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Comment by jcoffland | Hacker News Reader

All the resources to learn coding are freely available. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make a buck.

When transitioning from two decades of mainly Coldfusion (mvc) and some Php to C# last year I spent a few hundred dollars on Pluralsight. Best money I ever spent. SOLID, the full asp.net framework, CQRS, a bunch of common patterns, etc etc.

I feel like I've learned more in the last 18 months than I did in the decade that preceded them. It has totally rekindled my childhood passion for programming (Vic20/C64 basic, Amiga assembly).

I'm a bit ashamed by how far I had fallen behind, but at the same time it shows it might not be too late for someone who got too comfortable until reality hit him in the face.

Quality content is really, really important. So is finding a great mentor. And also other sources of inspiration like DotNetRocks, and reading He every day.

>> Reading HN every day.

I disagree.

- It takes time to make high-quality resources. Teaching is a real job.

- Asking for money can decrease churn (see: Sunk Cost Fallacy)

- Programs that include synchronous mentoring cost money, but might be more effective

Those are good points. I would personally narrow it down to the personality type of the individual. I personally do much better self-learning than in a class room. I taught myself how to program after dropping out of business school and it was the best choice I've ever made.

I have a feeling this dichotomy (between self-learning vs classrooms) will be especially true for coding far more often than most subjects. Also anecdotally I found a part-time university course in english/writing to be the opposite of my experience vs learning coding.

That would really be the difference in whether or not I recommended someone down a particular path. But I also believe this is what makes someone a good developer - even outside of the learning experience. Basically your interest and motivation in the subject outside of formal settings. Which drives talented devs towards OSS projects and learning new languages.

Although not everyone has to be above average at their jobs to be functional. There are plenty of BigCo programming jobs where you could be generally disinterested in off hours and still be of value to the organization (see: I've met a number of Java/C++ devs who would fit this category who work in big teams and are happy/functional). Those people would probably be better suited for coding schools. And would probably be a large percentage of those leaving the military for retraining, so I support the OPs mission.

You are think only of passive was of learning.

Quite frankly, if a person has any sort of formal education in their background such as college or even taking coding classes in high school, they are then entirely unqualified to offer such an opinion.

It may be easy to learn new languages online due to having learned the foundations, but unless you can say you learned all the foundations online, this type of comment isnt helpful. As many others have mentioned learning is a science and it takes a lot of work to structure learning in a digestible manner.

People have been self teaching since before online was a thing, and the materials available online today are vastly better and more complete than what was available pre-web. You could just as well argue that someone isn't qualified to offer an opinion if they didn't teach themselves to program from photocopied systems and hardware reference manuals. (That's the way some of us did.)

There can be advantages to a formal program, especially for some people, but claiming that formal education is somehow a prerequisite is a gross exageration.

The problem with self-teaching is that you don't know what you don't know, so you don't realise where the gaps in your knowledge are.

There's quite a difference between programming, in the sense of knowing how to put (say) Python code together, and being a professional developer.

The latter should include a whole extra set of analytical, algorithmic, social, and professional skills.

In practice it may not - but it does often enough for the distinction to be real.

And then there are those with sheep skins that still can't program FizzBuzz.

I even had professors in computer science that hated using computers and could barely conceal their contempt of them.

What did you expect? The purpose of a Computer Science education is not to teach programming. Just like a Physics education doesn't teach you how to bolt together steel beams on a bridge.

But I wouldn't expect physicists to have disdain for engineers.

Then again, any discipline that has "science" in its name probably isn't.

Where is the disdain?

The professors' contempt of computers? In a computer science department? I mean, it wasn't math I was majoring in ...

Originally CS was a branch of math, then the issue was confused because many places taught software engineering in CS departments, and finally we begane to settle on some sane terminology.

