Ask HN: 10 years of recreational programming, what takes me to the next level?
Almost completely self taught. Was forced to take a VB + Matlab class for my chemical engineering degree, but I basically didnt show up to class. At that point I was already a programmer and would only do the homework/tests. 4.0, easy class.
Outside of that its been google + stackoverflow + tutorials.
Thats been great and I've completed a full stack app, working on my second using react-native. Doing python automation when I get tired of that.
What I'm looking for is something that I'm missing. I spent time reading wikipedia about OOP and I found that very interesting to put names to things Ive been working with for years. I dont know if this improved my skill much, but I only put a few hours into wiki.
What should I put resources into next? Goal is to spend either a few hours or ~week into something that can improve my abilities. I'm not even sure what my weak points are. Any suggestions?
2 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 13.4 ms ] threadA friend of mine is self-taught (mainly front-end programming, JS, HTML, CSS). He started in his 40s and work in a completely different field. He developed surprisingly good programming habits by himself, but he's strongly lacking in some areas, compared to people who followed a conventional CS education. For instance, he has little knowledge of algorithms: he can't write a merge sort, assess its complexity, or work with dynamic data-structures. These are the type of things that can be hard to figure out alone. I think it's worth investing some time on this. There are tons of resources, e.g. a few good Coursera classes.
You can also focus on different layers of the software stack. You've been working on the front-end, but you can have fun with things like system programming (e.g. writing a UNIX shell in C), or a compiler for a simple programming language.
I personally enjoy doing programming projects from various universities. There are tons of cool projects at all levels.