Some of the best programmers i've worked with were weird dudes who learned how to program in college.
Starting early doesn't mean you're any good. 4 years of a serious, programming intensive CS degree is better training than 20 years of farting around with PHP.
We don't apply this criteria to other endeavors. I've been playing piano since I was 5 and I'm still not good at it. You're either good or your're not. Sometimes experience helps, sometimes it is a hindrance. Bad habits form early, too.
It's also curious that programmers claim that programming since they were a kid makes them a better programmer, but they also complain whenever a job advertisement requires years of experience.
"4 years of a serious, programming intensive CS degree is better training than 20 years of farting around with PHP."
That's really funny and true.
Yeah, agreed, I know plenty of CS degree holders that are top notch coders as well. But I have to say, I don't think a single one of them hadn't learned a language or two prior to college and I doubt they ever thought for a second 'I'm not sure how to program'.
I thought C was totally terrifying and confusing for the longest time. I started in Visual Basic because it had WSYWIG forms, and I just couldn't imagine how someone would programmatically construct an interface. Feeling like you have no idea where to start is completely legitimate. I eventually faced it, though, and got through it. Of course, I was 11 or 12 at the time, but still.
If you want to know how to programmatically construct an interface, fart around with a Tcl/Tk tutorial for a bit. That's very interactive and easy. It's a good way to get your head around the general idea.
I agree that C can be terrifying and confusing at first. The buggy GCC of the late 1980's/early 90's was not friendly for beginners. One of the class project's bugs disappeared for no reason when we changed the order of function definitions in one file.
It gets easier once you a) learn assembly language and b) write a compiler. Fart around with some CoreWars and Google "NAND to Tetris."
You were unlucky, I went the other way. I did start on basic on my Z80 machine, but since you could only really write adventure games with basic, I moved onto Z80 assembly language. Then, I moved onto x86 assembly language.
Every from that point has been easier, in most ways.
I was lucky, everyone of my friends had a C64, and they were swapping games. We couldn't afford a C64 at AU$399 at the time, so they got me the VZ300 for $99. I had to write my own games. This is how I got into development.
I was one of the few that could program, before I went to Uni. It was around the time that CS was becoming very popular, but hadn't start to differentiate between different sorts of IT, so they offered everything. The classes I found best were hardware, OS, and the half year class were we had to write the same program in 4 different languages.
I think I'm considerably younger than you. The only reason I ever needed assembly was to patch executables without source in my GUI OS; the days of insane resource constraints were already gone.
Hah, that makes two of us! Except iI didn't have the luxury of a Z80, I started on an 8080 that didn't even run CP/M... Ahhh the Compulcolor II, what a fine machine you were. At least you made me learn how a computer works.
I still remember how good it felt when my brother started loading up the games that I wrote rather than the few 'commercial' games that we had for the system.
PS: VZ300??? I thought I knew everything about the Australian 8-bit computer scene, but I managed to miss that one.
The VZ300 was made by Dick Smith, a successor to the VZ200. It had a huge hacker user community, their were program listings and hardware mods in APC magazine. After the VZ line, Dick smith bought out there CAT computer line, which were much more powerful, and more expensive.
Great little machine for $100. Funny thing, the VZ200 had a chiklet keyboard, which are becomming popular again. One of the big selling points of the VZ300 was that it had a proper keyboard.
I also learned C at that age, but I was excited about it. My motivation was thorough disgust at the limitations of QBasic and VB, which a friend and I had been running into in our more ambitious video game projects.
Actually you guys are probably right. I should clarify that I am in my mid 30s. When I was a kid computers were still mostly for nerds. There was no broadband internet. It was kind of a pain in the ass to program anything other than BASIC. If you wanted to use another language chances are you had to buy the compiler. Thus, it's not 100% unusual that I have peers who didn't program until college. Especially guys from countries where it was really hard and expensive to buy a computer in the 80s.
Now that everyone has had a computer and serious internet since about age 8 it would actually be pretty weird if they hadn't tried programming at all before college.
"Some of the best programmers i've worked with were weird dudes who learned how to program in college.
Agreed - in fact I'd say out of the best programmers I've worked with almost all had CS degree's.
"Starting early doesn't mean you're any good. 4 years of a serious, programming intensive CS degree is better training than 20 years of farting around with PHP."
Never implied 'programming for 20 years' made you better than a person that has a CS degree. I actually meant that all the good programmers I know - CS degree's or otherwise - started before college and did it because they loved it. Same guys that go home and read regular expression books for 'fun' in their spare time.
"We don't apply this criteria to other endeavors. I've been playing piano since I was 5 and I'm still not good at it. You're either good or your're not. Sometimes experience helps, sometimes it is a hindrance. Bad habits form early, too."
True, but again I never said that simply programming for 20 years made you a great coder. I simply meant that someone with this trait, who then pursues a career as a programmer (through a CS degree, or whatever) is going to have a leg up on someone who isn't really into it.
"It's also curious that programmers claim that programming since they were a kid makes them a better programmer, but they also complain whenever a job advertisement requires years of experience."
Not sure what you are talking about here. When I've had to hire a junior it seems like a lot of people with the wrong skills apply for the position, but experience-wise, if you have been programming for 20+ years that's not the issue for me. It's if you have the skills the job I'm looking to fill needs.
"Agreed - in fact I'd say out of the best programmers I've worked with almost all had CS degree's."
It goes to show that there's no correlation between programming skill and degree. Most of the worst programmers I've ever worked with had CS degrees, because they tended to write the most pointlessly complicated code they could. They were invariably the most guilty of premature optimization, and rarely produced code that worked any better than my minimal implementations did -- and of course, no one could ever prove that their implementations actually worked, because they were incomprehensible.
Get a challenging job where people can criticize your work and not a job where you can code and deliver with no feedback (except from users with no programming background).
In software, just because it works, it doesn't mean it is well done.
Also, if you can't note a significant improvement
in your skills over the next three years after graduation, you're not going to make it big in this industry.
I didn't mean to imply anything. One of the best (and richest) programmers I know prefers PHP. I just don't think it's necessarily the case that you become good simply because you started programming when you were 16.
My comment wasn't great because I also didn't mean that having a CS degree makes you good. What makes you good is practice on hard problems, and a certain amount of "je ne sais quoi."
Depends if you have also used other languages, I mainly code in PHP, but also have experience in other languages. I would say though you would develop a stack of bad habits if PHP was first and only language someone used.
Starting early doesn't mean you're any good. 4 years of a serious, programming intensive CS degree is better training than 20 years of farting around with PHP.
We don't apply this criteria to other endeavors. I've been playing piano since I was 5 and I'm still not good at it. You're either good or your're not. Sometimes experience helps, sometimes it is a hindrance. Bad habits form early, too.
It's also curious that programmers claim that programming since they were a kid makes them a better programmer, but they also complain whenever a job advertisement requires years of experience.