Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Peter Norvig

Why is everyone in such a rush? Translations

Walk into any bookstore, and you'll see how to Teach Yourself Java in 24 Thanks to the
Hours alongside endless variations offering to teach C, SQL, Ruby, following authors,
Algorithms, and so on in a few days or hours. The Amazon advanced translations of this
search for [title: teach, yourself, hours, since: 2000 and found 512 such page are available in:
books. Of the top ten, nine are programming books (the other is about
bookkeeping). Similar results come from replacing "teach yourself" with Arabic
"learn" or "hours" with "days." (Mohamed A. Yahya)

The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about
programming, or that programming is somehow fabulously easier to learn
than anything else. Felleisen et al. give a nod to this trend in their book
How to Design Programs, when they say "Bad programming is easy. Bulgarian
Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are dummies." The Abtruse (Boyko Bantchev)
Goose comic also had their take.

Let's analyze what a title like Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours could
mean:

Teach Yourself: In 24 hours you won't have time to write several Chinese
significant programs, and learn from your successes and failures (Xiaogang Guo)
with them. You won't have time to work with an experienced
programmer and understand what it is like to live in a C++
environment. In short, you won't have time to learn much. So the
book can only be talking about a superficial familiarity, not a deep
understanding. As Alexander Pope said, a little learning is a Croatian
dangerous thing. (Tvrtko Bedekovic)

C++: In 24 hours you might be able to learn some of the syntax of

C++ (if you already know another language), but you couldn't learn
much about how to use the language. In short, if you were, say, a
Basic programmer, you could learn to write programs in the style Esperanto
of Basic using C++ syntax, but you couldn't learn what C++ is (Federico Gobbo)
actually good (and bad) for. So what's the point? Alan Perlis once
said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about
programming, is not worth knowing". One possible point is that
you have to learn a tiny bit of C++ (or more likely, something like
JavaScript or Processing) because you need to interface with an French
existing tool to accomplish a specific task. But then you're not (Etienne Beauchesne)
learning how to program; you're learning to accomplish that task.

in 24 Hours: Unfortunately, this is not enough, as the next section

shows.
German
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (Stefan Ram)
Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989),
Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop
expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music
composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming,
tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is Hebrew
deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging (Eric McCain)
yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it,
analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any
mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. There appear to be no real
shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13
more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another Hindi
genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits (Vikash Tiwari)
and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been
playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while
they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt.
Peppers, was released in 1967.
Hungarian
Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the idea, although he concentrates on (Marton Mestyan)
10,000 hours, not 10 years. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) had
another metric: "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." (He
didn't anticipate that with digital cameras, some people can reach that
mark in a week.) True expertise may take a lifetime: Samuel Johnson
(1709-1784) said "Excellence in any department can be attained only by Indonesian
the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And (Tridjito Santoso)
Chaucer (1340-1400) complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to
lerne." Hippocrates (c. 400BC) is known for the excerpt "ars longa, vita
brevis", which is part of the longer quotation "Ars longa, vita brevis,
occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile", which
in English renders as "Life is short, [the] craft long, opportunity fleeting, Italian
experiment treacherous, judgment difficult." Of course, no single number (Fabio Z. Tessitore)
can be the final answer: it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that all
skills (e.g., programming, chess playing, checkers playing, and music
playing) could all require exactly the same amount of time to master, nor
that all people will take exactly the same amount of time. As Prof. K.
Anders Ericsson puts it, "In most domains it's remarkable how much time Japanese
even the most talented individuals need in order to reach the highest (yomoyomo)
levels of performance. The 10,000 hour number just gives you a sense
that we're talking years of 10 to 20 hours a week which those who some
people would argue are the most innately talented individuals still need to
get to the highest level."
Korean (John Hwang)
So You Want to be a Programmer
Here's my recipe for programming success:

Get interested in programming, and do some because it is fun. Persian

Make sure that it keeps being enough fun so that you will be (Mehdi Asgari)
willing to put in your ten years/10,000 hours.

