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Comment by creativityhurts | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but you can't become a _programmer_ in 12 weeks. You can become a pretty good code wrangler, you can put togeter a decent website or an application but you still have around 10 more years to go (as shown above/below http://norvig.com/21-days.html).

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Suggesting that it takes ten years to become "a programmer" is absurd. An experienced programmer, perhaps, but as soon as you can write and reason about programs (inferring what they do without a compiler), I would call you a programmer. Whether you're good is another matter, though a talented programmer can outpace one a decade their elder.

This just goes back to the "people as resources" (which is code word for developers are widgets) garbage that constantly comes up within organizations, etc, it wouldn't surprise me at all if creativityhurts is a manager of some sort. People are unique, not drones, some have a naturally higher aptitude and interest in programming than others as well as other factors such as intelligence. IMO a programmer who loves what they do and spends time working on their craft outside of their 9-5 job can quickly outpace a more experienced programmer who has little passion and just does it "because its their job". I've seen this first-hand that some people with years and years of experience just don't have that enthusiasm for software development, as soon as you talk to them about a concept that they aren't already familiar with through sheer rote memorization they either lose interest completely or just can't seem to catch on. That said, obviously if you take 2 developers who have similar attributes as far as aptitude, intelligence and enthusiasm but 1 has 10 years more experience than the other, than yes, of course, the one with more experience is going to be better overall.

yeah seriously. I'm teaching myself how to program and for the last year, I ve been spending an average of 10 hours a day reading, practicing,studying Python and JavaScript. I m just getting into concepts like Test Driven Development and design patterns. I m a disciplined guy. But, saying this is like saying: " How I became an astronomer in 12 weeks". It's not just the theory, It's the experience that comes with time and things you realize by making mistakes that make you become something.

You haven't actually read that article have you.

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