I Feel Bad For New Programmers 

I have a different take on this. I am a seasoned programmer who has been in the industry for over 30 years now. I have a background in electrical engineering and that pretty much gave me an edge when I was starting out. I had an in-depth understanding of how computers worked from the basic circuitry. There are so many layers of abstraction even in those circuits and trying to understand all of them won't get you anywhere. The software industry is moving fast and companies are looking for engineers who are familiar with their stack. So I see no harm starting out at a higher layer of abstraction and moving on to lower layers when you get a job or after you get relevant industry experience. In the end people need to get by and it's okay if you want to start from a higher layer. Your value as an engineer is not measured by how much you know, but how you use what you know and what is available to solve existing problems. That's my opinion.

As a new programmer, learning higher level stuff is kind of like watching family guy without knowing references. You kinda get it because the jokes work on their own so you just move on without much thought. Then when you learn about the references (or tools) you look back at the episode and you’re like “omg I understand everything now!”

On the one hand, having a solid understanding of the foundations is almost always beneficial no matter the field. On the other, the current state of many fields is so far off in space that if you stop to shore up that understanding, it seems impossible to catch up to where everyone else is in current developments. One of my personal issues is a tendency to get obsessed with those basics and never moving on.

The bad thing is that after learning all these things, we don't become good at programming; we just become good at using those abstracted tools. We don't know how these things work internally, and the moment these abstracted tools become obsolete, we're thrown back to step one

I personally prefer the bottom-up way of learning since your knowledge never depends on things you don't know yet and the bigger picture usually just clicks immediately.

At university, I see so many people with enough superficial knowledge to get by, and sometimes I really feel bad for them. As soon as things get complicated enough to go below theor comfortable layer of abstraction, they are lost.

As someone who is in Uni now, we still do all the things Primagen was talking about and haven't even sniffed in the direction of a GUI. Our intro to programming back in year 1 was in C (not C++), and one of our first courses which is compulsory involved how floats ints etc were represented in memory and we did lots of binary arithmetic and learned MIPS assembly there. I've been feeling somewhat down about not being able to make an actual application outside of a terminal despite years of programming, so this video really helped reassure me that I'm on the right path.

I program as a hobby but I’m so happy I started with C. I learned programming because I wanted to learn about computers, not necessarily because I wanted to make anything. I was just fascinated with the technology. Went from c to c++ and took an assembly course. I switched colleges and they wouldn’t let me continue the CS curriculum because they were learning Java and I was learning c++. I was like, “you realize I bought a book and learned Java in a week, right?” Like you said when you learn the actual art of programming learning a knew language is just matter of learning syntax and remembering how things work, you’re not trying to figure out why things work.

Agree 100%. I got a CS degree almost 20 years ago now, and had impostor syndrome so bad I did something else with my life. I've tried to get back into it a few times. It's amazing that there's a library for everything and modern developer tools are voodoo magic. It's so easy to make a functioning one-off business logic project with infinite tech debt, but that next step is a doozy.

This is why I feel bad for people trying to change careers at React bootcamps.

This resonates with me as well. I got filtered by Ruby on Rails starting out because there were too many concepts too far removed from what I was trying to do. Then I went to bare PHP and wrote horrible, unmaintainable code, but at least I was learning.

The discipline required to peel back the abstraction layers is pretty overwhelming these days.

I'm 36 in the middle of my cs degree. They taught absolute basics of python, java, and C++. I've been deep diving C++ on my own since there's no more other language courses during the degree. I always like watching prime's videos and play the game of inferring definitions through context clues for all the different technologies that are mentioned on a daily basis. I know I won't learn it all, so I'm just making micro-projects that can perform a task that I didn't know how to make before. Things like monitoring keyboard/mouse events from the windows library, or using sockets. I always have this anxiety in the back of my mind like I need to learn specific things before my final year at school is up. For now, though, I just keep writing things like linked lists or exploring new ways on how to fill up all my memory on my system.

