I taught myself. But those skills that I taught myself are used literally 10X more than anything I learned in school

I probably could have skipped all that college altogether

similarly the CIO where I work barely has a high-school diploma, and one of our mutual friends is a self-made multimillionaire who taught himself some tech stuff and got into the phone-dialer business.

Incidentally I'll be consulting with him to answer @Procella Eques 's question

I've also met people with CS degrees who can't actually solve problems using code

think about programming this way: different languages have different core philosophies and strengths/weaknesses

what I can do in server-side javascript, I can also do with Python, more or less. But some problems will be easier to solve with Python, others with Javascript.

Once you learn a single language, others come much easier

What does it mean to learn a programming language

I started out with PHP, then went to Perl, then C#, then Python and JavaScript

How similar is it to natural language if at all

It means you can solve problems using the grammar and syntax of that language.

"learning" is a constant process

that's the joy of it, but it takes some getting used to

So there's rules like grammar in the way you put commands in and commands are like vocabulary?

yes

Glad I studied linguistics for once

one thing that frustrates many people starting out (including me) is that the computer will do *exactly what you tell it*

you might not understand what you're telling it at first, but it will always faithfully execute your commands as long as your code is valid 😃

don't think of programming as something exotic or big-brain. it's not

at the same time, don't try to learn by diving into the code of some large project. you'll be asking yourself way too many questions to make any progress

here's my recommendation. First, tell yourself you're going to learn. tell yourself you're not going to quit

there are going to be times you'll want to totally give up, because something you think should be simple just doesn't work.

but the effort you expend solving that problem will be valuable in the end because you will learn a lot of tricks and gain a deeper understanding in the process

there's a LOT to learn, but you don't have to know everything or even a lot to start writing useful things

so back to my recommendation. Steel yourself, and then dive in.

Take your time as you're learning. Do a little a day. Make sure you understand everything.

I recommend starting with "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" or "Python the Hard Way"

either one will get you the same basic knowledge in the end

again, don't rush through it. do the exercises

if you do a chapter a day you'll have the fundamentals within a week

at that point, start thinking of simple problems to solve using code

one problem I tackled very early on is the Monty Hall problem

it's conceptually simple and a good conversation piece

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

https://www.learnpythonthehardway.org/

http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/

Once you get through one of those books, you'll have a much greater understanding of programming fundamentals. You'll have the foundation in place to tackle something more specific.

Get back to me once you've done that and we can talk some more. AMA along the way.

Gonna knock out an FtN article before bed 😃

Hmmm. "Learn Python the Hard Way" used to be free