Re:Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
by phs318u on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:24PM
(#39008272)
Ah the Sams books. I once thought that writing tech books was going to be a career (having contributed a single chapter to “Microsoft SQL Server Programming Unleashed” by Papa, Shepker et al. I was one of the Al’s).
I think the “in 24 hours” thing was more a case of “I’m going to tell you everything I know about XYZ in 24 hours”. Still, I have so many fond memories from the late 80s and 90s spending countless lunchtimes at McGills or the Technical Bookshop in Melbourne (now since long gone), flipping through tech magazines and wondering which of the many weighty tech tomes I’d spend my precious hard-earned on.
Re:Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
by ozim on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:21PM
(#39007400)
For me that is a nice discussion on its own - for me there’s multiple levels of knowing X - so anything,
Yes in 24h you are not going to learn enough to contribute to Linux kernel - but also will be ahead of something like 80% of general population.
I learned C first in high school because I found a pirated copy of "Learn C in 24 Hours" online, and I actually felt that they did a reasonably good job getting me started, though if I recall correctly some of their examples with pointers and memory management were actually incorrect. Still, it was enough to make programming interesting to me, and when I dropped out of college the first time I was able to salvage a somewhat decent career because of that interest.