Program. The best kind of learning is learning by doing. To put it

more technically, "the maximal level of performance for
individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as a Polish
function of extended experience, but the level of performance can (Kuba Nowak)
be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of
deliberate efforts to improve." (p. 366) and "the most effective
learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficulty
level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and
opportunities for repetition and corrections of errors." (p. 20-21) Portuguese
The book Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture (Augusto Radtke)
in Everyday Life is an interesting reference for this viewpoint.

Talk with other programmers; read other programs. This is more

important than any book or training course.
Romanian
If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate (tefan Lazr)
school). This will give you access to some jobs that require
credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field,
but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get
similar experience on your own or on the job. In any case, book
learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education Russian
cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than (Konstantin Ptitsyn)
studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert
painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's
Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a
High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his
own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own Serbian
nightclub. (Lazar Kovacevic)
Work on projects with other programmers. Be the best
programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others. When
you're the best, you get to test your abilities to lead a project, and to
inspire others with your vision. When you're the worst, you learn Spanish
what the masters do, and you learn what they don't like to do (Carlos Rueda)
(because they make you do it for them).

Work on projects after other programmers. Understand a program

written by someone else. See what it takes to understand and fix it
when the original programmers are not around. Think about how to Slovak
design your programs to make it easier for those who will maintain (Jan Waclawek)
them after you.

Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. Include one

language that emphasizes class abstractions (like Java or C++), one
that emphasizes functional abstraction (like Lisp or ML or
Turkish
Haskell), one that supports syntactic abstraction (like Lisp), one
that supports declarative specifications (like Prolog or C++ (al Uluahin)
templates), and one that emphasizes parallelism (like Clojure or
Go).

Remember that there is a "computer" in "computer science".

Know how long it takes your computer to execute an instruction, Ukranian
fetch a word from memory (with and without a cache miss), read (Oleksii
consecutive words from disk, and seek to a new location on disk. Molchanovskyi)
(Answers here.)

Get involved in a language standardization effort. It could be the

ANSI C++ committee, or it could be deciding if your local coding
 style will have 2 or 4 space indentation levels. Either way, you
learn about what other people like in a language, how deeply they
feel so, and perhaps even a little about why they feel so.

Have the good sense to get off the language standardization effort
as quickly as possible.

With all that in mind, its questionable how far you can get just by book
learning. Before my first child was born, I read all the How To books, and
still felt like a clueless novice. 30 Months later, when my second child
was due, did I go back to the books for a refresher? No. Instead, I relied
on my personal experience, which turned out to be far more useful and
reassuring to me than the thousands of pages written by experts.

Fred Brooks, in his essay No Silver Bullet identified a three-part plan for
finding great software designers:

1. Systematically identify top designers as early as possible.

2. Assign a career mentor to be responsible for the development of

the prospect and carefully keep a career file.

3. Provide opportunities for growing designers to interact and

stimulate each other.

This assumes that some people already have the qualities necessary for
being a great designer; the job is to properly coax them along. Alan Perlis
put it more succinctly: "Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo
would have had to be taught how not to. So it is with the great
programmers". Perlis is saying that the greats have some internal quality
that transcends their training. But where does the quality come from? Is it
innate? Or do they develop it through diligence? As Auguste Gusteau
(the fictional chef in Ratatouille) puts it, "anyone can cook, but only the
fearless can be great." I think of it more as willingness to devote a large
portion of one's life to deliberative practice. But maybe fearless is a way
to summarize that. Or, as Gusteau's critic, Anton Ego, says: "Not
everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from
anywhere."

So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you'll

probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your
real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days. How about
working hard to continually improve over 24 months? Well, now you're
starting to get somewhere...

References
Bloom, Benjamin (ed.) Developing Talent in Young People, Ballantine,
1985.

Brooks, Fred, No Silver Bullets, IEEE Computer, vol. 20, no. 4, 1987, p.
10-19.
Bryan, W.L. & Harter, N. "Studies on the telegraphic language: The
acquisition of a hierarchy of habits. Psychology Review, 1899, 8, 345-375

Hayes, John R., Complete Problem Solver Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989.

Chase, William G. & Simon, Herbert A. "Perception in Chess" Cognitive

Psychology, 1973, 4, 55-81.

