Programming: Intrinsic or Taught
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
Programming is both intrinsic and taught. I've been programming for almost 10 years now. I have had no college level classes in programming though I do have a bachelors degree from Univ. of Richmond. I feel my liberal arts education helped me to think logically which helps me program. Nothing teaches programming like actual experience though. College and University can give you a good head start, but nothing beats years of real world experience. Also it is hard to determine what makes a great programmer. Which would you rather have on your team? A good coder who gets the job done on time and writes code that is easy to follow and understand by other programmers. Or would you rather have the elitist programmer who can solve any problem with C++, but nobody else can understand the code?
I didn't get any requirements for the signature
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I don't consider myself self-taught, but educated by the community. Yeah, there was some schooling that was labeled "Programming", but that was indeed lessons in syntax, diagramming and a lot of documentation (the SDM-days, never used it IRL). Aw, and kissing a professors' arse. Needless to say I failed at my schooling. "Educated" by the community, because the algorithms from the books didn't come alive until I started using them. Followed a lot of tutorials, but those were prepped by the community. Read tons of articles, misinterpreted some, and got corrected. Even wrote some articles. Had lots of non-programming education which made me a better programmer. I can still hear grandma shout that I should clean the kitchen after an attempt at cooking, and my grandfather nodding that she's right, simply because a worker cleans his tools. The field ain't old enough to sell "handcrafted" applications like they are hot buns, but craftsmanship isn't determined by age, and I don't think it's hereditary. To some it's a job, to others a living, and some people are actually defined by what they do. There's lots of people here that I consider "craftsmen". I ain't there yet, and even if I never get that far - I'll always consider information to be my meat, and I'll always strive to become better. Your question has reminded me of the fact that I forgot something that I'll correct right now; A big thanks to everyone here who had to bear my ignorance, as it has helped me to become what I am :-\
I are troll :)
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Same with most things; you have to love it to do it well. If you don't have the aptitude, you can't learn it. Even if you have the aptitude, you still need to be taught. And taught. And taught some more. The best training comes from working with people who have been doing it for a long time. And you're unlikely to get such a job without a degree. The first programming job I had after I got my BSCS I was on my own to write a complete system (in VAX C). I did it, in the allotted time, it worked (it may still be working, I don't know), and I think it is/was better than what many of my classmates would have produced. But it is by no means of "professional" quality. The next job I had I was on a team, maintaining a large product, and that was a huge step in improving my skills. Programming is a little easier than many disciplines because: you have the compiler to help you, there is undo, you don't (generally) use up physical resources on failed attempts, and you don't need to start all over from the beginning after a failed attempt. Kids these days don't know how good they have it. We didn't have Visual Studio, .net, and the Internet when I was in school.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
The best training comes from working with people who have been doing it for a long time.
Not necessarily "work". There's experts here that I don't work with, and their knowledge still rubs off. I agree that you should seek out the place where the people lurk that are good at what you want to become good at :)
I are troll :)
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I personally believe that the best way to learn programming is to do programming. You can only be taught the basics of programming but for you to be worthy of being called a programmer. It has to come from within you. Programming is therefore self-taught. I was given the basics in college but i had to teach myself to be where i am today.
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
-my Dad got given a ZX spectrum when I was about 7 or so, and I started playing on that, writing little games and stuff -in highschool, I started on turbo pascal -after studying for A+, N+ etc, realised I didn't want to spend my life crawling around underneath someone's desk, so I started teaching myself -got 1st job, largely unsupervised: allowed me to continue teaching myself -got "proper" job, with excellent mentoring on some *real* OO and great design practices - my education in "the Art" started here -got another job and learnt about customers, long-hours, business, and some more advanced DB designs (important if you're a developer, not a coder) -got another job (current), and started learning from some of the best, and (*fanfare*) at last started working with more cutting edge tech. In between all this I started my BSc (as yet unfinished) and got a few qualifications on the way. Overall, I would say you HAVE to have certain "hard-coded" skills in you, and after that you really need passion, good mentorship, and some good old fashioned experience. I believe hard-qualifications like degrees can *partially* replace the need for mentors (if the university is any good), but a degree a good programmer does not make.
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Roughly, for me (in sequential order:) Self taught. Re-taught the "proper" way to do things at college. Re-taught the "proper proper" way to do things at university. Re-taught the "proper proper proper" way to do things in my first job. Re-taught the "proper proper proper proper" way to do things in my second job Teach others
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
Thats what I thought, not education vs self taught, but education && self taught. As a 90% self taught I feel I need more education, but have seen educated without experience that are clueless
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
Web Architects
Well that alone should clue you in not to even waste time arguing with them. I'll go out on a limb and claim that 90% of the people who use "Web Architect" as a title don't know what the hell they're talking about.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
And why is that? It may be an odd title since presumably such people architect web applications, not the web itself, but it's surely no worse than most other titles in this line of work. I hope you aren't suggesting there is no need for architecting web apps.
