THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO PROGRAMMING PROFESSIONALLY

Reading is very important to me because it’s one of the best ways I am able to learn and retain information. I’ve been approaching this topic, programming and python, on a very granular level. I’ve been stuck very up-close to python and a couple of other topics very specifically, but haven’t had a book that zoomed out as a good overview.

Until… I found this book! Althoff’s book The Self-Taught Programmer, is a fantastic overview by someone who has already accomplish exactly what I desire to accomplish.

Alhoff speaks about something called “The Self-Taught Advantage.” He writes, “You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.”

Alhoff writes, “You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.”

He goes on to say how important founders of companies such as Apple, Twitter, and Instagram were all self-taught programmers.

Finding and reading this book was a great re-motivator to continue with the self-learning route. It’s easy to fall into moments of doubt, but I find that fueling those moments into proactive steps is a helpful strategy.

Moreover, Althoff supplies the reader with a quote from Doug Linder, “A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.” I laughed at this moment because I remember doing that since I was a child! But what this quote highlights is that in programming, you can’t have any blind spots. Even if something should work some way, you still need to test and analyze it from multiple perspectives. It can also mean that you should know how to make and take something apart. The person who looks both ways before crossing a one-way crosswalk is keen enough to realize that there is still a small percentage that another car could have not seen the sign and gone the wrong way down the one way street. Therefore. the person is being extra sure (which in programming would be akin to catching an exception) to ensure their likelihood of safely crossing the street.

What makes this field a little difficult to get into is that technology is very intertwined. It’s not just enough to know one programming language. There are a lot of other skills you will need to acquire. If you want to know what I mean, go into your browser and search for terms like “software engineer” or “data scientist” job descriptions. In the “preferred skills” section, you’ll often see a long list of acronyms and names of things you should know. It can feel a little foreign if you don’t know how to parse through the terminology.

What this book provides that others don’t is a brief introduction into major aspects needed to get a job in programming, and a blueprint map of what to do to accomplish that. This book wont teach you all the specifics about Python or programming, but it will point you in the right direction of what you should be studying.

(Yes, that’s a gif I made of my notes on Python. I’m taking a three hour overview course on Python on Udemy that helps as a good overview of the basics I’ve already reviewed before in-depth).

I’ll be taking Althoff’s advice of: program every day. That’s the new challenge and goal. I definitely recommend this book to any fellow dedicated self-learners!