Lave, Jean, Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in

Everyday Life, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Answers
Approximate timing for various operations on a typical PC:

execute typical instruction 1/1,000,000,000 sec = 1 nanosec

fetch from L1 cache memory 0.5 nanosec
branch misprediction 5 nanosec
fetch from L2 cache memory 7 nanosec
Mutex lock/unlock 25 nanosec
fetch from main memory 100 nanosec
send 2K bytes over 1Gbps
20,000 nanosec
network
read 1MB sequentially from
250,000 nanosec
memory
fetch from new disk location
8,000,000 nanosec
(seek)
read 1MB sequentially from disk 20,000,000 nanosec
send packet US to Europe and 150 milliseconds = 150,000,000
back nanosec

Appendix: Language Choice

Several people have asked what programming language they should learn
first. There is no one answer, but consider these points:

Use your friends. When asked "what operating system should I

use, Windows, Unix, or Mac?", my answer is usually: "use
whatever your friends use." The advantage you get from learning
from your friends will offset any intrinsic difference between OS,
or between programming languages. Also consider your future
friends: the community of programmers that you will be a part of if
you continue. Does your chosen language have a large growing
community or a small dying one? Are there books, web sites, and
 online forums to get answers from? Do you like the people in those
forums?
Keep it simple. Programming languages such as C++ and Java are
designed for professional development by large teams of
experienced programmers who are concerned about the run-time
efficiency of their code. As a result, these languages have
complicated parts designed for these circumstances. You're
concerned with learning to program. You don't need that
complication. You want a language that was designed to be easy to
learn and remember by a single new programmer.
Play. Which way would you rather learn to play the piano: the
normal, interactive way, in which you hear each note as soon as
you hit a key, or "batch" mode, in which you only hear the notes
after you finish a whole song? Clearly, interactive mode makes
learning easier for the piano, and also for programming. Insist on a
language with an interactive mode and use it.

Given these criteria, my recommendations for a first programming

language would be Python or Scheme. Another choice is Javascript, not
because it is perfectly well-designed for beginners, but because there are
so many online tutorials for it, such as Khan Academy's tutorial. But your
circumstances may vary, and there are other good choices. If your age is a
single-digit, you might prefer Alice or Squeak or Blockly (older learners
might also enjoy these). The important thing is that you choose and get
started.

Appendix: Books and Other Resources

Several people have asked what books and web pages they should learn
from. I repeat that "book learning alone won't be enough" but I can
recommend the following:

Scheme: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

(Abelson & Sussman) is probably the best introduction to
computer science, and it does teach programming as a way of
understanding the computer science. You can see online videos of
lectures on this book, as well as the complete text online. The book
is challenging and will weed out some people who perhaps could
be successful with another approach.
Scheme: How to Design Programs (Felleisen et al.) is one of the
best books on how to actually design programs in an elegant and
functional way.
Python: Python Programming: An Intro to CS (Zelle) is a good
introduction using Python.
Python: Several online tutorials are available at Python.org.
Oz: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming
(Van Roy & Haridi) is seen by some as the modern-day successor
to Abelson & Sussman. It is a tour through the big ideas of
programming, covering a wider range than Abelson & Sussman
while being perhaps easier to read and follow. It uses a language,
Oz, that is not widely known but serves as a basis for learning
other languages. <
Notes
T. Capey points out that the Complete Problem Solver page on Amazon
now has the "Teach Yourself Bengali in 21 days" and "Teach Yourself
Grammar and Style" books under the "Customers who shopped for this
item also shopped for these items" section. I guess that a large portion of
the people who look at that book are coming from this page. Thanks to
Ross Cohen for help with Hippocrates.

Peter Norvig (Copyright 20012014)

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Eric-Wubbo Lameijer 3 years ago

Thank you for this post! I was trying to help someone learning to program (though she does not
plan to take only 24 hours for doing so...)
Two remarks content-wise though:

1) learning by doing is not necessarily the best or even the fastest way to learn, even though it
definitely has its place. If I would teach anyone programming, I'd strongly recommend to study
and try to understand good code; this would be the technique of 'worked examples'. So far, lots
of 'worked examples' and a bit of problem solving seems to be better than one example
followed by lots of problem-solving. (see for example http://www.jstor.org/discov...

