Do I still have hope to become a self-taught programmer at 25? | Hacker News Reader

Do I still have hope to become a self-taught programmer at 25?

4 pointsmed978 comments

Hello I'm 25 and I have taken cs intro course 2 years ago and I have not practiced my skills since then I don't practice programming because I spend hours thinking and hours debagging.. but I have no other option I live in a third-world country and I have no other option I want to continue learning to program so I can get a job but I don't know what to learn next I only find tutorials about web development and I don't want to become a web developer I want programs I know a thing or 2 about programming variables, loops, and functions. can you tell me what to learn next thank you

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Yes, you definitely can become a self-taught programmer. There's plenty of free educational resources to learn anything you want.

To become good enough to get a job, that will take time, and lots of practice. Web development has a low barrier to entry (it's easy to get started), and is a big field with many different kinds of jobs, so I would keep your options open. You may find specific parts of it interesting, like doing things on the server side.

To become a programmer, you have to read and write lots of programs. The best way to keep motivated for long-term learning is to find projects you enjoy.

For example, you may like building and programming electronics.

https://hackaday.com/

Another angle: you could explore GitHub for projects that you find interesting, then learn what languages are useful for that purpose.

https://github.com/topics

Or: explore job listings, find jobs that sound interesting, then learn what knowledge they require to get hired.

I am 50 and constantly learning new things. You’ll be fine at 25. Stop worrying about age and put in the work.

If you’re tired of tutorials and textbooks, it’s time to build something real. To learn anything well, you have to go beyond theory into practice; the toy examples of tutorials don’t count.

Pick a juicy problem to solve and program the solution. Write test coverage along the way. Once you get a satisfactory solution, polish the result, whether it’s the UI or refactoring, until it’s something you can be proud of. When that happens, it can be the subject of your next interview. Good luck!

I agree, build something. But I don't think it has to be anything too 'juicy', especially not at this stage.

At this point I think it's about building something that will be a bit of a stretch but nothing too big that it's too difficult, too long, as that will only demoralise the poor person.

In the past I've known people who found a little project for themselves, a couple of times I've had to provide make up project briefs because they were unable to come up with one of their own.

I can think back on my own trajectory and the real stepping stones were the ones I was able to finish.

The other advice is to try to join an IRL programming community like a local meet up, if they still exist in 2022.

Good call on setting stretch goals: steady progress, maybe tempered by a little pain, would be ideal. Applies to all learning in general really.

That's around the age I started, though I had an EE background.

It's like learning a language. You don't necessarily want to keep learning more words. Learn how to use it instead. It's a struggle at first but it improves exponentially - the more you know, the easier it is to grasp other concepts.

Which language are you using?

There are plenty of free online tutorial. Have you tried something like https://docs.python.org/es/3/tutorial/ ?

Learn how to write. That's more important than learning how to program. This can be done, for example, by engaging with the articles here and taking part in the discussions. Maybe you will be ignored, downvoted, or ridiculed, but if you persist, you will become a better writer and proponent of your ideas.

You need structure when you learn to program, and you should not have any preferences when you are a beginner. Learn to program by becoming a QA person, which is much easier in third-world countries that receive work from places like the USA and the UK. QA is often manual, but there is a trend toward automating things, and it's a wonderful way to get into programming.

TL;DR: Get a job as QA, and write often.

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