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Comment by xupybd | Hacker News Reader

I like a lot of what the author is saying, but there is still value in learning the theory.

You can get learn a lot building your own apps, but then you're forced to learn some lessons the hard way. Sometimes you can avoid making mistakes by learning from someone with years of experience. You don't need to take a course, but reading can help so much. Books like The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete or Literate Programming can set a good base for thinking about your code.

Also to address the how self taught programmers get jobs, it's worth pointing out that the first question was from a 17 year old. I'd say it would be tricky at that age to get given a chance by an employer. So with time and age their employ-ability should increase as a factor of age alone.

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That is how my experience was. If you don't go the often traveled route of getting a CS degree, you're a lesser known quantity. By that I mean, you are more uncertain from the eyes of an employer. You also can't easily measure yourself against CS graduates, nor can you leverage the kind of network you may have had if you had, say if you took that major.

Out of my 100-ish Facebook friends that I consider to know to some reasonable degree in person, only one is a software engineer, like me, and he lives very far away. Being self-taught is really hard, especially if you do not have any peers that you can learn from.

> the first question was from a 17 year old. I'd say it would be tricky at that age to get given a chance by an employer. So with time and age their employ-ability should increase as a factor of age alone.

Seriously? Who do you think is more employable?

- 17 years old; high school graduate; never had a job.

- 30 years old; high school graduate; never had a job.

If it isn't the second one, you're describing something other than "age alone".

To be honest 17 is very young. I'd employ neither, without something that blew me away. I don't know that making that comparison is really relevant.

30 years and no work history implies some problem that has prevented them from working.

17 years implies a lack of life experience and likely a lack of soft skills. Once they hit their 20's however they're going to be less of a gamble, regardless of their work experience.

So yes at some point too much time will have passed for them to become more employable. But I was only thinking in a sub 5 year term. More as a means of encouraging someone in that situation, not as a hard and fast rule, that the older you are the more easily you're employed.

Hey, whatever you like! Who's more employable?

(1a) 17 years old; high school graduate; never had a job.

(1b) 22 years old; high school graduate; never had a job.

Or, if you prefer:

(2a) 17 years old; college graduate; never had a job.

(2b) 22 years old; college graduate; never had a job.

I submit that in every case the 17-year-old is more employable.

How would you go about finding a 17y/o college graduate in the first place?

I'd disagree, the 22 year old in every case to me.

You wouldn't wonder what he's been doing for the last 5 years?

Yeah I would wonder, but it wouldn't automatically raise concerns. I'd imagine that the unemployment rate for that demographics is relatively high. 22 is still very young and I'd not be surprised if many had not yet had a professional job at that age.

Perhaps my views are not typical, but I find a lot of maturing happens in late teens and early 20's. I might be jaded but I find people get significantly easier to work with when they hit mid 20's. There are many exceptions to this however and not all people mature at the same age.

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