2) The 10-year rule (or 10.000-hour rule) very much depends on the field; it used to be about 6
years for painters, but can be over 25 years for musicians. (Sternberg, Handbook of Creativity,
around page 230) It tends to depend mostly on the competition in the field - the author of
'Moonwalking with Einstein' became an US champion after about 1 year of training!. Assuming
that a majority of programmers work hard at deliberate practice (which I doubt), it may indeed
take 10 or 15 years to become a top programmer. But to be functionally literate and 'worth
hiring' may not require that many years. Besides, one could definitely ask who is a 'top
programmer': someone who can write code that is superbly simple and clear? Someone who
can solve a complicated problem with a snazzy new polynomial algorithm? Someone who can
keep track of a project involving millions of lines of code? Someone who knows hundreds of
language functions and libraries? Someone who actually understands what a non-computer-
scientist customer is talking about and can transform it into a solution? Not all programmers will
be equally good in all of those things, being the 'best' programmer may therefore be like
comparing apples and oranges.

For the rest, excellent post! It definitely contains material that I want to mull over some more...
62 Reply Share

jigar singh rathore > Eric-Wubbo Lameijer a year ago

And your comment just provided me the vision on what a good reading actually means.
we should think about not just accept it as the ultimate truth. add something according to
your experiences throughout your life. think before believing
5 Reply Share

Amit Jha 3 years ago

I am referring to AI book these days and its just amazing to come to these pages.
15 Reply Share

zejian ju 3 years ago

Great article, learn much from it, thank you very much!
13 Reply Share

ppolask 3 years ago

I have been wondering how to become a programmer in 21 days using these books, but this
great article has cleared my misconception of becoming a programmer in just over two
weeks!!!.
10 Reply Share

dicksonagb 3 years ago

thanks for sharing this great article
15 Reply Share

TheTaoOfProgramming 3 years ago

Bullshit. You're putting a lot of people off programming. What if you can already program before
you `learn`? Your mind already works that way, and someone showing you the basics it just
makes perfect sense and you're coding in say 15 to 30 minutes. You'll probably not sleep that
night, of excitement. Just absorbing the functions and APIs methods just fit.
Ok there's tons to `learn` to memorize like a parrot - but, the basics are also very simple - and it
all was built on basic principles. It also makes sense as if someone has already done much the
work for you to achieve your creative ideas.
Programming is also un-learning, the tech changes very rapidly. Very humbling. Can be very
theoretical and mathematical. Philosophical. And very fun. An incredible field and science.
Some program like filling in a coloring book, the lines are already there. For some it is painting
a blank canvas, infinite.
So it takes 15 minutes, to 10,000 hours to a life-time, decades and you're still learning every
day.
Oh, and to put in 10,000 hours into programming can be done in 2 years, even faster do the
maths
maths.
Kids master this. It can be as much taught as teaching someone to love.
There you go, don't take much of what people say for granted - you write the code, you write
the rules you decide.
29 Reply Share

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Joey Joeseph Michaels > Francesco Basenghi 2 years ago

You obviously don't know who Peter Norvig is. Maybe just Google the name for
the sake of it. I'm sure you'll be enlightened even if just a little...
1 Reply Share

yr2091 > Joey Joeseph Michaels 2 years ago

I hate people who appeal to authority. Great Article!
22 Reply Share

Eyjlfur Kri Frijfsson > Joey Joeseph Michaels 2 years ago

He was not talking about Peter Norvig. He was replying to
TheTaoOfProgramming
4 Reply Share

Francesco Basenghi > Eyjlfur Kri Frijfsson 2 years ago

thanks, sometime pointing out the obvious becomes necessity.
4 Reply Share

dcofjapan > Francesco Basenghi 2 years ago

You missed the point of this entirely. While it's good to let people know coding
isn't as easy as riding a bike, people that deter others from doing what they want
to do is wrong regardless. How many times have I been told game or web
development is some stupid pipe dream whether vocally or without saying a
word. People are doing both successfully whether freelance or working with an
actual company and degree or no degree. Will they be a pro in 30 days from
reading a book meant for beginners? No but it's a start.
Reply Share