Completely agree with this. Was talking to my friend about this yesterday... With how they try to churn full stack web devs out it feels like they are trying to take shortcuts... Its absolutely insane you are expected to be full stack in a few months with having to know THIS much. Saying that as someone who has gone down this route myself. I'm grateful it's given me a door into the industry at least. I'd love to make Web plan b and get into something else like embedded systems, but it's going to take some time to get there for me.

As someone who started learning to program a year ago I felt this pain. The first thing I tried to learn was .NET frameworks and it was so overwhelming. I eventually pivoted to Js, though due to the level of abstractions in things like react and other UI frameworks, it just didn’t make sense to me, it felt like there was something missing to connect the dots. I finally got a grip on things when I realized the question you need to ask is why? Why is this framework abstracting this feature and what use is it to me. I found that I much prefer to understand how the cake is made rather than throw icing on it. Now I primarily only use minimal third party libraries as I found it is easier to understand what is going on if you build it yourself from scratch. It may sound counterintuitive but that’s really the best way to understand what is going on.

As an electrician that enjoys programming as soon as you said electric motor underneath memory, I started laughing.

Tbh we have a history of trying to make programming more glamorous/difficult than it needs to be Like formally proving recursion or learning how to make an AbstractFactoryManagerFactory are both completely optional if non-trivial vs just knowing how things fit together and what to consider in code/system design

dude my university doesn't even teach how MEMORY works, none of my peers know what assembly is, the lowest level language we're being taught is JAVA

I found that learning ASM on 8-bit PIC microcontrollers helped with the low level stuff. For the modern tower of babel problem where the simplest thing depends on everything and the kitchen sink, I let copilot help with the discovery lol.

I absolutely agree with you, Prime!! I honestly struggle with all the abstractions in front end. I don't write code like I do with a shell script or other languages that I'm learning to get away from front end. Instead I google the vast array of "stuff" I need to put together a mishmash of abstract terms that have meaning only in the framework or repo I'm working on. It truly sucks. I can think logically. I can't hold 500 unique terms in my head.

In my opinion, and mind you I am a very junior self taught developer with less than a year of experience and stupidly lucky to get a job, is that the way you can go from the bottom up, you can also go from the top down. The difference is those abstractions make it easy to to see progress which is by far the biggest motivation bump and then you see in practise why you must learn all the things those abstractions are based on.

I feel like you highlighted the 2 different ways you can aproach a problem. Where taking the university route takes longer, but you learn the absolute basics, allowing you to use that knowledge to quickly learn and understand the higher lvl concepts, ideas and abstractions every one takes for granted (up to a point). While the bootcamp route makes you quickly learn the high lvl stuff, but because you lack the lower lvl understanding might make learning certain things or new stuff more difficult. Of course the hope is that with the bootcamp route you learn the relevant low lvl stuff while doing, while the university expects you to pick up the high lvl stuff while doing. Both are valid but just for different ppl and situations.

17:50 This reminds me of something: One of my trainers during my apprenticeship also had some friends who worked at VW. He told me that programming apprentices get electronic training there.

Thank you, you have encouraged me. Because sometimes i feel overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge you have, i have 2 years of programming and i am learning rust and seeing you talk i really feel that i know nothing, i wish i could understand the binary thing, but i currently don't have the time to do so, i need to work on the thinks i already know in programming and i have a life besides programming... So thank you, it will reach a point where level of abstraction will become so high that the person will get to choose or understand the metal or do something useful because you will not live longer to understand both. So thank you for saying 28 times: "I feel bad for you", it has motivated me to accept my limitations and my ignorance, i am pushing forward, i heavily suggested the use of Rust so i could learn it... but i cannot go back in time and learn everything that theprimeagen learnt and have a life and work, i cannot, so again thank you for helping to accept my life condidtion! I am from Brazil BTW, love you channel, thank you for reading or not reading this...

10:00 A friend of mine and I were talking about this recently. He went through bootcamp and I am currently finishing my senior year. The way we finally came to a conclusion that 4year gives you stronger fundamental and flexibility. Bootcamp teaches you how to code but doesn't enable you with as much problem solving (his experience).