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
In my opinion (which probably doesn't have that much value) programming is a mindset, not a skill. I did a 3 year qualification in Mechanical Engineering with Design specilisation, and I am now in Financial programming. Not for a minute do I regret doing the Engineering as it tought me how to think. Maths, Engineering etc are all exactly like Programming, same mindset, same approach. Having an education and experience offer you great tools to be more productive and effective, but true programming (Maths, Engineering etc) lies underneath those...
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I have had no formal instruction in programming, yet I can program several languages.
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I think all learning is "self-teaching" on some level; merely attending lessons and hearing someone present the theoretical stuff probably doesn't achieve much, for most people, most of the time. I went to a Norwegian university and studied for a civil engineering degree in telematics / microelectronics. This was thirteen years ago so things may have changed but at least back then all the civil engineering degrees were very traditional beasts with lots of cross-discipline stuff. I'd have to say I emerged an expert on nothing and knowing a lot more than I had before about chemistry, static, dynamic, and quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, general and electron physics, cybernetics, analog and digital circuit design, signal processing, and above all mathematics (algebra, geometry, calculus, numerics, and discrete mathematics). There was a lot of lab work and hands-on stuff, but in my opinion it is so unfocussed for so long (one did get to narrow one's field of study towards the end) to constitute a somewhat wasteful use of time. What little I had in university about algorithm design and analysis always seemed like it would come in handy in my real world programming, but in honesty it is difficult to think of a single instance where I used it and it made a difference (i.e. led to something that I would not otherwise have been led to). I suppose that might have been different had I worked in a different domain (we do finance applications and most calculation happens in a database server, which of course we do not program imperatively - we merely query it).
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I have no idea why, but in a free kind of IT lesson at highschool in year 8, I decided that I wanted to learn to program. We only had VB6 at the time, but I wanted to do some coding at home too. Then I discovered Visual Basic Express (2005), which led me to work with it. I pretty much self taught myself from then on (two years later), and I've been accelerated to a senior IPT class. Something that shocked me though, was when we were talking about the Neumann bottleneck (the limits caused by having commands executed sequentially), and I mentioned that you could use threading to get around it, the teacher approached me a little later, and told me that yes I could use multi-threading in my assignments, but they don't teach it. Also, looking at one of the textbooks, I saw this code (in one of the last chapters):
If x = True Then
'Do something
End If
If x = False Then
'Do something else
End IfLooks like some people in our class may have to do a little re-learning in uni. This is not to say I have nothing to gain from formal classes though: I'm going to have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to do things like heavily commenting code, doing diagrams etc. to plan and other formal programming techniques. This I suppose is something that's vital to learn for the workplace, so it'll be good to learn that. So yeah, I'm self taught, but there is definitely a benefit to formal teaching etc. :cool: I sure as hell hope I don't sound arrogant/stuck up or something like that. My code isn't really all that good, and I certainly don't have any articles here yet.
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I randomly smash buttons until I get the desired result. The more noise I make the happier management is.
Todd Smith
Plenty of enter keys? Lots of LPM? Joking. ;P
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I've always said that "Programming is a state of mind", you either have it or you don't. Like others have said, I taught myself a little, learned syntax and a few helpful ways from College tutors, then learned loads from work colleagues when I finally go my first job. Now I work all alone, and I'm trying hard to learn from you lot, and others on the interwebs, as it's really hard not having someone to bounce ideas off of. There were a few people at college who were learning the 'Art', but I don't think they would have made good programmers, even if they did get better marks than me in the assignments!
You don't have to be mad to live here [UK], but it helps.