Tour de France rider in 24H > dcofjapan 7 months ago

The comparison to riding a bike is silly: becoming a proficient bicycle rider
takes years of dedicated practice. Sure, everyone with some practice can
ride a bike in the park or maybe commute to work, but that is the "hello
world" equivalent of bicycling, or chapter 2 of any 24 hour programming
book.
Reply Share

Eric MacLeod > Francesco Basenghi 2 years ago

Eric MacLeod > Francesco Basenghi 2 years ago
I think he's just trying to help people get in to it, this article comes off very strong
and you don't need to be in the deep technical to be able to do some useful
things with coding. You can't assume he's not a programmer though.
Reply Share

aaronpeacock > Francesco Basenghi 2 years ago

I don't agree with your expressed sentiments. I really take issue with your first
statement. No it's not obvious, nor is it correct procedure for you to jump to this
conclusion as a reaction to TaoOfProgrammings expressed opinion. If anything, it
shows that YOUR brain requires more discipline and perhaps YOUR brain has a
natural tendency to assert things it has no clue about. (whether
TaoOfProgramming is a programmer or not, which I would tend to assume is a
possibility until proven otherwise, especially given his/her name...)
In other news, appeal to authority is still a logical fallacy. One can certainly
disagree with Peter Norvig and still stand upright...
Reply Share

TheCreepyCrow > aaronpeacock 2 years ago

I'm guessing the reason he said that he is not a programmer is. Well
find one programmer that will ever say "What if you can already program
before you `learn`?" .... Find me anyone who can do something and its a
99.9% chance they'll never say, "Oh yeah, I just tried swimming and now
I'm a professional swimmer after 15 minutes", or a professional painter,
ect. You might understand the basics better then others, but becoming
proficient and effective with said tool or skill will take a long time,
no matter what it is or who you are. Then to top that off, people sell books
by making people think they can literally "Learn (any language) in 21
days!" I agree its good to get people into it. But that could also be why so
many people stop coding. When you realize you wont be coding that
game or making that impressive website in a month a lot of people
become discouraged.

What I think the OP ment was that some people are more inclined to
learn certain
things over others. I might be able to understand programming easier
than you, it could just click with me, but you can understand other things
better than me.

oh
and 10,000 hours is 416 days and 16 hours.... so If you wanna get those
10,000 hours in two years isn't that like 15 or 16 hours per day 7 days
a week?
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Marcel Valdez > TheCreepyCrow a year ago

To be honest the first time I programmed at 13 years of age it just
 To be honest, the first time I programmed at 13 years of age, it just
clicked, it was as if programming was the perfect vessel to express
something I had in me.

As soon as I knew what the basic idea of programming is (series of

instructions with flow control) and did some examples, endless abstract
ideas came to my mind and were automatically converted into pseudo-
code in my head, it was effortless and could not be stopped.

I remember coming back to my father that day and telling him during
dinner: "I can do anything you can do" (he owned a software company,
and no, he never sat down to teach me). Even though I only knew two
flow control mechanisms IF and JMP, I could not think of a problem (lack
of creativity probably) I could not solve with the tools I had (IF and JMP).

I've been stoked with programming ever since.

While I was not a master programmer at 13, learning a language's syntax

and basic functionality triggered a lifetime of coding. I am a 31-year-old
see more

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rururu > TheTaoOfProgramming 3 years ago

I agree. Also I think the basic premise "a little learning is a dangerous thing" of this blog
post is
flawed. Or does Peter Norvig think that teaching calculus in high school is
dangerous because most students don't become professional
mathematicians?
1 Reply Share

Jono > rururu 3 years ago

Good rhetoric, bad logic. We have understanding in Math before we get to
calculus, 12 years of it. We also don't go out after grade 12 and get a job doing
calculus. We don't go up to a business owner (who may not know calculus, and
can't evaluate our skills in it) and say "I know calculus!" I would say your analogy
is worse than wrong, its a lie.
3 Reply Share

