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Ask HN: How to get started at being a programmer

5 points by Flameancer ↗ HN
Hello, I'm currently a rising sophomore at college and I was wondering how would I go about perfecting my skills as a programmer. Is there anything I can do during my spare time I.E. projects that would help?

3 comments

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altruista
The first rule of programming is there are a thousand kinds of programming.

All of the great programmers I know got that way by repeatedly thinking up a cool idea they had, researching how to do it, and winging the rest. All you need is Google these days.

Though, of course, schooling can accelerate the learning by teaching you the mistakes of your elders so you can conveniently bypass them.

johncole
Totally second this comment. The best advice for this sort of thing: hop in. I started by trying to read a few books. I don't think I learned nearly as fast as when I just tried to think of something I wanted to make, and devoted a few hours/days to building it.
sccassius
Well, I personally just read a lot of stuff over this summer and found certain things that interested me. When I found something cool, I read more about it, and tried to think of some stuff to build in that language/framework/toolkit.

You should do the same. Just read about what's out there, and you'll find something that you really think is awesome. Then you'll be motivated to do some coding!

There's tangible benefits to this too - for me, I reached out to a professor to help out with his research in an area that I found particularly interesting (computer graphics). Just ask around!