> and if you are self-taught, I can guarantee you that you have massive holes in your knowledge
Just curious, why is being self taught a guarantee for having massive holes ? Can you give some likely examples ?
Just curious, why is being self taught a guarantee for having massive holes ? Can you give some likely examples ?
My personal drive for self-teaching generally stems from either a specific problem I’m trying to solve on a project or a desire to dig deep into something “cool” I’ve come across.
In the first case, I’m tugging on the strings that seem most likely to get me to the solution to the problem I’m trying to solve. There’s a bit of backtracking here and there as I choose dead end paths, but it’s usually a depth first traversal. I’m not trying to learn all of a field, I’m just looking at what I need to know to move past the hurdle I’ve encountered.
In the second case, the goal is different but the process is pretty similar. When I’m learning for fun there is usually a bit more breadth, since I’m not trying to solve a specific problem in the immediate future, but I’m also probably not building a robust implementation of anything. I’ll usually end up with a decent surface level understanding of a topic; this is useful in that, if I encounter a related problem in my work, I’ve got at least the concept in my mental toolbox already and can do a deep dive more easily.
Over time I’ve built up a pretty wide and deep understanding of a lot of things as I’ve built them, but I am also fully aware there a ton of gaps (and have a big topic list that I occasionally visit during a slow period).
If only there was some way for people to communicate these linked topics in some sort of portable written format!
- Pointers and understanding how operating systems address/access memory at a low level.
- Hashing (This one may seem a little insulting but I have seen otherwise good developers confuse hashing with encrypting and it seems like an easy mistake to make if you haven't worked specifically with either concept)
- Binary math, logic, and encoding.
- The OSI model.
- Parallel programming, the program counter, and how operating systems execute/switch programs.
I would not count these as "massive" holes and it is also likely that these concepts would be discovered by a self-taught developer especially if she has looked for material from college-level CS courses.
None of this stuff is necessary to make great software but having this knowledge can help make other things easier to learn or understand. It's like the difference between knowing how to use common git commands and understanding how trees of objects are used to form a chain of commits.
I would not say "massive holes", as that would somewhat imply that this knowledge would be actually required, even though it's usually the optional, nice-to-have knowledge that you are getting from an actual CS degree.
You can still create whatever you imagine even if you are self-taught, but going through university would make it a lot more likely that you understand better the tools that you are using (algorithms, microprocessors, logic gates, electricity, quantum effects, etc.) so you will better know how to use them and what their limitations are.
But as a person who may be really new to the subject of development and computer science I think it's obvious that without a lot of research and prep ahead of time you might start with a book or topic and keep moving forward, but you may not be exposed to all of the same things (some probably really useful, some are likely bullshit) that you'd get in a more structured learning environment.