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How long have you been learning to code and how far along are you? I'm seriously considering learning to code myself.

• fttechfounder 15y ago
  I'm working through David Malan's "CS50: Intro to Computer Science" course at Harvard (http://cs50.tv/2010/fall/ http://cs50.tv/2010/fall/) and also Chris Pine's 'Learn to Program (http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/ http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/). As a complete beginner, I've found both to be very accessible, although the CS50 course is much more rigorous and much more of a pain since it's mostly taught in C99. While I can zip through chapters in Chris Pine's book, which teaches Ruby, I spend days working through each of the CS50 problem sets. At the beginning, the biggest surprise was how hard it was. It sounds obvious, but programming is about thinking like a machine. If you're like most normal people, this is going to be hard because you just don't naturally think like a machine! After a while, the framework of approaching a problem becomes more second nature, but it's still hard, especially if you're learning by yourself. I remember showing off what I thought was a completed program to my girlfriend. She played with it for about 5 seconds before breaking it by putting some input I hadn't planned for. If I started again, I would have enrolled in a community college for physical course just so I could have peers check my work and people to talk to when I hit a wall. I quit my job to learn to code so I'm fairly motivated, but even then, working by yourself has a way of a eating that away. I'm moving to New York City next month and the first thing I'm going to do is get plugged in.