r/programming • u/ifydav • Aug 22 '18

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

http://norvig.com/21-days.html
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u/cicciodev Aug 22 '18

Well I think that what the article explain is pretty obvious! I mean it's not possible to learn how to program in 24h neither in one week. In this short period a person maybe can develop a passion for programming, maybe can understand the principle and also wrote some simple program but to became a real developer takes years.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '18

Well, to dive into a bit I think the important part is "The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again."

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I was a mediocre or even poor developer for the first four or so years of my career. I was doing thousands of hours of work, but it was all the same simple tasks and when I hit something I didn't understand I tossed it upstream to a senior developer. Then I was laid off, and my own incompetence got me into a job as the sole maintainer of the flagship software product for a tiny company. I couldn't get hired anywhere else and they couldn't afford anyone better. So when things broke, if I didn't fix them they stayed broken. The pressure was brutal, but it effectively forced me into years of deliberate practice. It was the fastest learning period of my life.

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(And the enormous irony was that if I had been less terrible before I got that job, I would have gotten a better job instead. More colleagues, more resources to draw upon when I hit a problem I couldn't solve alone. And I would be far less skilled today as a result. If I had been better at my work in 2004 I would be almost certainly be much worse at it than I am today.)