

From Law School to developer: An interview with Andy Zhang - jra4
https://www.hireart.com/blog/how-i-went-from-law-school-to-becoming-a-software-developer/

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ZhangBanger
You do learn certain basics from a degree, and building fundamentals is
important. That being said, a degree is neither the exclusive nor universally
optimal way to grok logic and problem structuring. The most important piece of
the puzzle is your willingness to turn over stones, ponder problems, and fill
in blanks tirelessly. Software engineering is an immense field, and there are
always more blanks to fill.

The fortunate thing about online education today (coursera/udacity to name a
few) is that it strips away a lot of the tough/complex issues, offers you a
bite-sized problem, and breaks it down into a manageable chunk that a non-tech
person can solve. It's not unlike how a management consulting case interview
might go - you can't possibly know everything about an industry/space, but you
can (1) break out a facet of the problem, (2) ask some questions, and (3)
distill the incoming data. You develop understanding incrementally.

I'm a big fan of incrementality (also in writing software). Everybody starts
out writing "Hello World!"

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esharef
I wonder whether this is actually possible for someone who didn't have a
computer science background at all. I have spoken to Andy and I know he did
coding when he was young (Note, this is Elli from HireArt). I guess I wonder
if it's possible to make such a huge transition if you had no prior CS
background at all

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esharef
That's true ZhangBanger. But don't you think you get at least some basics from
an MS in terms of logic, how to architect an idea, etc? For instance, as a
non-tech person learning the basics was so incredibly difficult. Just
understanding the basic frameworks of how a computer "thinks" was hard....

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ZhangBanger
From an anonymous friend: most of the hard learning happens with practical
work. He has an MS in EE, and he felt like he knew nothing until he really dug
in and put in the coding hours.

