Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years: Why Rushing to Learn Code Fails
Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
I argue that true programming expertise cannot be achieved in 24 hours or even 21 days, but requires a decade of deliberate practice. Drawing on research from Bloom and Ericsson, I suggest that mastery comes from sustained effort, learning multiple languages, and working on real projects with others rather than relying on quick tutorials or formal degrees alone.
Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
- yoyohello13
One of may favorite things to do was to spend some time tinkering around to learn a new programming language. I collected quite a few and it was fun to learn new paradigms and how to organize programs. But now since AI… idk I just can’t do it, it seems just completely useless in the age of AI. Like getting better at the technical aspects of programming just doesn’t feel important anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive LLMs for that. It really took away something I enjoyed.
- primitivesuave
FWIW, Peter Norvig also gave an updated take on what programming will look like with LLMs around 2 years ago. It did give me some hope back then, but with the development of Fables and Kimis and Sols I think it's truly anyone's guess where the art of programming will go.
- tomhow
Seen here once or twice before... :)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44697007 - July 2025 (102 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39001755 - Jan 2024 (302 comments)
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Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27411276 - June 2021 (115 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20543495 - July 2019 (87 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16574248 - March 2018 (51 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395284 - April 2015 (61 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519158 - April 2013 (86 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years by Peter Norvig (2001) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3439772 - Jan 2012 (29 comments)
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191235 - May 2008 (19 comments)
Norvig: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243 - Aug 2007 (7 comments)
- throwaway17_17
When I decided to really learn how to program, after dabbling in very basic C++ from books and using BASIC this article and Eric S. Raymond’s ‘How to Become a Hacker’ [1] (CATB is struggling to load at all these days it seems) were two of the first articles I found. While HtBaH was probably more influential on me immediately, Teach Yourself was a great appetizer for the concept of pacing myself in my learning and in the choices I made.
With all the “AI” has made coding/learning to code a dead end and unnecessary crud being peddled currently I don’t know if people who want to actually learn to program are going to find resources that can be as motivating as this and other articles from `the before times`. It leaves me slightly bummed out, but in my less pessimistic moments I think motivated learners are going to see through the hype and find these types of resource anyway.
On a side note, the Norvig’s articles about implementing a Scheme in Python were my first foray into designing and implementing programming languages, compilers, and interpreters which really shaped my interest all the way through to today.
- markus_zhang
From my experience, just to say the thing that many such articles never mentioned, because the author has the innate ability anyway:
Seek mental stability, or whatever mental state that can push you to programming for 10 years without completely burning you out. If you can’t even do some programming after a relatively easy work day, you are burnt out.
BTW ^ is my state nowadays.