> Stop telling yourself that. You wouldn't be #11 out of 25,000 if you weren't talented.
I like this advice.
I used to think I wasn't as good a programmer than a friend of mine because he had a larger breadth of skills than myself. Then I actually saw the code he was producing professionally ... and it was crap. It was functional sure, but not maintainable at all (if the business rules changed, then rewrites were awful).
Where I work now, the developer team that I joined were a bunch of amateurs pretending to write business applications. Their code (which I'm still refactoring 10 years later) is awful. I seemed like a super star to my managers because they never knew the difference from a good and bad coder.
That last paragraph wasn't meant to be employment advice. My point is, you never know how good you really are until you see how bad other people are. Couple that with the general self doubt we all sometimes experience, and you end up feeling like the worst in your field.
I'm self taught too. I started coding at age 7. We're the best because we love our particular skill so much that we made a fun hobby out of it. We stayed up way late into the night honing our craft. Etc, etc ... other inspiring reasons why we're awesome at what we do.
Edit:
> Edit: I would also add that I'm also completely self-taught. The only computer class I've taken was typing... and I got kicked out for cheating because it was boring.
Ha, I wrote my comment about being self-taught before you made your edit.
On the topic of cheating: In 6th grade spelling class, we had to write out our weekly spelling words 5 times each. We were allowed to handwrite, or type it out on a computer and hand in the printout. I wrote a computer program where I would input the spelling words as an array (only typing them once), and it would output a text file for me to print out and hand in.
> On the topic of cheating: In 6th grade spelling class, we had to write out our weekly spelling words 5 times each. We were allowed to handwrite, or type it out on a computer and hand in the printout. I wrote a computer program where I would input the spelling words as an array (only typing them once), and it would output a text file for me to print out and hand in.
Wow, I wonder what the goal of that exercise was. Copy/paste has been part of windows since at least 95, no? Regardless, I’d think the main goal of forcing repetitive writing is improving handwriting and word recognition, which require a pen(cil) and not a keyboard.
:) While writing my original post, I tried to mention that copy/paste wasn't common knowledge at the time, but couldn't form a communicative sentence on the matter. I certainly didn't know how to copy/paste at the time.
This was in the days of Windows 3.1, and I was programming in QuickBasic 4.5 on DOS.
I think the word processor I used when typing may have been Word Perfect.
> Regardless, I’d think the main goal of forcing repetitive writing is improving handwriting and word recognition, which require a pen(cil) and not a keyboard.
I think the goal was for us to memorize spelling of the word. Maybe improved handwriting was a sub-goal, I don't know. By that age, I don't think teachers really focused on our penmanship. I consider word recognition to be more of a reading skill.
I was a lazy student. Spelling was never a priority for me. I never did well on tests because I never studied my spelling words. I was more into math and science. My parents never hassled me about my bad spelling test grades.
> Wow, I wonder what the goal of that exercise was.
Clearly, to learn to spell words. In much the same way that kids have to practice arithmetic and saying "I just used a calculator to get the results" is fine in real life but not when you want to learn what addition is.
I did this in WordPerfect in dos, even though I could program in pascal. Getting a compiler on the same computer as a printer back then was the biggest chore :)
I like this advice.
I used to think I wasn't as good a programmer than a friend of mine because he had a larger breadth of skills than myself. Then I actually saw the code he was producing professionally ... and it was crap. It was functional sure, but not maintainable at all (if the business rules changed, then rewrites were awful).
Where I work now, the developer team that I joined were a bunch of amateurs pretending to write business applications. Their code (which I'm still refactoring 10 years later) is awful. I seemed like a super star to my managers because they never knew the difference from a good and bad coder.
That last paragraph wasn't meant to be employment advice. My point is, you never know how good you really are until you see how bad other people are. Couple that with the general self doubt we all sometimes experience, and you end up feeling like the worst in your field.
I'm self taught too. I started coding at age 7. We're the best because we love our particular skill so much that we made a fun hobby out of it. We stayed up way late into the night honing our craft. Etc, etc ... other inspiring reasons why we're awesome at what we do.
Edit:
> Edit: I would also add that I'm also completely self-taught. The only computer class I've taken was typing... and I got kicked out for cheating because it was boring.
Ha, I wrote my comment about being self-taught before you made your edit.
On the topic of cheating: In 6th grade spelling class, we had to write out our weekly spelling words 5 times each. We were allowed to handwrite, or type it out on a computer and hand in the printout. I wrote a computer program where I would input the spelling words as an array (only typing them once), and it would output a text file for me to print out and hand in.