
Ask HN: At 34, do I go back to college or not? - zatara
I'm an orthopedic surgeon with a PhD in Biomaterials. I have a comfortable financial situation, a beautiful family and basically just work 2 days/week. Besides that, I really miss the challenge of creating something and wish that I had studied CS or engineering (thanks to PG and Woz!).<p>So here is the deal: I want to build a startup in 2-3 years dealing with custom-made prostheses, and I'd like to hack the technical side myself. My problem is education/background in robotics to pull it off.<p>From my initial investigations, I'll need a basic knowledge of mechanics and electronics (nothing fancy, it is basically a solved problem) and a more mature grasp of computer science (possibly some LISP to wrap everything). This is quite a stretch from my technical background (basic Calculus, basic FEA and some Python).<p>Here are my options:
1) Self-study (more targeted and possibly faster; requires self-discipline; no feedback; isolation)
2) Follow a 2-year technical college in mechanics and/or electronics (good practice; requires complementation)
3) Get a 5-year degree in mechanical or computer engineering (nice, but too long; lacks practical side?)
4) Combinations of the above (e.g. drop college after 2 years + self-study)<p>It certainly looks challenging, but my goal is not only making money in a fixed time frame, titles or jobs, but the journey itself. Can I get some advice?
======
physcab
Since you certainly have the discipline to pull self-study off, I would
suggest emailing a professor teaching undergraduate classes in Mechatronics or
Embedded Systems at Stanford, Cornell or Carnegie Mellon. They have very solid
programs in robotics as they are always big contenders in the DARPA grand
challenges. Get a syllabus and buy the books. When I took those classes, it
was a lot of self-study anyways with our primary reference being The Art of
Electronics and a bunch of AVR processor manuals. If you live in San Jose /
Santa Clara area there are some GREAT electronics depots where you can stroll
up and walk away with a bunch of servo motors for under $20 and start
hardware-hacking.

Don't go back to school though. I think its a bit overkill. Having a PhD you
already possess the skills to find the right resources and just begin doing
what you want...no need to relearn the theory (unless that is half the fun for
you). To address the isolation concern, I would suggest to find a hardware
company (perhaps medical) that you could intern at. Try and find a mentor who
can show you the ropes quicker than if you were to be by yourself.

~~~
Morinu
Can you give more info on the electronics depots in the San Jose/Santa Clara
area please?

~~~
physcab
Yea, I used to go to Halted and Triangle Machinery Co.. There's also the
Electronics Flea Market hosted by amateur radio societies that has good deals
too but you have to get there right when it opens (5am) to get the best stuff.
<http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/>

San Jose State University keeps a good list of local surplus depots here:
[http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/bjfurman/courses/ME106/componentinf...](http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/bjfurman/courses/ME106/componentinfo.htm)

------
paulbaumgart
Can't you go for a Master's in CS or Robotics or something? I know people with
math/science backgrounds but no CS-backgrounds doing their CS Master's here at
UCSD. It sounds like a lot of scrambling to catch up, but probably the best
bang for your buck.

~~~
AdamN
I think an MS is the way to go. You may even meet a cofounder in the program
and drop out. Just getting books is not going to give you the same experience
and education level as a year or more on a campus with labs, peers, and
mentorship.

~~~
zatara
I'm not sure about this. I've been through something like that during the PhD,
when I had to do some advanced stuff in Mechanics (finite element analysis),
without the proper background. It worked and I learned a lot, but it is
different from following the proper undergraduate courses.

My problem with graduate studies is that your mentor always has an agenda (a
paper, a prototype, etc) which may compromise his advice (e.g. skipping really
important courses/books to save time). Therefore, I'd much rather focus on
technical/undergraduate courses, if following any at all.

~~~
paulbaumgart
From what I've heard, the MS programs tend to be much more oriented towards
learning what you need to learn and getting out in 2 years. I don't speak from
personal experience, though, so I'd suggest you talk to folks who've done it.
I'd be happy to put you in touch with some if you'd like. My email's in my
profile.

------
sachinag
This is going to sound a bit presumptuous, but with your background, you might
be able to get to market much quicker if you approached some life sciences VCs
first. They may be able to introduce you to someone who can handle the CS
side, give you a little money to get started, and avoid some pitfalls along
the way.

I don't remember the names of early stage life sciences VCs off the top of my
head, but if you're interested, I'd be happy to do some digging this weekend
for you.