I don't mean to sound like a downer but I'm kind of glad that this video exists. I tried to learn how to code and get a job throughout the pandemic. I worked hard but it wasn't hard enough AND then I got told by a recruiter, after having multiple projects, interviews, even a little freelance experience, to go back to boot camp. that's when it hit me that I had learned a little versus actually understanding what I was trying to learn and do. So I honestly gave up and am now happily pursing a different career path in tech. If you want to program for a living, the challenge is higher than ever I think so good luck!

Im a self taught developer still kind of finding my way but have gravitated to web over the last couple years as it was easier to make money. The most difficult thing as a new developer with little to no guidance was wrapping my mind around the whole ecosystem of software/web. To make things even more confusing throw in all the buzz and hype for things like blockchain, ai, data science, game development etc and as a beginner its just insane. My first programming experience was a course building a decentralized shop using react and solidity. I managed to get through it but was so mentally taxed it hurt my motivation in some ways BUT I think if you can keep yourself afloat it can be beneficial but its such a whirlwind to start off. After a few similar bouts like this I finally took a step back took time to do some dsa, learn about networks, os, compilers to some degree and didn't try and make a website or application for probably 2 years and when I did I was crushing it. Out performing people who have been developing since before I knew what a function was xD

This is why i honestly think people should learn c as their first language. If you can build a data structure in c it becomes much easier to understand the abstraction in other languages.

You put into words what i have been feeling for months. Motivation runs very thin when simple things are fullstack apps. Thanks for the video❤

React bootcamper here. I definitely feel the pain. But I wonder how much of this is down to employers. There are so many adverts there demanding aws, docker, kubernetes etc from junior frontend devs

2 pieces of news for programmers who are just starting out: 1. It's hard, and most of you probably will quit after a few punches you'll inevitably receive. 2. If you can manage the stress and take those punches without throwing your laptop out of the window and staying diligent, you'll have a high chance of becoming a professional in this field.

Thank you for your insights about software development, I enjoy listening to your comments and to your rants, you don’t just get entertained but you also learn so much about different languages and topics, keep the good work.

This is very hard indeed, even though i went to college i was very distracted by the high level abstract stuff. Even if it doesn't make me as relevant job wise I will still be trying to balance fundamentals with learning "abstract modern things", college helped a lot in understanding fundamentals, but even going through college i still think there is a lot more for me to learn on the fundamentals. I'm about to get a VPS to work configuring Nginx and other things from stracth, no GUI or crazy stuff like Terraform, just a terminal and neovim, i'm hoping this forces me to learn more and more about how things actually work. Maybe after that do some graphics with C and OpenGL to understand, instead of just doing the minimum like i did in college, i just did it to get the grade to pass, i didn't understand at the time how much i would miss knowing this stuff, i wasted time, and now i will go back to learn this stuff. Hopefully it is better now that i don't have to worry about exams and professors

This is the exact problem I have. I have been learning programming since 2018 and I always find it very very hard to learn about the low level stuff. It's not easy to find resources online for low level programming and I'm someone who can't learn (feel comfortable) if I don't know how things works under the hood.

Yea, I realized this during my Comp. Sci. degree. Programming can go so deep in so many directions where any one project is gonna be using like 20 different APIs. My strategy has been to learn the main languages at a mid-level (Java - Python - C - HTML - CSS - Javascript) and the rest of my time is spent studying data structures and algorithms. The truth is, anywhere you get hired they are gonna expect you to learn THEIR stack and the chances that you just so happen to learn all of those things are effectively ZERO. Focus on fundamentals and build a few functional websites, web apps, google play store apps, whatever. Build simple apps that have been made before but add your own little twist.

Dude you’re the first person I’ve ever seen put this feeling I’ve had into words. I want to learn programming but it feels so, so complicated and I’ve never understood where to start.

