Ask HN: Your opinion on self-taught programmers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Your opinion on self-taught programmers?

10 pointsnicoschuele20 comments

Some time ago, I wrote a little post on my personal blog titled "Self-taught vs formal education in programming". You can find it here: http://bit.ly/12131O7

To my surprise, the stats of my blog exploded. Even though I didn't get many comments, I received quite a few e-mails asking me how to become a self-taught programmer. Today, I posted what I think is a very valid path, for anyone with the drive and passion, to learn: http://bit.ly/1246qMU

I am very interested to know what's your take when it comes to self-taught coders. Are you one of those? Have you hired one? Do you think self-taught ones are not as good as those with a formal education?

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Frankly, I think the value of formal education is underrated by both hackers and university professors. CS departments generally have low expectations of their students, with the exception of the "Top 5" schools. I have been on either side of this: as a teenager, I was self-taught and learned how to program by writing thousands of lines of code, and in college and grad school, I received a formal education in computer science, but I had to go out and learn more about the topics my courses covered on my own. A formal education is immensely valuable to writing more than just mundane code.

The key problem with being self-taught is that it is up to you to find the things you should be learning. It is very easy to miss whole topics that may be interesting or enlightening, or may even change how you think about programming. Here is an example of something I would never have known without a formal education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_programming

It is easy to gloss over it, but this is a completely different way to think about programming. You might not see it used much in the real world, but it opens your mind to a new way to think about problem solving and can help a lot in understanding other things (like model checking or natural language processing).

There is also the matter of understanding certain abstract concepts that are very important in both theory and practice. Asymptotic analysis comes to mind here, though even a lot of people with formal educations seem to have trouble with it (probably because they thought their theory courses were a waste of time). Algorithms and data structures are also prominent examples of things that are easy for self-taught programmers to miss, especially those that are not included in their favorite languages' standard libraries.

All-in-all, I think the best programmers are those who have both a formal education and who can and do learn on their own. Self-taught programmers usually know their language of choice at a deep level; coupled with a formal education, you can do a lot.

> Here is an example of something I would never have known without a formal education (Logic Programming):

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I read a blogger who wrote that CSS was a declarative language. Curious, it wasn't 10 minutes later after looking at various programming paradigms on Wikipedia that I was reading about Logic Programming.

One argument I hear a lot is that self taught programmers can teach themselves the theoretical stuff later on their own.

As you mentioned, one problem is that you wont have the direction. I think some other problems that are often overlooked is that you wont have the drive, or the time.

When you're in college, learning is your full time job. You have deadlines and requirements for that learning. All of your time is dedicated to it.

If you try to teach yourself these things while working, are you really going to be as dedicated to it as a student can be? In practice, I don't see this happening.

Another complaint is that you're not learning the applied skills you'll need in the industry. My view on that is that you have your entire life to work and learn the tools of the trade. You only have one real chance to go to college and learn the theoretical stuff.

If you're burnt out on school, by all means, take a few years off, see how the working life is, save some money. But before long you'll have more responsibilities, maybe a family, and no time. The longer you wait, the harder you'll have to work to go back to college.

I'm self-taught in the sense that I learned Javascript before I graduated high school and got a chance to learn to program in a formal setting. Also, I got a degree in Electrical Engineering, even though I use exactly none of that in my current position as... wait for it... a web developer.

I think self-taught or not is not the question. The real question is, are you passionate about programming, or at least about creating things via programming. There are a lot of people who have taught themselves to program as a means to an end, and I think that makes them "better", in some sense, than someone who started their CS degree in search of a paying job without ever writing a line of code.

Of course, the above is very binary, and as comfortable as we programmers might be with that, (and if I may issue a blanket cop-out at the last second), I think "self-taught" is a small facet of the whole that makes a "good" or "bad" programmer.

This: "The real question is, are you passionate about programming, or at least about creating things via programming."

I can't agree more but I know there are many who believe the exact opposite and think that only academic education can turn someone into a good coder.

There's a difference between self-taught to get a specific job done or self-taught to learn foundational CS / SE concepts, methods, etc. Some university courses are nothing more than a souped-up "Learning Java in 21 days" padded out to 3 years.

Unfortunately there are lots of university trained "software engineers" who can barely compete with your average self-taught programmer. So in terms of getting a job it depends on the company's hiring and evaluation processes. Typically big corporates want degrees and many startups look at what you've already accomplished.

It dose not matter if you are self thought or not. The only thing that matter is how smart you are. I have met people with degrees that for some reason don't know shit about the fundamentals of CS and then there is smart people that just gets it.

All i know is school dosent come even remotly close to preparing you for programming in the real world im self taught and even if I had todo it over again I would not waste any money trying to learn programming from a school. not to mention you can find EVERYTHING you need to learn and implement programming w/o a school and schools are usually 5-6 years behind so they will be teaching vb6 when the standard is win8rt or very basic php when you should be learning new technologies and concepts...also in my experince most schools dont even teach its more like "heres the book...read it and write an essay" (honestly which employer is gonna ask for an essay or a "open-ended-response" to my projects

if you lean more towards web dev...then you most deffeintly dont need school..web programming is dead easy even for a beginner who has never touched programming. application/desktop programming is a little more involved...the main difference being web dev is mostly more cosmetic(eg change something a refresh to see its output) compared to the compile-link and run phase of application dev... I honestly think if your passionate about w/e your learning then your employer(if he/she actually cares about the quality of your work) will hire you without a degree/diploma (im not suggesting you drop out of hs)

> web programming is dead easy even for a beginner who has never touched programming

That one hurt. Some say it's easy as pie even for a kid, some say it's so complex with all the layers going on. Why can't we never see it as it is?

I also firmly believe that anyone who thinks web development is easier than any other kind of application development should stop writing crappy PHP and improve the quality of her/his own work.

Don't let it get to you.

The web is just the interface. What's going on behind the scenes varies on the application. The parent made an extremely broad generalization.

You mean the fact the writing procedural code is outdated but still being used?

Really, almost every programmer is a self-taught programmer. The programming that you get in a formal education barely scratches the surface.

Yeah but at the same time, you are not just learning how to program when you go to school (if you are, then you are being ripped off). You are also learning how to think abstractly about programming problems, how to analyze programs, what sort of programs are possible, etc. It is hard to know what to learn when you are self-taught, and it is easy to get caught up in minute details while missing the bigger picture.

Talent, curiosity, interest and practice will find a way. I think what you are saying applied pre-Google, but now it's easy to see the path ahead.

You need to know what to search for on Google. Curiosity is good, but some topics are just not obvious enough for a curious hacker to search for. This is particularly true of more advanced topics, that are often not covered well by Google searches or wind up buried in noise.

Just follow the links and Google the keywords mentioned in the writings. I'd be in favor of people going to school to learn how to use Google.

Edit: that wasn't a knock at you, but I am often surprised at some of my smart friends who don't know how to use it, as in not knowing that the dash in front of keyword will eliminate those results.

That might be true for a few very talented and motivated people, but not for the majority. I would take a person with a theoretical computer science degree over a self-taught programmer any day, unless the self-taught one is clearly one of those insanely talented people.

Agreed, but the vast majority of programming jobs don't require a theoretical computer science degree. It depends on what you're looking for.

Programming is a life long learning process. I'd venture to say most computer programmers don't have computer science degrees in the same way most musicians don't have formal training. If you don't have a passion for it combined with talent, no amount of university training will fix that.

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