Why 95% of Self-Taught Programmers Fail (Honest Advice)

Learning to code isn't easy. It's even harder when you're actively doing things that make the process harder. In this video I talk about the 4 signs you're learning to code wrong (and how to fix it).

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[AndySterkowitz]

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[Zircuitz]

As a self-taught programmer with a professional job for 5 years now: I can tell you that programming is not about remembering syntax (I still Google basic syntax now and then). It's all about your ability to solve a problem.

[kebien]

My advice as a self-taught is: Tutorials are fine but you HAVE to apply your own twist to it. It'll likely break things and change some of the following steps, but that is what will actually allow you to learn stuff.

[bojidarboradjiev]

i am a self tought developer, studying for 2 years now and I just landed my first Dev Role!!

Really agree with this video:
- I study out of habit every day little by little,
- Things finally started comming along once i started developing my own projects (a big help was that i recieved assigments from companies as part of the interview process which really pushed me)
- Even now when i accepted my offer i dont feel prepared and out of my element, but i understand that thats part of the process.

For everyone out there just keep grinding and find your own paste in order to achieve your goal!

[antonvoltchok]

If this helps anyone, the way I got started being self taught was, personal projects, 6-7 free websites for friends businesses, creating an ionic android app for super super cheap for a company just to get it on my resume, also did some design jobs that turned into coding those designs afterwards, all together this was plenty to easily land a junior developer role, just keep banging out projects, understand that even though you’re doing things for free for people, you’re still getting tons of value for yourself in what you learn and added resume experience, so look at things positively and keep building and building

[numberiforgot]

You should create programs as you learn. When I first started I wrote python scripts for everything and anything. I even had one that helped me calculate my budget in college. If you apply what you learn, right after you learn it, it will stick with you.

[matthewsjc]

I completely agree with his assessments (not that this means much to anybody). I learned these lessons the hard way. I poured over book after book after book before I realized that the best way to learn is to DO. Start some projects, figure out as you go what you need to successfully complete them. You'll get into the nitty-gritty way faster and remember it far more doing it this way.

[sinthorasalb]

I got here through YouTube auto play and was ready to skip because I'm not trying to learn software development, but I quickly realized that the concepts you talk about are helpful for learning any complex skill.
I'm trying to get into music production and recently felt like I was struggling to advance my skills. I can identify the problems you talk about in my learning methods, and I believe that addressing them can certainly help me improve.
And even if for some reason I don't see right now these concepts don't apply to my struggles your video at least got me motivated to sit down and plan out a learning schedule. Thanks!

[markuspfeifer]

In my experience, the frequency of mistakes doesn’t really go down much, they just become more mysterious as you do more and more exotic and deep stuff. Rookie mistakes can often easily be googled, but if you go deep enough, you’re gonna encounter problems that will make you lose sleep because you keep wondering how the IT industry manages to keep balance while dancing one’s razor blade next to a volcano

[lynic-]

As someone who's been a junior developer for almost 2 years now, I've only had assistance from senior devs until like a few months ago because of my new job.
This video is 100% accurate. Making projects, learning from your mistakes is KEY to growing when you're self taught.

[lucasfernandes]

I love your videos, Andy. Every time I end up falling into the tutorial hell cycle you help me get out of it a little bit.

[lienmeat]

I'm not self taught, but my schooling taught theory way more than practical programming for work-like scenarios, and I learned more about actual programming for real projects the year after college than I did the years I spent in college. I'm a Sr. Software Engineer now, and for me at least, working on a project from scratch is the best way to learn.

The most important thing you can do is think of something to try to build, do whatever you can from scratch, and when you get stuck (meaning, you tried and failed a few times to make it work the ways you could think of), look at how other projects solved the same issue. This is the best way to learn programming for actual work scenarios. Yes, it's very hard, and it doesn't represent exactly what you will do at work, because you'll probably be leveraging a framework or libraries that have lots of things figured out for you, but you cannot understand the pitfalls of different approaches to problems, or how to solve hard problems without this foundation.

You should also build the thing again later with a different technology, or this time using whatever frameworks and libs you can and see how it comes together that way. This will give you experience with different tech, but it will also help you get better at vetting the tools you use to accomplish your goals, which is another critical skill.

When trying to learn programming as a skill, rely on stackoverflow or google only when completely stumped, or for your 2nd iteration to try to solve some of the things you know would keep the project from being considered truly complete.

As a professional developer, you can expect to be wrong, make a mistake, or need help from someone else at least once a day. Even great, experienced developers expect to mess up and have to re-do something occasionally, and ask others for input to come up with the right solutions. Get used to being wrong, and admitting it. It's a skill.

[RonnyJakobsson]

I started to learn to program on the Sinclair ZX48K at the age of 7. I am now 49 year's old and have been working as software developer for 24 years for the same company. I learn new things every week and still love getting paid doing my hobby.

[ZenoTasedro]

I'm a self taught, professional developer. I often think a large factor in my success was developing on and for Linux. I had tried to self and formally learn various languages on Windows or OSX but it just never clicked for me.

[aliyanpops]

Thanks Andy, I made great improvements over my learning process now including your video guide this just boosted my confidence. The mistakes part was hard to swallow first, also improved there and again thanks for the video, it just gave me relief. Been watching your videos, and I appreciate your support for all of us.

[OrincyWhyteDesigns]

Thank you for the encouragement. I’m at the stick figure drawing phase and it’s been overwhelming.

[raptoress]

Getting a good instructional book and taking notes on paper is a good strategy. A book has all the information arranged in a big context, and writing by hand helps with memorization. It's also important to use note marks so you can easily find any topics if you can't remember smth. Book + tutorials + taking notes + creating personal projects = win

[Darkxellmc]

This resonates so much to me.
I have been a dev for years now, but going back to uni for a year at the moment. Anything I learn there, I could've learned better, there's better tutorials online.
But the reason I'm really doing this is to set myself in a context where I have to learn. Uni gives me deadlines, projects to work on, instead of me failing to set them up myself. As you said, the key is having a plan and sticking to it, not the tutorials or the code themselves.

[preciousezeoke]

Landing on your YouTube channel is a blessing honestly. I see a lot of things differently now. Thank you so much for this video. You keep building my confidence as a software developer 🤭

[darrennew]

I have worked with lots of self-taught programmer who were missing entirely basic concepts, because nobody pointed them to it. Like, someone trying to implement the client for a complex network protocol who had never heard of a state machine. People reinventing NTP or ASN.1 without realizing that synchronizing clocks and transferring data between disparate systems was already a solved problem. Knowing what you don't know and has already been solved is important.