~~~
zatara
Thanks for the advice. I thought of this before, but I realized that the
journey is more important than the destination to me. Why should I outsource
all the fun?

That being said, a younger co-founder with the engineering and /or business
skills, good stamina and character would be certainly great. I hope to find
someone like this during my preparation.

~~~
amalcon
Perhaps consider outsourcing _some_ of the fun? Say, self-study a bit, but
also bring on a mechanical or electrical engineer to do the heavy lifting.

If you do go for a degree, I'd suggest electrical engineering. I know many
great programmers whose degrees are EE, and it sounds like you'll need some
expertise in that area as well. (No, I'm not referring to people from schools
where CS technically falls under the EE department, like MIT -- though a joint
program would probably work too).

~~~
zatara
I think bringing in more knowledgeable people in the future will be definitely
necessary. What I'd like to do is to be able to build a rough alpha version
(think Apple I), and then have people come and polish it (think Apple II).
With more people and funding, we may be able to achieve Mac-level (relatively,
of course).

My problem with the full EE course is that it will eventually require me to go
into areas absolutely not necessary at all. But the same can be said for all
other options as well.

------
thesethings
Anybody reading this site knows that college is not a necessary step on the
way to entrepreneurship, including you.

But less talked about it is the "journey" part.

As long one is in touch with personal motivations and goals, then college
seems fine.

You're in no rush, financially comfortable, and as eager for experiences as
you are your innovative product. I'd say college sounds like a cool idea. I'd
just be careful to pick a good program, otherwise it could be
painful/frustrating.

I'm about to go to college part-time with no professional necessity at all.
I'm in a different spot than the OP. I don't have a first degree. But I do
have a fine geeky career that I'm about to step out of to start a business
(way less capital intensive than his idea :D ), and am going to college with
the _hope_ of learning a subject matter, but no real expectations. Just mostly
for the experience.

~~~
zatara
You make a valid point and I'd do the same if I were in your shoes. I'm just
worried of wasting too much time pursuing rabbit holes when I already know
where I want to go. At the same time, I've been more than once surprised with
things that seemed unimportant before. The question then is how to filter out
the "rabbit holes", while keeping the ignored interesting stuff.

~~~
huherto
"you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking
backwards." <http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

~~~
msg
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." --
Kierkegaard

------
jey
Just get some books and start hacking. That's all they use to teach you with
in college anyway, except they charge you a metric crapload to do it.

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a
narrow field." -Niels Bohr

~~~
zatara
I like the attitude, but it is not so simple. Take a look at the other
replies, from people with more experience on the engineering side (rather than
CS), and you'll quickly realize that self-study/hacking can only get you so
far. It wouldn't be different for, let's say, surgery...

The matter here is trying to get to expert level while minimizing stupid
mistakes, and for practical subjects, demo and feedback seems to be necessary.
Making all possible mistakes is very time-consuming.

~~~
jey
The difference between software and surgery is that in surgery you can make
unfixable mistakes. Not so in software, unless your program is controlling a
Therac-25 or something. The key thing to realize is that even when you go to
school to learn, they can't possibly teach you "everything". You still have to
learn a lot on your own after graduating.

------
rysico
Hey! Having just finished a CS degree and after thoughtful consideration, if I
had the opportunity to go back in time and do it over again, I wouldn't. I
think that I could have covered all of the material in far less time on my own
and used the extra time to develop my skills as a programmer. With all of the
exams and assignments that occupy so much time in University, I think that
your time would be better spent writing programs that interest you and reading
other people's code as well. University will teach you the basics, but without
much practice, it's of very little value. Furthermore, I gather from your post
that you'd be studying for the benefit of starting your own company. As a
result, you obviously don't need that piece of paper certifying that you know
what you know. Conversely, if you thought that you might eventually seek
employment with another company, the CS degree is (unfortunately) important
just to get a look at your c.v.

This is just one man's opinion. Let me know what you decide.

