How Learning to Program Changed the Way I Think | Hacker News Reader

How Learning to Program Changed the Way I Think

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19 pointsdjblue20097 comments

Great post DJ. I'm excited to see where you'll be after this next year! I enjoy watching really smart people with dedication excel in programming when they don't have a traditional technical background, like a degree in CS.

"I thought that I could just read a book and know how to program."

I felt the same way when I first started with Django. I had been using Python for about 2 years and I assumed I could read a book and pick it up overnight. How naive I was! That was ~3 years ago and I noticed just this past year I've been diving into the Django source to see how certain things are implemented, like different decorators and middleware, so I could _properly_ write my own. I'm constantly learning how to make Django do what I want in the most efficient and pragmatic way. Programming is absolutely a craft that takes time to understand and master. The exact same can be said for the tools and frameworks we use.

Thanks, Jordan. I think traditional schooling conditions us to believe we can just read a book and learn something. It seems to be all about content knowledge instead of process knowledge. One of the most valuable lessons I've learned as a developer is learning how to learn.

> One of the most valuable lessons I've learned as a developer is learning how to learn.

Not just valuable for programming, but for anything in general. the skill to learn how to learn something should be taught in high school, not learnt via osmosis, or intuition at university.

Diving into source code is a really great way to learn. You see not just the nuts and bolts described in documentation, but examples of how the parts fit together in actual software. I wish CS degrees included more of this sort of literary analysis of software.

"I remember realizing that at the end of every week, I had implemented a feature I had no idea how to do at the beginning of the week."

This was beautiful. I guess I passed that stage without consciously realizing that; thank you for reminding me how wonderful programming is.

Thanks, sanxiyn! It's an incredible feeling to be able to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and look back at how far you've come. Does that feeling wear off? What keeps you going?

I've had the same experience, when I first started at the job I'm at now, I always had this feeling that I was too technically inexperienced, but I found that I was able to find many of the solutions to my problems by doing research (with the help of Google, of course)

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