6-month web developer as I've seen is to take the quickest route to nearly any paying job (some $10/hr "web dev" jobs aren't worth it) to A) cover bills, B) start on the experience record, C) surround yourself with people that at least know of programming. They may not be Dennis Ritchies or Guido van Rossums, but believe me when I say your motivation to learn more and stick with it skyrockets when you can carry on everyday conversations that pertain to your field of interest.
ktran03 13y ago
Exactly. Whole post on point. Anyone's who been programming only 6months or less, you don't know $Hit about programming yet.

FLUX-YOU 13y ago

>If you want to be a reasonable developer, you cannot get away without being expert at least one low-level language (C or C++), one high-level language (Python, Ruby, LISP, etc), some knowledge of OS fundamentals (threads, processes, filesystems), some knowledge of concurrency (threads, locks, message passing), understand how to design your own language and build a compiler or interpreter (Flex/Bison, lex/yacc, etc), and a good base in discrete math (at the minimum, ideally some knowledge of numerical analysis and probability would be very useful as well). Okay, so I think when the OP was talking about 3-6 months for a developer job, they were referring to web dev. That is where I have seen the most "6 months to a position" stories. You certainly don't need all of that knowledge to put together a crud app or a front end with all of the frameworks and templates available. You do need that knowledge when your app/site suddenly explodes with millions of users and your backend has gone thermonuclear due to being unoptimized. In this case, the body of knowledge for a web developer is much smaller: HTML/CSS/JavaScript/A few frameworks. This is much more appropriate for the 1-3 year span. Some quick google searches: http://learnwithjeff.com/blog/2012/08/21/how-to-get-a-job-as-a-developer-in-less-than-six-months/ http://learnwithjeff.com/blog/2012/08/21/how-to-get-a-job-as... http://www.codeconquest.com/what-is-coding/programmer-6-months/ http://www.codeconquest.com/what-is-coding/programmer-6-mont... http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-web-developer/ http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-web-dev... Note: I know these are basically blogs with probably zero credibility here, but I've had a few conversations which basically said the same thing + 6 months extra time to be conservative.

zenbowman 13y ago
For those of us who were around during the 2001 web bust, we know that those "web dev" jobs will quickly disappear when the bubble bursts. That's exactly what happened to the "HTML and XML developers" around 2003, and it'll happen again to the "HTML and JavaScript developers" in 2016. If OP is serious about learning to program, then he should give himself more time and learn those other more valuable skills which will make the change of career worthwhile, and not worry so much about mastering the latest fad technologies, demand for which will almost certainly evaporate within a few years. Demand for computing is going to skyrocket, and if want computing to be a field of genuine professionals, its time we start holding ourselves and other engineers to a higher standard.
- FLUX-YOU 13y ago
  Even if it's slated to go boom, it's a position that pays and is a relevant resume mark. While doing web dev, study the 'real' stuff or specialize. Not all web dev positions will disappear if the market goes boom again, if it's even destined to go boom again. We're ALL rolling the dice at that point anyway. But the point of the 6-month web developer as I've seen is to take the quickest route to nearly any paying job (some $10/hr "web dev" jobs aren't worth it) to A) cover bills, B) start on the experience record, C) surround yourself with people that at least know of programming. They may not be Dennis Ritchies or Guido van Rossums, but believe me when I say your motivation to learn more and stick with it skyrockets when you can carry on everyday conversations that pertain to your field of interest.

ktran03 13y ago

Exactly. Whole post on point. Anyone's who been programming only 6months or less, you don't know $Hit about programming yet.