What I think they now commonly mean:

* CS is a branch of math

* the art of building software is engineering

Of course there are tradeoffs. I'm not arguing that self-teaching is necessarily ideal or preferable. But both the article's premise (or at least the tl;dr people are taking away from the headline...the text is a bit more nuanced) of "can't do code school therefore can't learn to code" and the assertion that someone isn't qualified to comment on self-teaching if they have an education are ridiculous.

> The problem with self-teaching is that you don't know what you don't know, so you don't realise where the gaps in your knowledge are.

That is why the only valid starting point is : the problem at hand and to solve.

From there, you can work your way back to what lack of knowledge prevents you from solving the problem.

If knowledge does not show up somewhere, assisting you while solving a problem, it is most likely useless knowledge and undoubtedly just a waste of time.

> The problem with self-teaching is that you don't know what you don't know, so you don't realise where the gaps in your knowledge are.

The benefit of self-teaching is that you do not have to try and learn everything in four straight years and then set forth into the world with what you were able to take in during that time. In practice, the gaps become quite apparent when the gaps become problematic and one can quickly fill in the gaps on the fly thanks to no dependence on the schedule of others to fill those gaps.

Okay, I'll bite. I learned programming entirely on my own, both from the manuals that came with my computer and from magazines, both computer specific and general purpose (Byte mostly---it was a fantastic magazine in the 80s).

But this was in the 80s, when computers came with decent documentation and a guide on programming. It also helped that I was in high school and thus, had the time to devote to self study without having to worry about supporting myself.

So I think it's possible, but it requires a degree of discipline and self-motivation to learn. Not everyone has that.

But to say that "if a person has any sort of formal education in their background ... they are then entirely unqualified to offer such an opinion" comes across as arrogant.

There's a huge difference between the theoretical ability to learn something and actually having access to education. I completely agree that we're living at a time when anyone with a decent laptop and internet connection has access to the basic required materials, but learning something from scratch with minimal guidance is difficult, and the huge amount of mythologizing around programming has made it even worse.

Bootcamps, at least Dev Bootcamp, focus heavily on the mental/emotional aspect of this stuff as much as the technical material itself, and do a lot to build the confidence that really is required for many people.

And yeah, I do think most companies are primarily incentivized by profits, but that doesn't mean they can't provide a genuine service at the same time.

Full disclaimer, I used to work for Udacity and was "trying to make a buck".

> but learning something from scratch with minimal guidance is difficult

Unfortunately, that is the only real skill. Everything else you can learn by using exactly that.

Trying to make a buck isn't bad. But I also repeat to people that learning this stuff is free. I think it's my obligation to repeat it to people so that they don't get taken advantage of by people trying to make a buck. You can learn it all for free, the only 'cost' is time, which varies wildly with or without paid guidance. It's ok to be thrifty, even "cheap", when it comes to learning, and for coding especially the best resources tend to be free.

For guidance, there's a literal industry of practicing programmers who pay it forward all the time with source code plus guidance on IRC/skype/email/HN/blogs/etc.etc. Desire to actually learn is the key thing, and while paying someone can help keep your education progress on track even in the face of disinterest (college courses you hate but must pass), it's no substitute for internal motivation. (Edit: a sibling comment does note the sometimes paying can actually spark internal motivation. Paying for things can be worth it, but it isn't necessary.)

But there is a vast difference between being alone in a room, and being in a room full of people who are all trying to learn the same thing.

But what you're talking about is more like a club for new coders (which is a good idea). This guy was specifically looking for coding schools, which I assume are online only (so no classroom atmosphere).

Many (most?) coding bootcamps are conducted in person.

Now that access is so prevalent and available to most (not even just resources related to programming/coding/whatever), it seems like it tends to be discounted compared when access was the issue and worrying about anything else outside of that could be considered to be fanciful.

Yeah but knowing where to find them (the good ones) is not an easy task. There is definitely economic value in the curation of material, and in the personal oversight provided by courses.

This is true, but in the same way as this:

"Anyone can be physically fit. Everything you need to know about diet and exercise is freely available."

In education as in fitness it often helps to have a guiding hand.

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