Ask HN: Becoming a Software Engineer?

> my maths skills are lacking

The majority of computer programmers do not use or know any math beyond the high school level. Math is great and I won't discourage you from learning it but for an entry level programming job it's 100% unnecessary.

> The Art of Computer Programming

It's really weird to me that you've even tried this book. Despite the name it's a really serious computer science text that would be struggle even for students with a graduate level knowledge of computer science and mathematics. I would not expect you to get anything out of it right now.

What exactly is your level of programming knowledge? Can you write a function that prints a string in python, what about a function that determines if a string is a palindrome? Figure out where you are and then work on getting to the next level.

> I feel like everyone but me can sort of 'see' the code in a sort of 'logical' engineering kind of way and that's the skill I'd like to develop.

You might be expecting too much, too quickly. This is an ability that just takes tons of repetitions to develop. You need to struggle with bugs and errors for 1000+ hours to get anywhere. Intuition comes from practice, not reading or lectures.

Thanks for your reply Overrun11, appreciate this! I had to search what a 'palindrome' is, didn't know this was the word for it!

>What exactly is your level of programming knowledge?

As another commenter put it, probably in the 'tutorial hell' stage.

It sounds like you might be stuck in a "tutorial loop". Put them aside for now, and try building a tiny project for yourself. It could be anything that interests you; scratch whatever itch you may have right now no matter how silly/useless it seems. The goal is to start writing code for something tangible (instead of learning the basic mechanics of whatever language for the nth time as you aimlessly cycle through tutorials). Your code will be crappy and unidiomatic. That's okay because after you get that first project under your belt, you'll now have a better idea as to which resources to target next to improve.

Thanks mgomez, I think you're onto something. My only difficulty with this would be the concept of 'you don't know what you don't know.

I just want to second this suggestion.

Pick a small project that you care about.

It has to be something you care about because you will pay attention to whether the results do something meaningful, which is the key to guiding you toward actually learning what you need to learn. For me, this meant making video games. For my friend a physics educator, it might mean generating random quiz questions with meaningful or realistic numbers.

It also has to be simple. For me, I started a long time ago with a text based game where you fight a sequence of monsters by basically rolling dice with tweaks and theme that mattered to me. For my friend, it might be literally randomly generating 3 random numbers and putting them into a pre-written physics problem.

There is always a way to add on to a project you care about, so start super simple and make it work really well (just meaning, to your satisfaction). Then add on another thing and try to integrate it, and so on.

My CS students when I was TAing always learned the most from long term projects that had enough freedom for them to make it fun for themselves. This is in contrast to curated sequences of academic exercises and expository text.

So for example, creating something in pygame could be useful if you enjoy making games but don't necessarily want to be a game developer, just for the education you will receive via the enjoyment you are having making it?

The beauty of starting any arbitrary project. It will SHOW you what you don't know.

Some people love this phase of learning the best because it can be the most exciting part ("I hadn't even heard of topic X this morning but now I know enough to be dangerous"), and some just accept this as the slog that's required to get you up to speed enough to build useful things which is the part they enjoy the most. (I'm the latter.) But either way, that's how all of us start.

I had a similar problem to you. While it was easy for me to complete assignments on Udemy or similar, I didn't develop a deep understanding of anything I am doing. What finally helped was doing the free Java course from the University of Helsinki (mooc.fi/en). What set it apart from the other courses is, that for each topic they are introducing, they have multiple, involved coding assignments and provide good automated feedback when your submitted solution doesn't work.

Of course, the beginning was still difficult. But the assignments were all solveable and didn't take too much time (on average), so I had a positive feedback loop that kept me engaged. Ultimately, just by the sheer amount of assignments and them having appropriate difficulty levels, I managed to develop a good intuition about why some things work and other don't. And later on, they also include slightly bigger projects so you can put stuff into perspective.

I do feel the problem with most online courses, that they often have very simple exercises (that can be easily copy-pasted) and overly long explanations. But the real way to learn programming is by doing it, not reading about it. Once you gained the underlying understanding, the theoretical concepts also become much easier to grasp.