So nice to hear this from you man. I started on pascal in highschool, at uni I started CS in 2005 but failed, 2009 did an IT diploma, 2017-2021 did my CS undergrad, Doing a AI Postgrad Cert now part-time. The point? I've kind of been in the barrel of the technology wave for what feels like forever, every year I feel like "A New Programmer" and never been able to get the illustrious "IT/CS related job". Every time I learn something it seems it's already too late, need to learn another dozen technologies, frameworks, and stacks so I can be employable. I use to run nightclubs during my studies, so throughout my life I've never known anyone technology inclined, in fact most people in my circles would often just mock what I did. But during my postgrad I started my own web agency doing wordpress websites.... and it's nice to have money slowly starting to drip into my home now I have a baby daughter who will be born any minute now. It sucks to have spent nearly 2 decades learning tech to end up using what many of my contemporaries or young working engineers would think is lame... but I really persevered, I really envy guys like you using great technologies professionally that pretty much are enjoyed by every westerner. But in my experience most people just want a wordpress site for small businesses, need it built fast and cheap which just can't be done with a programmer-enviable stack. I did all my studies online after 2009 and so had to live off of Stackoverflow for years because I had no teachers to help me, no colleagues for support or to even compete with, all the while either running nightclubs or doing construction after I got too old and stood out at the club. (I can tell you now, after studying independently long before RU-vid tutorials were a thing, now is the dopest time to be an independent programming student. ChatGPT answers all those stupid questions I spent countless hours figuring out my self through trial and error or honestly, maybe never having answered for me). ...have considered teaching a private school as it came up recently through a cousin but they say most teenagers have no idea how to even email let alone how a computer works (you'd think Gen Z were tech literate but it turns out they aren't - not counting social media and related apps). I have been doing this 20 years and I can barely keep up with the studies so kudos to those young new programmers that make it and succeed.

I think the biggest issue, as you've said, is how many different approaches to the same thing you have when learning the ropes. Want a framework? you can pick from 10 available. Want routing? 10 available. CSS styling? 10 available. Database consumption? 10 standards available. What serving strategy will you use? 10 options available. Very few people can learn effectively from this. When I was transitioning from HW to SW, even with a lot of knowledge on fundamentals, peering into web dev already made me flinch from the enormous amount of stuff to learn. There's just so much, happening so fast, and you don't know really where to focus to stand out. It felt like I would have to invest too much to reach a point where I was satisfied with my skills, in something that I wasn't really into. These days I understand much more about the field, but I still don't consider a career in web. It just looks too unstable for me to plan ahead appropriately.

As a newcomer(I've learned to write HTML last autumn) I would like to say that I actually feel excited about all these new tech around - so much learning opportunities which make programming always feel novel. I've just yesterday decided to use Redis to make it easier to upload images to the app I'm making and it was so much fun finally realizing how this could be a better solution than what I had initially. (I don't store images in Redis, no)

This is soo much true. In my first job and university, i focus only on build and deploy apps in intranet enviroments (no connection to internet). I have to build everything from backend and frontend proyects scratch and deploy it using Apache. It was hard, YES, but it give you the knowlegde of how everything works end to end, that's a great feeling. I recommend everyone to try that at least. The other realization i have when i pass to consuming libraries to write/read or PR libraries code. That give you soo much understanding of more things, because it help you to learn from others people code, is so nice. I don't thing the current state of code is broken, but is harder to get there if you start only with RU-vid videos. Learning algorithms in university and for my tesis was a great base, and is harder to get that watching only RU-vid videos, i'm not saying that's imposible, but little harder. And yes, in my university i have programming tests in papper :) (really hardcore hahahaha)

I kinda feel the same. I also started mostly with php and a simple apache webserver. While at the university i've had a small job, where i created webapps, but since then I've been mostly a games programmer for my professional and personal life. And I feel like overwhelmed from the amount of js frameworks and let alone the amount of tooling that is present in the web development today, compared to back then.

This made my day. I feel so overwhelmed starting to learn python. I have a midterm in 10 days and I'm literally plagued by fear.

Amazing video! I would add that today is also difficult to get a different experiences because companies already have specialized people for almost anything.

Mate, you are SO spot on with this. I started late and when I did I started with CS50, so first programming was in C, and I still feel this way. Think I need to mess about with assembly for a month.

