How can I become a AAA programmer?

4 points by truth_sentinell 9y ago ↗ HN

I am about to receive a bachelor degree on computer science (but the education is not as high level as you have in USA or the like). I live in venezuela and I'm 23 years old (which I think might be of help for the answers)

I've been programming with web stuff for about three years (sporadically). Mostly php, html, css, jQuery.

I try to read everyday programming books, but I don't happen to see much progress. Sure, compared to myself three years ago I've made progress, but now I think I progress very slow and is frustrating.

I have tried applying for freelance projects (because my country's economy makes inviable working on a local company), but I'm always shadowed by people much more skilled (specially from USA).

Also, every time I read the comments in here I feel dumb as a rock. Everybody seems so intelligent and nerdy that I'm actually fearing that I can't get a good paying freelance job. Is it because I'm relatively young and inexperienced? What do you think is the average age here?

I'd like to be that guy whose GitHub's libraries are used by hundreds of people with very nice programming prose. But every time I take a look at other's githubs I feel overwhelmed and so little.

I don't know what else to do to speed up my coding progress. Should I keep with a specific set of tools? Or should I learn the cool kids in town? (that's another problem, there are so many tools to learn to be competitive. It's overwhelming).

Thanks for your time.

2 comments

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greenyoda 9y ago ↗

"Also, every time I read the comments in here I feel dumb as a rock. ... Is it because I'm relatively young and inexperienced?"

Yes, I think so. If you keep on learning and practicing (writing code), you'll keep getting better.

"What do you think is the average age here?"

I have no idea what the average is (I'd guess somewhere around 28-30), but there are definitely some people here who have decades of work experience. I'm in my 50s, and I know there are some people here who are older than I am.

"I'd like to be that guy whose GitHub's libraries are used by hundreds of people with very nice programming prose. But every time I take a look at other's githubs I feel overwhelmed and so little."

The people who write popular libraries probably have more experience than you do. They weren't born knowing how to write code like that, they learned by programming for many years. But it's a good thing for you to look at that code - you can learn a lot from studying it.

"Should I keep with a specific set of tools? Or should I learn the cool kids in town?"

Every few months there are new "cool" tools, and learning each cool tool that appears is a distraction from learning fundamental programming skills that are pretty similar no matter which tools or languages you use.

jerf 9y ago ↗

This is probably not the best site to ask that question. For all the programmers that may be here, I haven't seen very many games programmers pop up, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone identify as a AAA games programmer. (By sheer numbers there must be at least a few, but I've not seen them self-identify.) I'd suggest looking at http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/301/how_to_break_in_... , which also mentions some other sites you'd probably be better off with.

And I'd take a moment to pitch the idea of not: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/49f57n/the_sec... But do as you feel you should, of course.