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0 pointsblowski4y ago0 comments

In my teens and early 20s, I had all the time in the world to experiment. As a middle-aged father, I get very few hours to learn, and so have to use them efficiently. Being spoon-fed helps a lot with that. It's an especially acute problem given how much junk info exists on the internet.

If you can afford the time to spend a whole day learning how to solve the problem yourself, it's probably the best way to learn. But if we restrict the industry to those who can afford that time, we'll be poorer for it. Many people can be good developers despite going through a different learning path.

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ohashi4y ago· 3 in thread

The discrimination against different learning styles is a bit off-putting. Just because some folks can just read and self learn everything doesn't mean everyone can. It also doesn't mean those people aren't capable.

I am not a parent, but I've definitely found as I've gotten older it's harder to self learn sometimes. Having structure and some guidance can make a world of difference.

A good example I had not too long ago was having to go back into Java, something I hadn't written in many many years. Syntactically, I could write basic logic. But I didn't have any feel for how a project should be structured, what sort of libraries exist, and a lot of other things I know implicitly from languages I am working with regularly. I had a friend (who actually happened to be a bootcamp teacher in a previous life) spend a couple hours with me just going through the basics over a screenshare/voice chat. I picked up more in those 2-3 hours than I did in previous 2-3 weeks because I had someone who knew what they were doing, could answer questions, could anticipate what I might be thinking next and could guide me.

A good teacher can be infinitely helpful to learning something, even for someone experienced (I've been writing code for over two decades now). I can't imagine how much more helpful a good teacher could be for someone who is just trying to start learning. We shouldn't be discouraging this style of learning, we should be seeing how to make programming accessible to everyone interested in learning.

ddaalluu24y ago

I hear you. I'm self taught. I was always the go to guy when there was a problem. I had no one I could ask. Teachers asked me. But no one hired me. So I became self employed. I wonder how much better I would've done if I actually went studying and had a mentor. But I was always on the frontier, always. I also fixed so many bad student projects, aka where someone would hire a student for cheap and the student would abandon the project and I had to step in to finish it. Ah well it is what it is. Nowadays I feel like an outsider, probably because I am. Still being self employed but my projects crashed and income is way below sustainable. So either create something new, but I'm getting old and tired and bored, or find a job, but I'm too used to the comfort of working when I feel like it and not being on a clock. Anyhow I digress and if I had a proper teacher in my young years, how much better could I have done. I'd imagine an increased learning speed of factor at least 5 if not 10. Also not studying means not knowing the language e.g. log(o) or w/e. I never knew what "scalar" meant when I read it, but I knew without having a label "scalar". etc etc

lifeplusplus4y ago

I prided myself on being self taught but once I went to a bootcamp and learned RoR in just 3 months from zero to working products.. it blew my mind how much having a good teacher around for 5 hours or so can do for you. Previously I taught myself js and it took 3 years to become decent at it. Teacher was able fill in the holes, give watch out tips, inform about parts to skip for now, show the big picture and keep momentum going.

imtringued4y ago

I was a decent programmer before my first job but doing something every day for 8 hours is a completely different experience. You don't have this "luxury" in your free time. The moment things stop being interesting or become too difficult you just stop and give up.

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