~~~
zatara
You're right, I don't need the title by itself. But I do think that CS is the
most challenging part of this project, and this opinion is shared by many
people into robotics. The mechatronics part is tough, involves lots of math,
but it is a solved problem after all. Do you really think it is possible to
take on SICP, K&R, PAIP et al by oneself?

------
jrockway
I think you'll be fine with self-study. The way you get feedback is to iterate
and share your work with other people. Build a small robotics project, find
your favorite robotics-related community / fourm, post "look at my robot, my
robot's amazing", and wait for the feedback. Then do that again.

Eventually, you'll develop a sense of what's right and wrong (from your own
experience and looking at other people's work), and then you'll have the tool
you need to do the project you actually want to do -- experience and
intuition.

It reminds me of that essay, "Teach yourself programming in ten years". You
can't read a book and become an instant expert. You have to read books AND
fail for yourself AND learn from your failures and success. You aren't going
to get this skill in college, you can only get it with your own practice.

------
dkarl
You can learn the mechanics and electronics yourself. You have time, money for
equipment and books, and all the background and maturity you need. If you find
that going it alone leads to frustration, pay a starving grad student $30 an
hour to help you out once in a while. I don't say this knowing anything about
mechanics and electronics; I just know that school will be too slow for you
and won't actually help much. School is for people who need to prove (to
themselves and others) that they aren't just dicking around. Since you've got
a PhD _and_ financial security, people are going to assume that whatever
you're doing in your workshop, you aren't just wasting your time, and even if
you are, you've earned the right.

Don't sweat the difference between Lisp and Python. Python interfaces to C and
has large, mature, and popular scientific computing libraries. I would
actually recommend learning Lisp (for the usual reasons) and using it as you
pursue whatever CS learning you need, but don't be surprised if you end up
using Python for practical work because of the libraries and the large
community of people doing scientific computing.

~~~
zatara
I consider CS the most important part of this project and the real open
problem. I thought about doing this project in LISP, because dealing with
custom-made devices will require code generation and lots of AI. I'll have to
translate lots of surgical experience and rules of thumb into the code, so
Python doesn't seem to be enough (or maybe I'm just unexperienced). Besides
that, I really control all the environment so deployment is a non-issue. Does
my rationalization makes sense?

~~~
dkarl
Honestly, it did not even cross my mind that you would need to do any
sophisticated programming. I assumed that most of the challenge would be in
mapping and mastering the problem domain: figuring out what problems you need
to solve, researching existing solutions to each problem, finding code and
adapting it for your needs, experimenting to see if the existing solutions
work well for your particular problems, adapting them if necessary, and then
wiring it all together in a simple way using a glue language. Lots of work and
sophisticated AI stuff there (probably a few PhDs if you took it far enough)
but no fancy programming. That seems to be the sad truth about real world
problems: the programming is rarely as hard and interesting as all the other
problems you will solve.

On the other hand, Lisp is a lot of fun, and you shouldn't pass up any excuse
to learn it ;-)

------
ableal
I'd say go with #2 (technical college), to learn how to program micro-
controllers with sensors and actuators, and have hands-on experience with
equipment.

That will give you a view-from-the-bottom perspective on CS; perhaps then
you'll figure out if you need to climb to the top.

~~~
frossie
I agree with that. As somebody with a science background, I feel self-study is
great if I want to _understand_ something, but for anything relating to
manipulating a physical object, I find it much, much faster to have it
demonstrated first, and to try it in front of a critical (in a nice way)
person.

For example I prefer to understand quantum mechanics from a book, but I would
rather somebody showed me how to truss a chicken.

EPID and all that, but I think there is a huge shortcut to be had by spending
a little time with somebody who has the tools and skills you are trying to
pick up. The rest you can figure out for yourself.

