Advice For Becoming A Programmer
The best advice I ever received from an old-school programmer was to work in the industry. Start wherever they put you and work your ass off. Learn daily and always humble yourself to where you feel there is much more to learn. Then, learn it.
Another post mentioned a mentor, which is a good idea, but having many mentors is even better. Those mentors are co-workers, coders in the community, etc. Don’t just seek knowledge from one person, but many coders with different strengths and specialties. Absorb the information like a sponge and apply it to real-world projects.
The programming community is just that, willing to extend a hand in helping you understand how to do things. Why? Because we care about each others’ work, and we don’t want to deal with your shitty code when it comes back to us to work on it.
I have audio engineering and business degrees, which had nothing to do with my becoming a programmer. I’ve worked my way from a junior engineer to a senior engineer, to a lead engineer, and now my own company of engineers. I still don’t have a CS degree or an engineering degree. Would I recommend getting one? Absolutely! Why? Because I put in 80 – 120 hours of work plus training for every 40 hours of work an engineer with an education put in.
Rey’s initial response can be found here on Quora.