Really appreciate this feedback gabelschlager, and I've seen mooc.fi a couple of times mentioned. From the other commentors suggestions, it seems that just trying (and doing) to build something would be beneficial.

Welcome! I definitively feel your struggle because I was there a few years ago. When I started this journey a few years ago it just seemed daunting and impossible but I remember telling myself: "people do this and I am 'people' so I do meet the minimum requirements!"

I agree with other comments here that it seems like you might be stuck in a tutorial loop. Do start building something, a small project for yourself. I've had the privilege of mentoring a few people and it is almost always when building something, not when "learning" that the actual learning and insights and aha moments happen.

Getting a mentor or coding in a community can be invaluable. We all learn differently and build mental models to understand stuff. (I'm down for helping in any way :-) email on profile)

But if you really want this don't give up!

Another thing that sometimes can get starters stuck is a false idea that engineers have some sort of privileged mind (some would like to think so) but in reality we are all people from all places and genders and backgrounds and think about things in wildly different ways! So don't try to become some idealized and maybe non-existent ideal engineer, but just grow yourself with this new skills and do what works for you!

You mentioned that you have done some R and Python, and your comment about math seems to suggest that the use of those might have been in data science-y fashion?

It could also help to decide _what_ type of software engineering you'd like to do. This could help you clear up a bit of confusion because there's A LOT in software engineering...

Anyways, best of luck!

>So don't try to become some idealized and maybe non-existent ideal engineer, but just grow yourself with this new skills and do what works for you!

I never considered this, so this is appreciated, and so is the help. I will send you an email for sure.

>You mentioned that you have done some R and Python, and your comment about math seems to suggest that the use of those might have been in data science-y fashion?

Yes, it was and I actually enjoyed it a lot.

> Am I capable of learning these things even if I find them overwhelming?

Yes! Especially if you find them overwhelming - that means you've taken the first step of treading into new territory and trying to make sense of what you see. "Beginners mind" is a fantastic resource.

The key is to stay in that mindset, explore, iterate, stay curious about what you observe. The only way to do that effectively (besides sheer stubborn willpower) is to work on an interesting project. Build something real! Start with the simplest possible thing you can imagine and iterate. When you get stuck, learn to push through and to get comfortable with long periods of ambiguity. There is no substitute for practice. Learn each topic as it comes up, in the context of a real application not a tutorial, and you'll develop an intuitive sense for that code eventually.

Thankyou perrygeo, you're solidifying the advice of many other commentors on here and I appreciate that. Do you have any reccomendations?

Sorry to spam another course at you but if:

>Resources I've tried: Codecademy, Datacamp, Udemy (automate the boring stuff, Python Bootcamp: Zero to Hero, etc), FreeCodeCamp, TheOdinProject, FutureCoder, Python.org, LearnPython.org, learncpp.com, C# for Beginners, leetcode, edabit, exercism.io, Code Wars, Code Abbey, Project Euler, Codinggame.com, books from NoStarchPress and various other books and youtube videos (e.g. FreeCodeCamp Videos).

If all of these failed then the one I think will click for you is CS50x.

https://cs50.harvard.edu/x/2022/

Watch all of the videos, do all of the problem sets, set up the online coding environment so you can push your code to the testing suite and check your work passes.

No problem kingkongjaff, I've considered CS50x. I noticed that they've produced CS50P which is what I initially started but then I got analysis-paralysis between CS50x or CS50P and never finished.

Which would you reccomend?

Do CS50x.

Then if you want to continue do CS50 web or CS51

Try this: https://github.com/woadray/cs-bootcamp, it's my self made bootcamp. I came up with it as I'm 32 and attempting to switch career, even thinking about going back to university. It's hard but you will learn a lot. Take your time, there is no shortcut to studying. And YES YOU CAN.

Spent a couple of minutes checking out this resource, and I really appreciate the links tsingy! Thank you.

Do you have any other 'intro' links?

This series is excellent on crossing the chasm from interested to effective: https://lowlyswe.substack.com . Code (not study, code) 50+ hours/week for a couple years.

Thank you spenrose. I've bookmarked one of the articles and I'll read that later this evening. It looks interesting.