~~~
zatara
I think you nailed it, this is the insight I was looking for and wasn't able
to express myself. I've had this experience in the medical field and it is
true, certain practical stuff (surgery, soldering, etc) requires
demonstration/feedback. Thanks.

~~~
ableal
Let me add one thing that I forgot to mention: do not miss playing a bit with
analog electronics - such as operational amplifiers with gain fixed by a
negative feedback loop, low pass filters, oscillators, etc. ('Enlightenment'
for EEs starts here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_amplifier#Non-
inver...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_amplifier#Non-
inverting_amplifier) )

There's lots of fascinating systems/control theory that you can 'climb up'
from there. You'll also find that part of what the body does is similar to
those crude electronic systems. And a lot of the programmed digital control is
emulation of the behavior of analog, but often with bells and whistles
impossible in simple circuits.

------
ryanwaggoner
If you have time and disposable income, why not self-study with a tutor to
guide you? Not entirely sure of the best way to go about finding one, but it
would at least cut out some of the disadvantages of the self-study route.

~~~
zatara
This is a good idea, but I'll probably need a lot of tutors. Maybe I need a
"higher-altitude" mentor, who can go through the journey with me and indicate
tutors when necessary.

------
alexyim
Unless you really have a passion for learning, I'd say it's not worth it. Are
you really going to take a risk and go back to college so that you could take
even more risk by doing a startup? Are you sure you can't/don't want to take
on other roles besides being the hacker?

I guess it ultimately depends on how comfortable you are. Whatever you do, try
doing it the "lean" way. Try taking one or two classes first without jumping
into pursuing a degree. A lot of universities allow concurrent enrollment so
you'd just take a class alongside regular students if they have room. Good
luck.

------
pingswept
I think a 1-year MS in some kind of engineering from a school with hands-on
classes would do the trick. I did this at Stanford coming from a similar semi-
technical background, and it was great. I think a class like ME218 at Stanford
teaches you a nice mix of electrical, mechanical, and software. Video of a
recent final project: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukxm54MhrIk>

------
waivej
You have really specific ideas which makes me think you can self study.
Institutional learning can be wider focussed and might not be as useful.

1) I would suggest starting the business right now. You have a day job and can
bank roll it the initial stuff. Give yourself a budget and maybe a time and
place to work on it? Do you have time to study on the side?

2) Next, find the type of customer that you want to work with and start seeing
what you can find on the market to fit their needs. This way you can find a
niche. Is it kids, adults, veterans? Is it mobility, seeing, hearing, etc?

3) Start researching the sort of things that are being created. (ex: The
walking robots, robot cars, etc.) Maybe start communicating with researchers
directly. You might end up finding one to study this exact thing with.

4) Try to connect a technology you can replicate with customers that you want
to help and figure out what needs to be done to connect the two. You may even
start just by helping people with off the shelf products and improving them.

This can be a good time to put together a business plan if you need funding to
pull it off. You may also find yourself just building a series of prototypes
in your spare time.

Enable a few kids to walk and money will find you.

~~~
waivej
PS: Maybe buy "What is a Microcontroller" about the Basic Stamp.
[http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=211799...](http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2117994)
It's really simple and a nice way to get perspective on programming hardware.
As a next step, build something with an Arduino.

------
phugoid
Gee, I'm 34 and I'm planning to go back to school for a Masters in robotics
next year (I'm a Mech Eng graduate).

I sure wish I'll run into someone like you when I'm done with my Masters.

For now, may I suggest you check out the Springer Handbook of Robotics for an
excellent wide overview of the field, both in theory and applications. Maybe
seeing it laid out like that will help you decide where you want to go with
it.

~~~
zatara
Well, thanks for the tip and please keep us posted. ;-)

------
anigbrowl
2 or 4 sound like your best options, more likely 4. Remember, you don't _have_
to do everything yourself; maybe a year or two spent learning the basics would
give you both a good foundation for the project, and the opportunity to meet,
evaluate and recruit other people who may have better ME/EE skills than you,
but not your clinical expertise.

Or as you say it's 'basically a solved problem', maybe you can just find
someone and work together. Just lsat week I was recommending HN to someone
with a Mech eng degree and who has family manufacturing contacts in Asia to
get on HN because he's a great hardware hacker but doesn't enjoy programming
so much. Depending on your location, I bet you could assemble a small research
team here on HN fairly easily. I wish you good luck with it, as giving
mobility to people who've lost limbs or similar is a very worthy pursuit.

