From my experience as someone who is primarily self-taught, I think that having a more experienced programmer who can act as a mentor is vital to one's own grow

From my experience as someone who is primarily self-taught, I think that having a more experienced programmer who can act as a mentor is vital to one's own growth as a developer. My first experiences programming in a professional capacity consisted of writing VBA macros to either automate tasks like moving or reformatting data, or in one instance, run an iterative algorithm that could not be expressed simply with excel formulas. Looking back, I was stuck at that level for several years, until I was given some new assignments that were signficantly harder than my previous ones, and I had no idea where to begin. I discussed some of my current assignments with a colleague who had some programming experience, and he gave me a few basic lessons (in VBA) about object-oriented programming and communicating with SQL databases using the OLEDB library. Based on this knowledge, I set out to build some advanced, database-enabled spreadsheets, relying heavily on Google, Stack Overflow, and various blogs whenever I hit a snag. As I was progressing, I would bounce architecture ideas off my mentor and he would give me some topics to research in more depth. I would then go back to my online resources to figure out how to apply these new concepts to help solve my problem. As time went on and I became more confident in my skills, with the advice of my mentor, I moved from Access to SQL Server and from VBA to C# and the .NET Framework, eventually reaching a point where I became a self-sufficient programmer developing full scale applications used across my firm. For a motivated student, I think this method of teaching can yield tremendous results. With the vast amount of detailed information out there from tons of easily accessible sources, having a more experienced mentor create a path for the novice to follow but also letting the student figure out the implementation details on his/her own can be very rewarding. It allows the student to develop strong problem-solving skills within a smaller context (so the student doesn't get overwhelmed with indecision) yet also provides a support system when the student truly is stuck on a problem. I'm not suggesting that this is the BEST or ONLY way programming should be taught, but for someone like me, who learns best by doing, it can be a great way to get started in the field.