On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:13 PM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > > This list contains a large number of self-taught programmers. How did > you get started, and how did you get to a moderate level of skill? (If > you want to talk about what happened after that, great, but I am more > interested in the first two stages)
When I was studying architecture, I generally found the archi crowd's khadi-clad, I-am-an-artist-this-is-my-art conceit insufferable so I started hanging out with a bunch of CS guys. I started playing video games on their computers, progressed to cracking them in order to cheat and then writing batch files for minor automation. I soon realised that writing code gave me a better rush than the games -- and that I was getting no rush whatsoever from architecture. I dropped out, scrounged a job writing VB code for an ERP company and the rest, as they say, is history. Funnily enough, many of the CS guys I hung out with back then never seemed to love the machines the way I did and ended up getting MBAs and leaving the industry. Another data point: my sister is my only sibling to actually have a CS degree. She's also the only one who's not in IT -- she works in an ad agency. It seems formal study is a sure shot way to kill any interest in a subject. -- b