As for the headline question of 'college in 30s' I say sure. I turn 40 this
year and am returning to study, which will be a 4-5 year process.

------
sequence7
What about option 5:

Learn while doing, or more specifically while someone else does and teaches
you. You're clearly highly skilled in your technical niche why don't you find
someone else with complimentary skills (mechanics, electronics and computer
science) and partner with them. You can start building your business
immediately in the time that you have and as part of the partnership each
teach the other. I know that as a hacker having the opportunity to work with a
real specialist in another field and for us both to teach each other would be
a massively satisfying experience.

You get two benefits the way I see it 1) You can start building your startup
now 2) You get the two skilled specialists to work on it and share the
excitement

I see the only drawback is that you don't get to go and spend a few years
learning a new thing without any commercial pressure. If this is about
learning how to be a hacker that's bad but if you're really into the startup
thing then you save yourself a lot of time.

------
starkfist
Additional degree on top of a PhD and MD is ridiculous when there are so many
books and internet resources readily available.

Most university engineering programs are not hands on enough for this and will
be a waste of time. You really need a facility like www.techshop.ws and access
to a bunch of people who need limbs.

Just start building the prosthetic and learn what you need as you go. You
might find that you don't even like doing the hands on stuff in which case
going to school would be an even bigger waste of time.

John Carmack did not go to school for either computer programming or rocket
science and has done alright in both fields. Dean Kamen also has no degree and
invented insulin pumps, wheelchairs, the segway, the "luke" arm, etc...

------
mattwdelong
I suggest a combination of 1 and 3. Get into a BME or BCE program and drop out
after two years; at this point, you should have the foundations for which you
could start to build your startup and proceed with your self study on the side
to further your education.

My thoughts are that you are financially stable to afford the formal
education, but you are limited by time - once you finish up a 4-5 years
degree, that puts you are almost 40. I mean, your life is far from over but I
assume that your priorities will change. Instead of thinking about your
startup, you would probably be thinking about your children's educational
future.

------
dalore
I would skip college since a degree is just an excuse to get the foot in the
door for job interviews.

If you are good at motivating yourself to learn you don't need it. Also most
colleges you can just attend the lectures for free anyhow, you only pay if you
need the degree. Just get some books on the subject, and find an online
community to bounce your ideas off and your set. That way you can learn at a
faster pace and not be dragged down by the speed at college.

------
trix
Dude, I was an Emerg doc. I just finished the 5 year diagnostic radiology
residency and I am starting an interventional radiology fellowship. I am
married with small kids.

Don't go back to school for 5 years. The price you pay with respect to not
seeing your kids grow is too high.

Follow the self-study route. You can always hire technical people to assist
you.

Here is another perspective: If you live a comfortable life and have a
beautiful family, why not enjoy them?

~~~
zatara
Well, I do enjoy my family and friends, but they are also busy and have their
own lives (school, work, etc). I'm not willing to be an absent father, but in
reality I have 3 full open days in my week and I'm bored to tears. Should I
just fill up my time with more work, just to buy more stuff than we need, or
maybe engaging in some mildly satisfying hobby?

PG discusses this in one of his essays, when he points out that happiness must
be considered in different time frames (one hour, one day, one week, one
month, etc). Besides that, I really feel the urge to create things.

------
acg
Rather than going it alone it sounds like you ought to be partnering with
someone. Studying IT even at a higher level courses aim at giving you a
grounding in the subject, I'd imagine you want to target the pieces that you
are interested in. Better to form a team with the skills that you need and
learn from one-another.

I'm no expert on this, but isn't the role of a design agency to advise on
these sorts of problems?

------
gluu
Maybe you can offer to work for free in a university robotics department as a
staff programmer while taking courses or learning on your own. You probably
won't be able to contribute much at first, but being able to learn with that
social support is important, especially in an area where there is little in
the way of autodidactic textbooks.

------
tewks
I'm studying for an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at the
moment. My course consists primarily of electrical and mechanical engineering
with medical science, biomechanics, some chemistry, et cetera. I can code
pretty well. This sounds like a really interesting project. Definitely keep me
posted as you progress.

