<story><title>I&apos;m a cargo cult programmer, help me</title><text>Hello HN I come to you for help.&lt;p&gt;I went to college and got an Information systems degree, it was a crappy college so the most programming we had was dabbling with arrays and pointers in C, not much Algorithsms &amp;#38; Data Structures, no unix, no Operating Systems and no compilers, and most importantly no problem solving. Half way through college my father died so I had to find a job to make ends meet,  somehow i got sucked  into the java &quot;enterprise&quot; world where I&apos;ve been for the past 5 years, glueing API&apos;s and frameworks together, with some Javascript and SQL on the side, however on the verge of my 30&apos;s, I now have found that I lack the fundamentals of Computer Science,  the things every programmer should know: Algo&apos;s, Data Structures, Operating Systems an understanding of compilers and being profficient with linux. Eventually I plan on going back to a real University and getting a CS degree, but I&apos;m unable to do so at the moment, this is why I have come to ask for help.&lt;p&gt;OTOH I have given thought about if programming is really for me, I have found that I&apos;m really, really bad at problem solving and &quot;thinking outside of the box&quot; I have come to accept that I&apos;m really not smart. I&apos;m slow, forgetfull, concepts never seem to stick, I have to force myself to not take things for granted, it seems no matter how hard i try I can&apos;t look at problems from different perspectives and understand the  implications of a particular solution, I&apos;m starting to think I may have a learning dissability, or that is because I lack the basic toolkit for problem solving, but I really think I&apos;m just not very smart.&lt;p&gt;Of course the realization of my lack of skills, as you may have guessed, is because I want a better job, and there seems to be no place in the world for dumb programmers, and to be honest this is something I understand given my limitations and looking at my other peers, seeing how long it takes for me when programming something or understanding a problem, seeing how fast other people can grasp concepts that I struggle with, I understand that I&apos;m just not valuable that all my experience
means nothing, So I&apos;m back to 0.&lt;p&gt;I have started going through the basic Algo&apos;s and Data structures again with a basic Java book about algorithms (I tried cormen but no way I could wrap my head around that stuff, I forgot all the calculus/math from college and i just lack the mathematical maturity for that book).&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m also trying to study discrete maths, Operating Systems and compilers, of course one step at a time. I imagine this will take me years just to get a basic understanding of all these concepts.&lt;p&gt;And finally trying to memorise all those linux commands I ALWAYS forget.&lt;p&gt;Lastly I&apos;m trying to learn technologies and languages that will help me get a better job, I&apos;m still not decided whether I should learn Ruby on rails or python or Lisp or just stick to Java and learn Android and do my own thing  and forget about joining a &quot;cool&quot; startup or working at the big guys like google(10 years from now after I become a real programmer of course...) Or quitting programming altogether.&lt;p&gt;Hackers, I understand this is a long and boring post, filled with grammar &amp;#38; spelling errors (English is not my primary language), but I only ask of you to guide me whether I should continue this path in which I have invested all my adult life on or just start again from zero, I just don&apos;t want to be a cargo cult programmer anymore.&lt;p&gt;Thank you</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>blhack</author><text>I&apos;ve gotten some flak for saying this other places, but the &lt;i&gt;most&lt;/i&gt; helpful thing that I&apos;ve ever done to learn linux was installing gentoo.  Especially doing it without the official install CD (by using something like knoppix).&lt;p&gt;Start here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The thing that is different about installing gentoo vs centos or ubuntu is that instead of something that looks like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;     Would you like to format the disk (click yes or no)?
