<story><title>Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)</title><url>http://norvig.com/21-days.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>blackSnake</author><text>I can relate to it through the lens of Karate. I&amp;#x27;ve been studying just about 10 years and I&amp;#x27;m just beginning to see the depth of the art. Its almost like you spend those 10 years building the foundation before you can start building the house.&lt;p&gt;One of the points in the article really jumps out and again, I use martial arts as a lens for comparison. Talking to other programmers extensively accelerates your growth. If I had tried to piece together the knowledge my Sensei taught me through &amp;quot;Youtube, books, &amp;amp; self-study&amp;quot;, I would have not gotten as far as I have. There&amp;#x27;s something about having a mentor that can warp-speed your progress. Anyone who has mentored under a master in their field would attest to that.&lt;p&gt;The programming culture is one where you&amp;#x27;re encouraged to go out and figure it out. Yes, there are teams and pair programming but I don&amp;#x27;t see most companies emphasizing mentorship as much because its not directly tangible on the books. Its more of a long-term investment and they see employees jumping around every couple of years, so why bother?&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to see master programmers (30+ years of exp) offer year-long intensives for serious students who wanted to accelerate their growth. I bet you would get some excellent programmers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)</title><url>http://norvig.com/21-days.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bungie4</author><text>According to the owner of this company, it takes at least 3 days for somebody with absolutely no computer skills to learn programming. Apparently its the career path of choice for telephone operators in a call center.&lt;p&gt;What is funny, after programming professionally for about 30 years, Is I want that job in the call center answering telephones. Even more ironic, it takes 1 month of intensive training to do that job.</text></comment>