Confession of a corrupted Lisper here, how to get into IT?

1 points by mksha 6y ago ↗ HN

I have been reading about Linux, Lisp and functional programming since forever, eternally excited just reading about it, yet never really programming anything serious, just snippets of here and there, after which I get lost configuring Emacs, practicing a new keyboard layout, or worst, at the end of this crazy happy spectrum, watching Stallman lecturing about freedom of our techno landscape while trying to understand subtle beauty of a Guy Steele talk , damn, then Sussman comes along, and I could watch him anytime, his intensity is captivating. Lately I like to watch Bartosz Millewski lectures on category theory and draw diagrams, but hey I still dont understand much though its really fun and helps me feel a sort of nice meditative state.. whats my point? I have been spending my time like this for the past 15 years without even trying to get an IT job, immediately being put down by realizing I will have to work on some pythonesque imperative control flows, or scripting along en endless tube of calls. Once I met a lisper while working in a restaurant and he was amazed at how excited I about lisp, he told me its not important I do not know how to code or the mere fact I do not own a computer. Such minds should me nurtured and given jobs..well I am here now, I guess I am looking for a motivational answer that could put me on track, or am I wasting time yet again? Can anybody relate to this and how did you overcome this infinite search in constant space?

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NotSammyHagar 6y ago ↗

I think those ruminative philosophical talks can be intellectually stimulating but you need some real world practical experience working in tech. IT can be a broad term, there's helping people with their computers, hardware issues, configuring companies web pages or intranet, software engineering, these are all very different things, you need to clarify what you are getting at. I'm guessing software engineering.

Lisp is a great language, however there are far more software jobs using other languages. I suggest you work on some fun toy problems and try programming in a more commercially employable and approachable language, I suggest python. You can do everything on line. There are these self-contained browser programming environments. After you get started you can install software on your own computer, I wouldn't start with that. A quick web search found this page - https://www.learnpython.org/. But there are tons of them. Find one of those, work on something interesting to you and then see if you are interested. There are lots of interesting things in the computer science world, but since you have years of yearning, I suggest narrowing your focus to something that is more direct, assuming employment is your goal. As a beginner with no recent school experience as a dev or employment (apparently), it will be hard to find that first job, but once you have one your resume will get you considered for the next. Good luck!