It's not even about the complexity or how close the technology is to the computer. It's about how using languages like c/c++ and focusing on things data structures and algorithms in the early days strengthens one's fundamentals. This not only builds patience as a developer but also helps build a problem solving mentality.

training and learning is becoming less and less important in this age where everything has to be BLAZINGLY FAST, including development. businesses want quick RETURN ON INVESTMENT for their devs, and they dont even care what the dev actually knows or wants to learn, as long as the job gets done. we dont have time to fully learn all the things we are using these days, but it forces us to learn quickly when we do need to dive deeper.. its a double edged sword.. I took this all in my stride, and have been exposed to so many new technologies and projects, and have grown in a way that I dont think would have been possible before this. It was really tough to keep up, but its the only skill i truly got to train: being resourceful and prioritising knowledge. experience: 6years

New guy here! I've been learning to code for 3 years now on and off since I'm a parent. It wasn't until just recently that I feel comfortable enough to apply for a Jr position. Took me a while to learn what I learned compared to my peers who are all senior developers, but if you have the will it can be done, even if you are a busy parent like me

I'm currently thinking of jumping into web development as a job starting as someone who do know how to generally program and I do agree that I didn't remember web development being this complex nowadays. I learnt HTML and barely any CSS for my college course in web development and no hosting or databases used and apparently I have passed the course. Now going unto RU-vid trying to be a web dev seems like you need to learn 5 different programs and languages just to get a basic website up and running.

I'm a more UI focused person and one big advantage of the top down approach is it allows you to build stuff quickly, giving motivation to learn and build more stuff. Despite all the frameworks, cloud services, dbs, etc; it doesn't take too long for a beginner to throw together a simple React app. For me personally, that was much more rewarding than stdout. Building something first, then learning the theory behind it keeps you from having to ask "why am I learning this?"

A whole lot of this feels to me like it depends on where your interests lie. I don't really want to be a web dev. I think it'd be cool to do embedded systems or maybe just standard application development, but so many people go crazy about emphasizing JS frameworks and whatever the next hype web thing is. I wouldn't want to go the bootcamp route because those seem to be designed to churn out a very particular type of dev that I don't really care to fit into.

man i feel u!! that linking classes, that tick that this is how memory works i feel u completely. The art of programming!! By going through all that small stuff, we can now solve any kind of program. Like you can make a website sure without knowing the basic, just my learning all the frameworks, but then if you have to do a complex binary tree calculation for giving salary through referred persons on a website, we can see how it all being structured in our head before even sitting in-front of a keyboard. It is just so fun to be able to think like this and solve problems this way. The only real life super power is the art of programming man.

On the one hand, I am learning these lower-level things on my own time, and there are probably more resources now to do so. But I deffo have to carve out my own time to do it, because my work learning time is spent on these higher-level abstractions, and I suppose it will be on me to learn how to bridge the two to be more flexible as I progress. I can see "So you have a job in web dev...here's how you can take that knowledge to learn the fundamentals" being a solid space for mentorship, which I think you implicitly do, and I appreciate.

Been majoring in Computer Engineering, building computer, OS, and compiler from scratch. And when I was picking up on web dev it was suck a walk in a park. I can just bottom up every single concept and understand exactly how those technologies work, and the relationship between them.

Been out of the programming industry for 7 years because of a mental break down I had. Burnout from another job, and ADHD, and other causes. Want to get back in, but often feel really discouraged when I look at job opening being posted. There is like a hundred languages, and then 100 tools for each language they want you to know.

I am doing game development as a first year, we are 10 weeks in which I know isn't a lot but we did go over those basics, we have exclusively been doing C++ and learned about what variables are in memory, how the most basic operators worked and built up from there. We only just last week saw what a class is, I was using them in side projects already but we got explained to the very basics what it all means and what actually happens on the cpu and in memory. The basics are still a thing, just not something other courses bother with.

I graduated in June 2023. Before my studies in software engineering my only knowledge about coding was modding game file values, which isn't usually doesn't require knowledge over software principles. Abstraction caused a lot of issues. I didn't often even know how to word my questions properly. I was baffled by how did programmers know what methods they can use to do various things, how do they know to add .length after an object? Confused, lost. Nowdays I am a junior fullstack developer doing consulting work at companies and it took a lot of courage to go to the very basics and root of software development into the hardware and lower level programming languages. Over time I began to understand all of it so much better.