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Jono > rururu 2 years ago

Exactly, and people psychologically do this so incredibly frequently. The
less we know, the more we believe we know. That is exactly the issue, so
theoretically you may be right but in reality it's totally wrong.
3 Reply Share
 Sillycibin > Jono 2 years ago
Right, people don't know enough to realize how much they don't know.
When they know something about an area or have a skill of some degree
and they have a overly simplified model of the domain they grossly
overestimate their proficiency.
1 Reply Share

Eric MacLeod > Sillycibin 2 years ago

agreed, if you can do some nifty things in say python and you didn't learn
much about how it works under the hood you're in trouble when someone
else's module breaks if you manged to get a job in coding prematurely.
Reply Share

Anthony > rururu 2 years ago

The problem tends to be down to the fact that there's a lot of ways to
achieve things Right Now. Nothing wrong with this, but unless you're
working with people who are self-aware enough to realise that they're
incurring a lot of technical debt and have the work environment set up to
pay it down at some point it does put at risk the codebase.

It's dangerous not in the sense that it'll kill anyone, but dangerous as in
building a structure on dodgy foundations. Maintenance costs ratchet up,
and the cost of implementing new features or shiny new cool things is
prohibitive (or impossible)
Reply Share

VP > TheTaoOfProgramming 3 years ago

The part about 'not sleeping' certainly rings a bell, and i agree that you can think like a
programmer even if you arent one.
Reply Share

Brian Adgermilk 3 years ago

I think you have just answered a huge life question in general.
5 Reply Share

Stefano Scerra 3 years ago

A great essay, many truths in it
8 Reply Share

Kai Chen 3 years ago

Thanks, Peter, for this awesome post! There are some great pointers to ways to practice that
never occurred to me; and I've been programming for almost 20 years and have always
considered myself as conscientious about improving my art.

Itzshak Stern has said 'Practice slowly' when asked what's the best way to learn to play the
violin. That advice has stuck to me for the last 3 months or so. It jumped to me again when I
read your emphasis on _deliberate_ practice. But even with full attention, it would take 10K
hours -- ars longa indeed. On the other hand, the reward for long toil is always greater than that
for the genius who gets it right away. Not that I feel sorry for the genius. :)

p.s. Now about working on projects where one is the worst programmer ... any openings at
Google right now? :)
4 Reply Share

Vallabh Kansagara 3 years ago

this is the only way you find that what can a programming language can do !
3 Reply Share

Kirua 3 years ago

Thank you. I've been interested in programming from very early ages (I suppose I'm still in my
early ages, being only 13) mainly because my father is a programmer and I'm a pretty big
gamer. Actually, It isn't just programming languages that I've been interested in. I'm also very
interested and motivated to learn different languages, such as French, Spanish and Japanese
(though I haven't quite gotten anywhere with them yet).

At first, my ideal was learning how to program Ruby, Python and Java within two or three years
(not to the point of mastering them, but to the point of me having a proper understanding of the
language and being capable of using the language in a way that doesn't scream "Novice!"). At
first I was a little upset that it would take so long, but then realized that within that ten years I'd
still be programming. It isn't a matter of learning for ten years, THEN doing it. It's a matter of
learning as I go, for the period of ten years... and maybe even learning more after those ten
years as I go. Really, I've been interested in this kind of stuff since I was six or so, and even
tried learning some really basic stuff when I was (probably) nine. I'm thirteen now, and I've still
been learning a few things. I could continue doing this for ten years, becoming more adapt with
different programming languages. I have a Dad and an Aunt who'd be more then happy to help
teach me some things long the way. I just need to spill in a lot more effort!

Much different to how I was thinking about this at first, I'm now much more motivated! I hope I'll
keep to my word and learn within these ten years. ^_^ (I apologize for my lack of knowledge
when it comes to grammar, especially with my misplacement of the words "Then" and "Than",
they just confuse me far too much for me to bother learning how to use them properly.
Hopefully this useless comment of mine still makes sense.)
5 Reply Share

G Nebs > Kirua 3 months ago

You're very insightful. I'm exactly double your age and I found your post motivating and
even though this was a post written about your individual perspective I still found it to be
enlightening. This post was not useless and your grammar is fine.

