Self taught programmers, aren't we all

I read a posting about self taught programmers and my first thought was, who isn't a self taught programmer then I thought that perhaps there were some advantages of being taught programming but they aren't really very long lasting and only really help to give you a bit of a head start.

I think that an education in programming probably gives you a head start in areas such as design, uml and a glimpse at a few other languages.

One interesting point I would like to make is that I worked somewhere where non programmers were trained to be programmers because this is what the company said

"any one can learn to program, it is the right type of person we want"

I still happen to think that this comment has a good deal of sense about it. This comment also helps explain why people are offered money to recommend friends for programming jobs because I believe that in the end you want people you can trust and who will get the job done and those qualities of character don't really have anything to do with if they have learnt programming at University or not.

I also say this because I believe all people (self taught or not) can program okay and get their work done but they won't produce reusable code for the first few years because they don't understand what makes good reusable code. Basically university taught people have a broader programming knowledge but are not that far ahead of self taught people and it's how interested you are in programming that effects how you will progress as a programmer.

My main concern with the blog entry is that it's not the degree that might make non self taught learners better but the education in programming and this can be surpassed by reading some recommended books in what ever programming language they are programming in and backed up with some effort in learning to be a better programmer.

I think it's pretty irrelevant if you are a self taught programmer or not. The real question is if you are interested in programming, if you want to improve there is a wealth of material from books to articles but if you just program to pay the bills then you won't improve. I say this because I think the biggest improvement you can make as a programmer is in the area of design, design of code effects any language you are using, any project. If you research and understand what (and why) is good design and start thinking in a more abstract manner than actually coding it is the easy part.

perhaps this is where the self taught people get caught, you can find links to tutorials to help you with your coding problem but without investment in learning about programming design your code will never improve. Until a programmer realizes about object orientated rules and objectives then you will write code that gets the job done but is difficult to modify and change. Perhaps it is learning this that self taught programmers find difficult because it won't initially improve speed or perhaps short term quality of code, the main benefit is felt once you have to come back and modify the code, if it is designed well then adding or modifying the code should be easy.

in the end who isn't a self taught programmer?

Here is the link to the blog entry

http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t69920.html