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
Bit of everything, and glad of it. Started at 13 - dad brought a Commodore Pet home for Xmas (yes, I am dating myself), let us play games on it for two days, then took them off and said that if we wanted to carry on playing games, we had to write them. And they had to be structured, and documented. (Guess what his job was?) Self-taught BASIC and machine code as a result (no, not assembler - it didn't have an assembler). School did not have any form of computing as an option. Continued using computers as a tool through sixth form and the first two years of college (aiming at a physics degree). Some actual tuition here in how to use an IBM mainframe and FORTRAN 4 as a physics analysis tool. Final year of college, it finally clicked that maybe computing was a viable career choice in its own right, not just a tool I took for granted for everything else. Swapped to Computer Science, learnt the basics of a dozen or so widely varying languages (enough that from then on you can just pick up almost anything else, was the theory, and yes, even back then, that included what would now be called object-oriented languages), and some excellent tuition in algorithms and basic theory. Yes, surprisingly enough, much of this is still useful. Not so much the piece of paper, but being taught how to think. Mix of self-taught at home (playing with web pages and VRML) and at work (COBOL, PL/1, meeting the horrible results of a 20-year-old program that had been modified continually for its entire life). Some courses that helped, some that didn't, some that were "how to use this specific technology", some that were "how to program". I remember the one about Jackson Structured Programming as being particularly useful at the time, and the ones about Oracle databases and tuning SQL have been of generic use since. I'd say both sides were useful, and either in isolation would be a problem. College did not teach me how to manage programs that had more than 100 lines or so of code: version control and documentation were not mentioned. Self-taught and work did not teach me how to analyse an algorithm and tune it.
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On my way to work today, I was thinking about my development as a programmer. I do have post-secondary education in the field, but, I think what I was taught there was more of the syntax of a language than how to program itself. With that thought in mind, I would describe myself as self-taught. As an example of being completely taught a skill, my oldest brother is a meat cutter by trade. He was taught his skillset by our father and then refined his skillset by attending college. How would you describe yourself in this regard? Tim
I started at 9 on ZX80s then ZX81 then Spectrums. Fortunately the manuals for the ZX81 and Spectrum were *superb* in terms of teaching you some actual principles (as was a book on Z80 machine code, by, I think, the same author. I have several innante talents that I think helped me immensely then and now. I read ridiculously fast (up to 1100 wpm!)good memory - ideal for fast learning. I have natural facility for languages, an inbuilt drive to spot the patterns/deduce the rules/simplify - a reductionist tendancy, I suppose. Logic comes easy to me, ditto abstraction. I hate repetition and automatically optimise *any* task (at leasts in my head). I come from a family of (numerically talented) engineers, so maybe there's some design/fault finding abilities there (plus we did all our own car maintenance - awfully akin bug fixing). My dad can be extremely pedantic (partly as humour) so I learned to be rather precise in how I phrased things very early... There wasn't much computing at school, I recall by the time there was one Scotvec (bonus points for anyone who recalls those!) in Computing in Engineering, taught by a Techie teacher - by that point I was much better than the poor guy (I recall correcting a flowchart of his to make the algorithm more general/extensible). I did a 4-year BSc, where I learned many many things that I have since forgotten, but started to develop and become very familar with certain prinicples I use to this day - I have been a (Classic) Test Driven Developer since my *2nd* assignment (you can guess how the first went.... almost late and frantic... just like too many real ones). Set logic was invaluable, as was its companion - database design and SQL (Oracle back then). I did Cobol too. (ah, 4-tape master/detail merges - weirdly actually useful in all sorts of odd circumstances since - not with tapes, of course.) The importance of requirements gathering and documentation was drummed in ... By the time I got my first job (Cobol), I was well on the way to having a good foundation - learning particular languages/frameworks takes time as ever, and I had to pick up OO (was 'faking it' it via interfaces and code generators etc since VB4), I suppose that I feel that the time at uni bolstered an innate talent, giving it a framework to hang subsequent knowledge upon. I think it can really make a difference - especially the database stuff - there are so, so many horribly designed ones out there... So, intiailly self taught, educated, learned on the job. Still learning (it never stops) som
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In my opinion (which probably doesn't have that much value) programming is a mindset, not a skill. I did a 3 year qualification in Mechanical Engineering with Design specilisation, and I am now in Financial programming. Not for a minute do I regret doing the Engineering as it tought me how to think. Maths, Engineering etc are all exactly like Programming, same mindset, same approach. Having an education and experience offer you great tools to be more productive and effective, but true programming (Maths, Engineering etc) lies underneath those...
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
yeah - there are lots of engineering grads in financial development - it seems a particularly good match.
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yeah - there are lots of engineering grads in financial development - it seems a particularly good match.
yeah, I've seen many professional engineers and finance people being quite comfortable with writing basic code (vba, sql queries etc) as well, the skills require the same mindset and overlap a lot more than most people think
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
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yeah, I've seen many professional engineers and finance people being quite comfortable with writing basic code (vba, sql queries etc) as well, the skills require the same mindset and overlap a lot more than most people think
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
Best project manager I ever had was an ex-engineer too. Maybe it was no tendancy to try to micro-manage...
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My favorite was being asked to explain what the ol element was in HTML.
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States.
If you don't ask questions the answers won't stand in your way.
Doing a job is like selecting a mule, you can't choose just the front half xor the back half so when you ask me to do a job don't expect me to do it half-assed.