

How long did it take you to learn how to program? - Pbyte


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wglb
Sitting in Union Station after first quarter freshman year with a 10 hour wait
for train, read the fortran text for the next quarter cover-to-cover several
times. Was ready to go when class started after winter break.

I am still learning programming many years later after countless languages and
many challenging projects.

So I will give you a two part answer:

1) 10 hours 2) 46 years.

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dirkdeman
This question is impossible to answer. There is a difference between learning
and mastering. Learning is quick ('hello world' will takeless than a minute),
while mastering depends on which language you're using, how fast you learn and
how much time you devote.

Maybe you're just beginning with programming and you want a timeframe how long
it will take you to be able to code something decent? My advice is not to
stress too much about the 'how long'. Just begin building stuff, start easy in
the beginning. Tackle problems as you encounter them, and constantly wonder
'how did they do this?' when you're using an app/website/whatever. Curiosity
is a great teacher.

As for myself, I started coding (HTML, CSS, PHP) 7 years ago. Within a few
months I was able to write a half-decent web app, but if I look back on the
stuff I made back then it makes me want to cry, it's that bad... I got a lot
better since, but I wouldn't say I've mastered it yet. Good luck!

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ZanderEarth32
17 days.

No, really, I don't think you ever stop learning really, or you shouldn't at
least. You might be able to attribute a length to how long it took you until
you felt you were proficient. But it's all relative. I could say it took me 30
seconds to learn how to program because I could get something to return
"Hello?" but is that really programming?

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lukesandberg
Agreed, I constantly look back on the work i have done in the past and think
that i had no idea what i was doing. Learning to program is a skill to be
honed continuously.

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thisispete
28 years and counting.

basic, who can remember. turbo basic, qbasic, pascal? all grade school...

flash took 1.5 years from flash 5, as2 to as3.

php, asp, don't think I ever got fluent enough to not have to refrence..

javascript and jquery took me about 2 months from novice to master. 4-6 months
for everything html5 and css3 related.

still working on the objective c, c++, etc.

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RollAHardSix
6.5 years in, still learning everydate.

Enough to be useful and -basic-? 2.5 years of self-study and classroom.
Classroom gave some fundamentals while self-study gave practical techniques,
and more importantly, a practical language to say 'I know'. School never
covered one language long enough, never pushed into the underlying libraries.

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CyberFonic
Depends on the levels of dedication and aptitude !

That's like asking "How long does it take to learn to play the guitar?" What
like a monkey? or like Eric Clapton?

I've worked in many corporate IT departments with veterans with 10+ years
"experience" who couldn't hold a match to a motivated 15 yo hacker.

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dutchrapley
I learned to build web applications fairly quickly. Zero to a job doing it in
less than a year. It's solving other peoples' problems that's the hard part.
You only get better at it with experience across several projects - and that
is where you keep learning, every day.

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duaneb
I started programming around nine years ago, and I still have a _lot_ to
learn.

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richardk
I'm 21, 5 years and counting; I still don't know how to program.

