How did you learn to code? | Hacker News Reader

How did you learn to code?

1 pointvdthatte9 comments

Hey everyone,I'm curious- how did you go about learning how to code?

Was it self-taught and working on projects/bootcamps/through tutors?

Mostly self-taught: BASIC/ASM on a C64 using the Programmer's Reference and Compute!'s Gazette. Taught myself C on a Mac Plus by writing a game over winter break during my first year at university.

There's so much documentation available now (more than was available years ago) for so many open-source and free resources out there.

For me, though, the biggest assist to really learning something is having a project. Whether it's at my employer or a personal thing, a project drives me much better to learn something than documentation alone.

I completely agree with the project part. Funny, I started learning how to build iOS apps during the winter break of my first year at university too!

Self taught by reading and watching as many guides, articles, tutorials as possible. Then applying what I learned to build something I was interested in, at the time it was early webapps. Learned html, then I had to learn this thing called css, then js, then backend with ruby, then databases with sql, then hosting and managing with linux.. The more I learned the more I had to learn.

That's really cool! Did you have a vision for becoming an engineer or making your own products when you were starting out? Did that drive you? Or was it just the thrill of making stuff?

Got introduced to the school computer in 1980 - a Texas 990/10 mini. Immediately went out and bought a bunch of books on BASIC (the only language we were allowed to use). Bought a UK101 for home use (8k 6502), bought Rodnay Zaks' book on 6502. Also Leo Brodie's book on Forth. So self taught from books - the only way to learn back then !

Fascinating! Yeah it's funny how we tend to take Google/Stack overflow and all the amazing resources on the internet for granted now haha

I attended a bootcamp. The program had a very poorly constructed curriculum, and that made it feel more like a money grab than a place to learn useful skills. I got as much as I could out of it, but I would say that the majority of my current skillset has been self-taught.

That's really interesting!!

Would you recommend someone starting out to rather learn stuff on their own instead of going to a bootcamp? Also what do you think made their curriculum poor?

No I would definitely recommend a bootcamp, if you find the right one they will provide great value as long as you immerse yourself in them. I have many complaints about the particular one that I went to, starting with the fact that they charge nearly $15,000 CAD for a 6 month "Full Stack Developer" program, 3 months of which is spent covering very little Javascript, and focusing strictly on WordPress. Basically the first 3 months is a waste of your money. Another thing that I've read about, and heard about, but I haven't experienced, is that the prevalence of all these bootcamps has lead to an over saturation of Junior level developers in the industry. That would make sense intuitively, because there's only so many Junior jobs to go around, so it might be worth looking into how the job market is wherever you are.

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