
Ask HN: Is this book lying about taking only 20 hours to learn programming? - goughgough
A book by Josh Kaufman<p>Am I missing something?<p>I get his point that we don&#x27;t need to spend 10,000 hours to master something.<p>But , 20 hours? A marketing point to sell a book may be? (cynicism overspill here).<p>I have read chapter 5 of his book &quot;The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! by Josh Kaufman (Jun 6, 2013)&quot;<p>In it he described the process of how he went about breaking down and defining a programming problem and researching solutions and deciding which tools {out of a myriad of choices} to use for the job and downloading and installing tools and coding a Wordpress replacement solution using Sinatra and Jekyll etc.<p>For the scope of his programming project, see &quot;Deconstructing the End Result&quot;  at :
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;ocm4kua<p>Along the way in his 20 hours journey a coder wannabe like me is introduced to new programming tools and concepts such as:<p>git, Sinatra, Heroku, Jekyll, DataMapper, Rake , framework , state etc.<p>He described how he researched and decided to reject using Ruby on Rails in favor of Sinatra; 
rejected Postgres in favor of DataMapper ; 
rejected Python in favor of using Ruby ; 
choosing Heroku instead of alternatives ; 
making complicated choices along the way.<p>All these in 20 hours.<p>Granted, he went into the project already knowing how to deal with html and css and maintaining server issues that host his website http:&#x2F;&#x2F;personalmba.com --- none of these skills I possess.<p>In case you don&#x27;t know who Josh Kaufman is, take a look at this video.
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY<p>..........Another question :<p>If you were to study computer programming again, how would you go about shortening your learning curve?<p>..........tl;dr:  
Is it really possible for a newbie to learn programming in 20 hours or less to solve a programming issue?<p>What resources or advice would you use or what pitfalls would you avoid to get to the end goal of learning programming faster?<p>Thanks a million.
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segmondy
You can learn a lot in 20 hours, you can't learn all you need in 20 hours. The
key is maintaining a fine balance between learning(READING) and
doing(LEARNING). With google/stackoverflow, one can do a lot without
understanding much, kinda bruteforce your way to the solution.

Just start doing, there was a post where someone learned to program by
building a small project everyday for about 180days, that's more like it. Take
that approach, start building everyday, non stop. Don't worry about the amount
of time, just finish whatever you start.

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gamechangr
You won't learn ...

"git, Sinatra, Heroku, Jekyll, DataMapper, Rake , framework , state etc."

in 20 hours.

That is certainly marketing!

Maybe give you a very basic introduction and that's all.

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nether
it's like learning "writing." the process doesn't end at 20 or 2,000 hours.

