This may be a crazy suggestion depending on your office environment, but maybe you could ask your company to pay for them. If they are genuinely increasing your productivity (distractions, mental health), it's probably an investment that would pay for itself quickly.

There are some technical and historical reasons that BASIC was THE de facto programming language for students and non-professionals for a generation. The main one, in my opinion, is not that the language was so easy (it IS pretty easy, though), but that it WAS (emphasis on "was") so easy to get started. You literally turned on the computer (TRS-80, Commodore 64, etc.) and you had a BASIC prompt. It's now actually harder to get started in programming because there are just so many layers of tools to get going. (There are notable exceptions, but there is no universal simplicity like what was on the home computers of the 1980's.) You CAN write high-quality, well structured software in BASIC (and Python, and you name it). You can also write garbage. I've read thirty-year-old BASIC code and re-written it in C. The original code was impeccably constructed!

I am sympathetic to your cause. Being in the USA we have different terms for degrees, course tracks, etc., so I may not understand the details of your situation 100%. That said, here are some thoughts: 1. You are PLENTY young enough to retrain at any level. There will be some sacrifices, but they will be short term. 2. Focus on skills that are not easily commoditized. Python is great, but it's a tool that is easily learned, and is often used to create "throwaway" code for testing, utilities, etc. It's not really the basis for value-add on major projects. A fundamental understanding of computer science concepts will last your whole career and is not easily outsourced. 3. At least in the USA, bootcamps are quickly earning bad reputations. They teach the tools, not the fundamentals (which would really be impossible in such a short timeframe). Their hiring numbers are generally recognized to be suspect. 4. Unless you have serious personal commitments (like kids), I say dump your day job, and get yourself a genuine 4-year degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or something that will last for years. Borrow, skimp, starve, to do whatever it takes to pay for it. Good luck!

Remember to offer to your customer (or boss) that they can get it done (1) fast, (2) cheap, or (3) good. Pick any two.

I high school when I was in my "second phase" of programming (the first on a TRS-80 COCO when I was 7-12 years old, the third now as a professional), I would go on massive programming binges. When I would get stuck on the kind of problem where you just try things over and over (and over and over...) for hours at a time, it would creep into my dreams. I would go through the problem in my sleep repeatedly and it was exhausting. You never get a break, even while sleeping. Occasionally (very rarely, and never when you need it), the solution would come in a dream! On a side note, after reading about some sleep and cognitive studies, as well as from my personal experience, I have concluded that the best way to write a lot of code efficiently is to -- code less and sleep more! Between staying up late (1:00 AM) on the computer and having kids waking up (6:00 AM), even though I don't feel tired, my brain is certainly not working optimally. When I do go to bed early (i.e. before 11:00) consistently for a few nights, the quality and speed of my work is much better. I have also found that 1/2 hour on the treadmill in the evening gives me a couple hours of extra brain energy at night. And my dreams are about friendly women, and not unfriendly pointers... Stuart

Reading a book is a great way to acquire information because you are focussed on the book. When you sit in your comfy chair, bed, desk (computer turned off), airplane seat, etc. there is no ambiguity about what you are doing. You are reading a specific book because you want/need to. You didn't "stumble" upon it while on the web and you won't get stumbled-out of it because you saw a hyperlink or ad in the book. To paraphrase one of the other posters, the author has gathered and synthesized information and is presenting it to the reader in a methodical manner. It's more like taking a class with a good teacher. Reading on-line can in some ways be the opposite. To extend the analogy: If you are taking an Engineering lab course, the "online" method would be to have a huge lab full of every imaginable apparatus, every instruction manual, every doctoral thesis, every ad for related lab stuff, etc. all randomly in front of you; you don't know where to start. The "book" way is that first you are presented with an overview, then simple instructions, then you are presented with exactly the right equipment you need to work. I'm not saying that reading online is not useful. In fact, most of my technical reading IS online, it's just that sometimes, when you need a complete reading on a topic, a book is the right way to go. I also like to be able to cite books in arguments. They hold a lot more weight that saying "I read it on a web site". For example, when ironing out some points of our company's coding guidelines, I often pulled the "Code Complete" card. Show them the book and they'll have a hard time arguing it!

No. I do have strong opinions on immigration policy, but I was in no way "trolling" or had any ulterior motives. I guess my big point is that this is subject (teaching programming) is really part of a bigger set of interwoven issues: math and science education in the US and compared to other countries, university education for professional (read "useful") careers, international competition, brain-drain, out-sourcing, etc.

I need to throw-in my contrarian points-of-view. I have met many university students in the last few years who have learned the fundamentals very well! I have been lucky to work with young people from very good American universities (not meant as a knock against other countries' schools, but just putting it context), so I cannot say this is 100% representative of the next generation of Engineers. My experience with Indian engineers on outsourced projects is that they are very capable of doing the work which they were contracted to do. Appropriately from an economic standpoint, they are well-trained for the task at hand, which is often high-level programming (as opposed to embedded or high-performance coding). We'll see if this trend continues. If the Indian and other off-shore (that is, not North America or Europe) countries begin to school their best and brightest in real electrical and computer fundamentals, and if American schools begin to lose focus of them and on hard-core science and math, then we (that is, American) technical industries are in trouble! The next generation will all be pushing frapaccinos to our Indian and Asian neighbors. The good news is that American Universities are still REALLY desireable places for the best foreign students around the world. Of course, our visa situation is horrible. We're basically encouraging students to come and study and then we kick them out to be our competitors. Rather, we should teach anyone who wants to learn the fundamentals, as well as the state-of-the-art and have an immigration policy that allows us to take advantage of the best young minds the world has to offer.