~~~
zatara
I wish I were you some years ago. About your engineering study, how is the
startup mentality? I see a lot of talk about entrepreneurship in engineering,
but most students and professors seem to be more focused in what is more
important to land a job at big companies and team work in detriment to
creativity, self-reliance and comprehensive skills.

~~~
tewks
A large contingent, not a majority, of my peers view studying engineering or
science as the necessary prepration before entering finance.

A surprising amount of those who have their head around making things have
done the thinking and the math to find that, hey, the risk/reward ratio of a
startup might be worth it, particularly at a young age.

------
spudlyo
I'm a big fan of self-study, but since you already have a PhD, it seems like
you'd be quite comfortable learning in a classroom environment. Perhaps you
can audit some classes in basic electronics and computer science? That should
be a bit cheaper and could dovetail nicely into your self-study.

------
openfly
Well where are you in the world? I would definitely suggest rolling by your
local hackerspace and looking for some assistance in getting yourself
motivated, and navigating the harrowing experience of building out your own
tool collection / parts collection as well as some of your skills.

Sourcing components and tools as a hobbyist, garage inventor, or even small
design firm is very different from sourcing parts as a large institution or as
an enterprise. The factors of scale change the playing field drastically. Many
of the smaller kit builders and maker types have a shared knowledge regarding
this sort of limited run development that you are endeavoring to pursue.

That being said, the key benefits for you that a major scholastic environment
can provide you outside of tutelage is access to a robust machine shop,
capable electronics facilities, and more important than all of that...
protection from litigation in the patents you file.

Many graduate and even undergraduate programs offered by major universities
actually will stipulate that any patent you file while at school, regardless
of whether it's a personal patent or something completely unrelated to school,
will be protected by them, their legal war chest, and their patent warchest.
This is a huge selling point for some schools. ASK ABOUT IT.

Also, many schools have start up incubators of their own, or a network of
people who can help you find funding. A friend who left stanford graphics lab
took advantage of their start up program where they offer you use of
facilities and space on campus in return for a percentage stake in the
venture... they also will provide you with assistance in using their alumni
network to score capital.

These are just some immediate thoughts. But I definitely see some values in
going back to university that have no relevance to the actual classes you
might take, but more with getting things done in your R&D.

Definitely regardless of what you decide your level of commitment is, don't
get discouraged. There are far too few people with medical certification and
experience turning their eyes towards prosthesis and other technologies that
assist the disabled. And while there's money to be made there, more
importantly there is a lot of good that can be done. The things that help
someone who is confined by their disabilities can be for more huge to the
people who use them, than us.

I know a number of engineers, good ones that would be interested in helping
people the way you are suggesting. It's a job that one can draw immense
satisfaction from.

------
cianestro
You could find a CSE student or a hardware engineer looking to switch focus
into orthopedic surgery or medicine; the idea being you two would learn from
each other and pass on valuable connections and resources gained from past
experience.

------
bavcyc
Read the Art of Designing Embedded Systems by Ganssle. Lots of good info on
his website as well.

This should give you more information on which to base your decision.

------
bz
I know someone who might be interested in chatting with you. Do you mind
throwing up your email in your profile?

------
vaksel
if you want to learn something, it's better to learn it by yourself. School is
aimed at the lowest common denominator and is aimed at finishing a small
portion of curriculum during the semester. And since most classes are 3-4
credits, at most you'll be paying to learn something 3-4 hours a week.

While on your own time, you can dedicate 30-40 hours a week on your studies.

~~~
cschneid
Sort of.

There are times when a structured class gives you more benefit than
unstructured. Specific examples off the top of my head are like sciences where
you need lab equipment. Or if you're the kind of learner who needs lectures
rather than readings.

