High score pass-through experience sharing: 10 years of programming without any teacher

In any bookstore, you will see a long row of similar books beside Teach Yourself Java in 7 days, they want to teach you Visual Basic, windows, the Internet, and so on, but it only takes a few days or even hours. I performed the following search on Amazon.com:

Pubdate: After 1992 and title: days and (Title: Learn or title: Teach Yourself)

(Publication date: after December 1, 1992 and title: day and (Title: or: without a teacher ))

I got a total of 248 search results. The first 78 are computer books (79th are "Learn Bengali in 30 days", and 30 days are used to learn the bengale language ). I changed the keyword "days" to "hours" and got a very similar result: this time there were 253 books, and the first 77 were computer books, 78th is "Teach Yourself grammar and style in 24 hours" (learn grammar and style 24 hours a day ). 200 of the first 96% books are computer books.

The conclusion is that either people are eager to learn computers, or they do not know why computers are surprisingly simple and easier to learn than anything else. No book is meant to teach people a few days to appreciate Beethoven, quantum physics, or even how to dress up a dog.

Let's analyze the meaning of a question like "Learn Pascal in three days" (3 days to learn Pascal:

· Learn: in three days, you have not enough time to write meaningful programs and learn from their failures and successes. You don't have enough time to work with experienced programmers. You don't know what it is like in that environment. In short, there is not enough time for you to learn a lot. Therefore, these books talk about superficial proficiency rather than in-depth understanding. As Alexander Pope (English poet, writer, 1688-1744) said, a half understanding is dangerous (a little learning is a dangerous thing ).

· Pascal: in three days, you can learn Pascal's syntax (if you already have a similar language), but you cannot learn much about how to use it. In short, if you are, for example, a basic programmer, you can learn to write a basic-style program using Pascal syntax, but you cannot learn the true advantages (and disadvantages) of Pascal ). Where is the key? Alan Perlis (first Chairman of ACM, winner of the Turing Award 1922-1990) once said: "If a language cannot affect your thoughts on programming, it is not worth learning ". Another point is that sometimes you have to learn a little bit about pascal (more likely Visual Basic and JavaScript), because you need to access existing tools to complete specific tasks. But now you are not learning how to program, but how to complete the task.

· 3 days: unfortunately, this is not enough, as described in the next section.

10 years of programming without human skills

Researchers (Hayes, Bloom) research shows that in many fields, it takes about 10 years to develop professional skills, this includes research into chess, composing, painting, piano, swimming, tennis, and neuropsychology and topology. There does not seem to be a real shortcut: even if it was Mozart, he was 4 years old and showed a music genius. It took him more than 13 years to write world-class music. Let's look at another representative of the music type, the Beatle. They seem to have suddenly taken the lead in the 1964 Ed Sullivan program. But in fact they have been performing since 1957. Even though they have been very attractive for a long time, their first successful sgt. Peppers will not be released until 1967. Samuel Johnson believes that 10 years is not enough: "the remarkable achievements in any field can only be achieved through a lifetime of effort; a little lower price will not change ." (Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price .) james Chaucer, English poet, 1340-1400, also complained: "it takes a long time to master the skills." (The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne .)

Below is my recipe for success in programming:

· Interested in programming, programming for fun. Be sure you will always be able to maintain enough fun, so that you can invest 10 years in it.

· Talk to other programmers and read other programs. This is more important than any book or training course.

· Programming. The best learning is to learn from practice. In a more technical language, "the highest level of performance of an individual in a specific field is not automatically obtained as a result of long-term experience, however, even very experienced individuals can improve their performance through deliberate efforts." (P. 366) and "the most effective learning requirement is to develop appropriate difficult tasks, meaningful feedback, and opportunities for repetition and Error Correction for specific individuals ." (P. 20-21) Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life (cognition in practice: Culture of mind, mathematics, and daily life) it is an interesting reference book on this point of view.

· If you want to, spend four years in college (or several more years as a graduate student ). This gives you entry-level qualifications for some jobs and a deeper understanding of this field. However, if you do not like to enter the school, (make a sacrifice) you can also obtain similar experience at work. In any case, learning from books alone is not enough. "Computer Science Education won't make anyone an expert programmer, just as studying paint brushes and paints won't make anyone an expert painter." Eric Raymond, the author of the new hacker's Dictionary (new hacker dictionary) said. One of the best programmers I have ever hired has only a high school degree, but he has created a lot of great software and even discussed his own newsgroups, in addition, stock options allow him to reach the level I cannot reach (author of Jamie zawinski, xemacs, and Netscape Navigator ).

· Complete the project with other programmers. Become the best programmer in some projects; be the worst in some other projects. When you are the best programmer, You need to test your ability to lead the project and inspire others through your insights. When you are the worst, you learn what masters are doing and what they don't like (because they ask you to do those things for them ).

· Take over other programmers to complete the project. Understanding the programs written by others. Let's see what the program needs to be understood and modified when no original programmer is present. Think about how to design your program to make it easier for others to take over and maintain your program.

· Learn at least half a dozen programming languages. This includes a language that supports class abstraction action (such as Java or C ++) and a language that supports functional abstraction (such as LISP or ml ), A language that supports syntactic semantic action (such as LISP), a language that supports descriptive specification (such as Prolog or C ++ template ), A language that supports coroutine (such as icon or scheme) and a language that supports parallelism (such as sisal ).

· Remember to include the word "computer" in the phrase "computer science. Measure the test taker's knowledge about how long it takes to execute a command on your computer and how long it takes to obtain a word from the memory (including cache hit and miss ), how long does it take to read continuous data from a disk and to locate a new location on the disk.

· Try to participate in a language standardization work. It can be an ansi c ++ committee, or it can be used to determine whether the coding style of your team adopts two spaces of indentation or four. Either way, you can learn what people like in this language, how much they like it, or even why they have such feelings.

· Good judgment from the standardization of languages as soon as possible.

With these ideas, I doubt how much I can learn from the book. Before my first child was born, I read all "how ......" But I still feel like I am a newbie with no clue. 30 months later, when my second child was born, did I pick up those books and review them? No. On the contrary, I rely on my own experience to make the results more useful and reliable than the thousands of pages written by experts.

Fred Brooks, in his short article "no silver bullets" (no silver bullet), sets out three steps to discover outstanding software designers:

1. Identify the best designer group as soon as possible.

2. assign a career mentor to take charge of the development of potential objects and help him maintain his career resume with care.

3. Giving growing designers the opportunity to interact and inspire each other.

In fact, it is assumed that some people themselves have the necessary potential to become outstanding designers; all they have to do is to guide them forward. Alan Perlis is more concise: "Everyone can be taught how to sculpture, but for him, what can be taught to him is how to avoid sculpture. The same is true for outstanding programmers ".

So even if you buy those Java books, you may find some useful. However, your life, or your real professional skills as a programmer, will not actually change within 24 hours, 24 days, or even 24 months.