Edit: I just realized your post was from 2 years ago. I guess I'm not double your age
after all. :)
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Gregory Tasonis 2 years ago
A few ramblings from a middle aged tech guy. There is a reason why the very best books on
the hard sciences are usually decades old and why publishers will never go broke with "24
hours" books. Everything is built on a solid foundation. Everything you learn needs to be
actively integrated into your overall "information architecture" web of understanding. Something
I read, Feynman I believe but my memory isn't what it used to be, stuck with me. People have
difficulty with Physics because Physics is properly taught using the language of Mathematics.
You can search for book after book after book that uses prose to "explain things differently", but
it's an impossible task.

In this context, "A little programming knowledge is a dangerous thing" means to me that a trivial
understanding of a single language's syntax isn't something you can build on to understand
more complex problems than printing "Hello World!". You don't need to know everything up front
to begin, but you DO need to realize everything you're learning initially is really miles deep. If
you don't understand something, you're probably missing some pre-requisite and need to figure
out what you need to learn, learn it and integrate it into your web. That process is painful and
difficult. Did I mention it's painful? If you're not naturally gifted, I've found EE's tend to develop
this talent...indeed it may be the most important thing you ever learn.

Mr. Norvig makes two excellent suggestions that I wish I'd heard 20 years ago and would
recommend to anyone interested in CS. "Remember that there is a Computer in Computer
Science". Read Horowitz and Hill's "The Art of Electronics" from cover to cover. Then learn 6 or
7 programming languages that each exemplify a different type of abstraction.

"May the road rise up to greet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may you be in
Heaven an hour before the Devil knows you're dead."
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chris94703 > Gregory Tasonis 2 years ago

Thank you.
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Mage Ona > Gregory Tasonis 3 months ago

Will you tell us why we should read "The Art of Electronics" from cover to cover. What
good will it give?
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John Osinski 3 years ago

Thank you so much for this blog post, i first read it years ago and it holds a special place in my
heart :)
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Rajkanwar Batra 3 years ago

You need 10 years to be an expert programmer but what if someone is just trying to put
together a prototype?
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Eduardo > Rajkanwar Batra 3 years ago

...reads like "You need 10 years to be a surgeon but what if someone is just trying to
open up a patient?"
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rururu > Eduardo 3 years ago

But you may be thankful if a mere paramedic can successfully perform a simple,
life-saving surgical procedure in emergency situations.

Also comparing programming with performing surgeries is like comparing apples

with orang utans. Many scientists write code regularly, but they didn't practice it
for 10 years.
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> rururu 3 years ago

You what, think that person programming the controller for LHC,
pacemaker, mine clearing drone, robotic arm at a factory, doesn't have
the same level of responsibility than the surgeon? Programming the UI for
GPS satellite control center? OF COURSE comparing programming with
performing surgeries is valid comparison, at least in terms of
responsibility, depending on the domain.
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rururu > 2 years ago

Yeah, depending on the domain. And that's why the comparison is not
valid.
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JTW > rururu 2 years ago

that "mere paramedic" didn't learn his craft by reading a "how to perform a
vasectomy in 24 hours". He actually spent several years in classroom
training, then more time in what amounts to apprenticeships, then more
years working under close supervision by other paramedics, doctors, and
nurses, before being allowed to even touch a scalpel in the presence of a
patience.
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Aaron > JTW a year ago

lol, no. A paramedic does about a year of training at a college. 6-7
months if it is an actual academy, as evidenced by the U.S. Military's
training like the SOCM course. Most paramedics might get their hand
hold for a few months, but that is it. When I was a 68W in the ARNG, I
could do crics, chest tubes, cut downs, etc after 5 weeks of "surgical"
training
training.

That comparison was not all that valid. I do agree the title of this article
should be ten years to be a professional industry developer. I know
several biophysicists that do theoretical/computational work after
CS1/CS2, perhaps a numerical analysis or comp physics course, and a
class or two that needed some coding in undergrad. After a year of grad