School is not as worthless as HN makes it out to be.

~~~
dalore
At uni no-one checked or took roll call at lectures. You could just rock up
without enrolling/paying and get free learning. Of course you can't do the
exam and get the degree, but that's not the goal here.

Is it stealing? The professor would be doing the exact same thing with or
without you there. As long as you don't take up a seat in an otherwise full
lecture.

~~~
DrSprout
Well sure, if you go to a big degree mill. I went to a small liberal arts
school in the States, and classes were participatory, and it was very
difficult to attend without changing the dynamic of the class.

I think the lesson is choose your professors, classmates, and class sizes
carefully.

------
keefe
so ok...

#2 this is a waste of time for someone with your intelligence imho #3 - yep,
too long #4 - possibly, if you're not a self directed learning type.

I would vote for #1, if you've already got a PhD the you have what it takes to
pull it off.

As I understand it, you want to work on robotics. Very many of my friends who
do research in robotics got their start playing with lego mindstorm robots.
This would probably be a good place to start, because you basically can't
learn software dev without writing something and it will give you a firm grasp
of the basics of writing software for robots.

It's not clear what your level of experience in writing software is, if you
haven't gone through basic tutorials then there are plenty of those out there.

If you happen to read this post and there's one thing to take away, it's that
the absolute most important thing for ramping up to high productivity quickly
is that you have a really solid infrastructure. The reason is that without
such an infrastructure, codebases tend to drift and you can write yourself
into a corner very easily.

I'll speak to my java infrastructure as this is my primary background.

First, I'm a big proponent of IDEs especially for beginners. I really like
java with eclipse (it's unbearable with notepad) because with autocomplete and
source code generation, you end up with code that reads more like an essay
than a mathematical proof, which suits my personal style just fine. It just
helps to offload my memory into autocomplete. Whatever editor you pick, it's
extremely helpful to read up on it in advance.

Next is source code management. I personally use git and I create a repository
for every project I'm working on, I find the distributed, self contained
nature amusing. Commit often and branch when you change features.

Next up is managing dependencies. I use maven, which I absolutely love. Maven
basically centralizes your dependencies and separates that concern to help
avoid dependency hell. Some people use maven to manage their source, but I do
it the opposite way with the maven files inside the directory where I create
the git repo.

You also have to manage your own source. It's fine to play around ignoring all
this, but once you have "real" code - this means code that you must maintain -
then it's important that it be of a certain quality. You should try to have
each project capture a particular need (read OCR or access a neural net or
calculate some geo stuff for your robots or whatever) and that each product
stand alone as much as possible. There should also at least be some functional
tests.

imho, a relatively inexperienced dev with such a nice environment can be as
productive as experienced devs flying by the seat of their pants. It also
vastly reduces the risk of catastrophe.

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Daniel_Newby
Are you talking about robotics for making prostheses, or robotic prostheses?
The latter will require considerably more and more specialized knowledge:
control systems and signal processing, switching power converters, radio
shielding, etc.

Programming these days tends to involve a lot of gluing libraries together.
Python in general has much more extensive libraries than Lisps and Schemes.
(The Python claim to fame is "batteries included".) Python also has excellent
support for using libraries written in C and Fortran, which are the dominant
languages for numerical modelling and math code.

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rick_2047
Don't you have good institutes near you (not exactly colleges/universities)
who teach basic of CS. Where I live there are pretty decent institutes (only
if you can find them) who have courses on anything college teaches. These are
much more focused on you than on the course as there are probably only 8 to 10
people in the class.You can also adjust timing and learning speed. But the
down side there would be most of the students there are not of the brighter
pool of students.

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grails4life
This post sounds bogus. So you have a PhD and an MD and you cant figure out
whether should go to a community college or spend even more time in school
playing with robots (if you are really an MD, you probably just finished your
residency a few years ago at 34). ....hmmmm...sorry, dont mean to be rude but
I dont buy it. If you are legit then a PhD in biomaterials is already plenty
and with tons of free time, that is the perfect setup to do a startup....just
do it!

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zatara
I'm in Europe, things are different here. Anyway, it is almost always possible
to combine residency with graduate training, as I did, and shorten things up.

~~~
grails4life
Ok, well then you have enough training. Go for it!