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
You get a walkthrough of what fdisk is, then how to use it, then you use it to partition your disks.  Instead of selecting a filesystem from a dropdown, you make one with mke2fs.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t recall if Ubuntu even tells you what lilo or grub is.&lt;p&gt;The reason I like this is that it forces you to understand what is going on.  What is the /boot partition?  Why is that important?&lt;p&gt;Installing gentoo is going to force you to use tar, and wget.  It&apos;s going to force you to get comfortable on the command line.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s also going to force you to understand what a kernel module is.  It&apos;s going to force you to understand things like: what chipset does my wireless card use?&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s hard.  And it takes forever.  And it probably won&apos;t work the first time.&lt;p&gt;To me, it&apos;s kindof a rite of passage, like telling a carpenter that he has to build his workbench before he is allowed to start working on anything else.  The workbench he makes might suck...hopefully this causes him to want to keep building new workbenches until he has one that is perfect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theoj</author><text>Another great way to learn Linux is to setup a VPS. Last year I setup a VPS from scratch with no previous experience (Ubuntu, PHP, Ruby on Rails, DNS, email server, iptables and more) using just web tutorials. It was a slow process (it took me about a week full time) but it taught me a lot.</text></comment>
<story><title>I&apos;m a cargo cult programmer, help me</title><text>Hello HN I come to you for help.&lt;p&gt;I went to college and got an Information systems degree, it was a crappy college so the most programming we had was dabbling with arrays and pointers in C, not much Algorithsms &amp;#38; Data Structures, no unix, no Operating Systems and no compilers, and most importantly no problem solving. Half way through college my father died so I had to find a job to make ends meet,  somehow i got sucked  into the java &quot;enterprise&quot; world where I&apos;ve been for the past 5 years, glueing API&apos;s and frameworks together, with some Javascript and SQL on the side, however on the verge of my 30&apos;s, I now have found that I lack the fundamentals of Computer Science,  the things every programmer should know: Algo&apos;s, Data Structures, Operating Systems an understanding of compilers and being profficient with linux. Eventually I plan on going back to a real University and getting a CS degree, but I&apos;m unable to do so at the moment, this is why I have come to ask for help.&lt;p&gt;OTOH I have given thought about if programming is really for me, I have found that I&apos;m really, really bad at problem solving and &quot;thinking outside of the box&quot; I have come to accept that I&apos;m really not smart. I&apos;m slow, forgetfull, concepts never seem to stick, I have to force myself to not take things for granted, it seems no matter how hard i try I can&apos;t look at problems from different perspectives and understand the  implications of a particular solution, I&apos;m starting to think I may have a learning dissability, or that is because I lack the basic toolkit for problem solving, but I really think I&apos;m just not very smart.&lt;p&gt;Of course the realization of my lack of skills, as you may have guessed, is because I want a better job, and there seems to be no place in the world for dumb programmers, and to be honest this is something I understand given my limitations and looking at my other peers, seeing how long it takes for me when programming something or understanding a problem, seeing how fast other people can grasp concepts that I struggle with, I understand that I&apos;m just not valuable that all my experience
means nothing, So I&apos;m back to 0.&lt;p&gt;I have started going through the basic Algo&apos;s and Data structures again with a basic Java book about algorithms (I tried cormen but no way I could wrap my head around that stuff, I forgot all the calculus/math from college and i just lack the mathematical maturity for that book).&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m also trying to study discrete maths, Operating Systems and compilers, of course one step at a time. I imagine this will take me years just to get a basic understanding of all these concepts.&lt;p&gt;And finally trying to memorise all those linux commands I ALWAYS forget.&lt;p&gt;Lastly I&apos;m trying to learn technologies and languages that will help me get a better job, I&apos;m still not decided whether I should learn Ruby on rails or python or Lisp or just stick to Java and learn Android and do my own thing  and forget about joining a &quot;cool&quot; startup or working at the big guys like google(10 years from now after I become a real programmer of course...) Or quitting programming altogether.&lt;p&gt;Hackers, I understand this is a long and boring post, filled with grammar &amp;#38; spelling errors (English is not my primary language), but I only ask of you to guide me whether I should continue this path in which I have invested all my adult life on or just start again from zero, I just don&apos;t want to be a cargo cult programmer anymore.&lt;p&gt;Thank you</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>blhack</author><text>I&apos;ve gotten some flak for saying this other places, but the &lt;i&gt;most&lt;/i&gt; helpful thing that I&apos;ve ever done to learn linux was installing gentoo.  Especially doing it without the official install CD (by using something like knoppix).&lt;p&gt;Start here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The thing that is different about installing gentoo vs centos or ubuntu is that instead of something that looks like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;     Would you like to format the disk (click yes or no)?
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
You get a walkthrough of what fdisk is, then how to use it, then you use it to partition your disks.  Instead of selecting a filesystem from a dropdown, you make one with mke2fs.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t recall if Ubuntu even tells you what lilo or grub is.&lt;p&gt;The reason I like this is that it forces you to understand what is going on.  What is the /boot partition?  Why is that important?&lt;p&gt;Installing gentoo is going to force you to use tar, and wget.  It&apos;s going to force you to get comfortable on the command line.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s also going to force you to understand what a kernel module is.  It&apos;s going to force you to understand things like: what chipset does my wireless card use?&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s hard.  And it takes forever.  And it probably won&apos;t work the first time.&lt;p&gt;To me, it&apos;s kindof a rite of passage, like telling a carpenter that he has to build his workbench before he is allowed to start working on anything else.  The workbench he makes might suck...hopefully this causes him to want to keep building new workbenches until he has one that is perfect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tlrobinson</author><text>Oh god I remember trying to install Gentoo on a PowerBook once about 5 years ago on the advice of a friend. Spent a couple days trying, never did get it working but I did learn a bit about Linux...&lt;p&gt;Of course the skills you learn are more sys admin / OS concepts than fundamental CS concepts though.</text></comment>