I starting using computers and learning to program in the mid-80s. I've been at it every since... hardware, networking, app programming, web development, and more. I honestly think those learning to code in the last 5 years have the best resources and therefore the best chance(s) to learn what's necessary to develop amazing apps. The main problem I see for today's "students" is there are too many good tools/languages available for them to learn. Best advice I heard is pick an area (ie. Web Apps), find out what *most* mid-level developers are using, and focus on learning ONLY the essential "core" tools... and then build, build, build.

It is ridiculous how complex modern development is. All CS should be bottom-up. Not top-down. Yes, assembly and machine code are hard... but they are hard not because understanding it is hard but because putting together lots of simple instructions is harder to wrap one's head around. We should all be learning how the machine works and how it has to be talked to first. No other field of engineering starts at the absolute top and works down.

When i started to learn programming i was like 13, i went to an extra class for Pascal, and we didnt really learn any data structures or anything, we mostly did simple games. I think what was important is that we didnt have any overly-abstract frameworks/OOP/fancy design patterns, we just used some built-in functions like DrawPicture(x,y), so a lot was still done by hand, and it was a great way to get hooked onto programming without it being too abstract and far from metal like with frameworks, but also without it being "boring" or "useless" like when you start learning from data structures.

at my ex-job i had the oportunity to work with junior, mid, senior people in php, they all wanted docker for the server to be up yet non of them where able to start a basic apache/nginx server and they were suposed to reploy and maintain the linux server I had to teach 6 people the basics (1-2hours based on the person)

I get that it's proper to learn C or C++ first, but I realized that learning them first usually make people give up early in the process so I switched to learning Python instead first.

A testament from a self taught. Before I started, I didn't expect I'll be this deep in CompSci, and that's for a reason. Started coding in Python, then I learned HTML, CSS, JS, and when I'm there learning React and Node js, I discovered how deep the iceberg really is. Long story short, I realized how shallow my understanding is of the tech I'm learning that I have to learn CS 101 by myself. Started with Crash Course Computer Science, then some more CS learnings, heck, even some basic Networking stuff to better understand web dev, then Data Structures and Algorithms, then revisited web tech with HTML, CSS, and JS, and things made much more sense. My key takeaway here is that the innovation in tech made it so much harder for newbies as we have to learn not just the fundamentals, but also the new technologies, at the same time, which can easily confuse any informally unguided newbie like me.

You described the reason I am in my third try to learn how to program. It always feels like an insurmountable amount of knowledge required to just start.

I went from an unrelated engineering background to data science to cloud dev. Because at first I stuck to the maths and modeling I kinda got what was happening. Once I got how to model stats I then learnt how to deploy/ host things and that eventually led to me picking up C. I think what REALLY helped was having a logical path and reason for what I'm doing/learning at every point of the way. Otherwise I would be completely lost.

I tried learning to code so many times but got stuck by this very problem. Until I learned super low level stuff nothing clicked for me. Owe a lot to Ben eater's breadboard computer series

my personal opinion: which one is easier depends on your goal: 1- you want to program as fast as you can and MAYBE get hired then we have it easier. 2- you want to learn computer science and then dive into the web stuff later on with solid foundation that wouldn't change with new technology that becomes industry standard and end up without a job, you had it easier. but again i'm just a beginner and this just what i got from watching you and doing some courses

I started my degree four years ago and lot of what you talked about I learned pretty much in that order. I almost gave up but I kept pushing. I am about to graduate soon with my bachelors and a few certificates and the basics make sense but all the different things that come together make it very challenging.

This video is of tremendous value and importance to me. You nailed it by articulating a problem of learning from the top things first or bottom-up. This helped me to realize I'm just not smart enough for this profession and stop torturing myself

for me two big paradigm shifts in self-learning to code were when I realized how far abstracted React, Webpack, JS, etc really were from what the computer was actually doing .. and then (2) that getting errors doesn't mean I am a de facto bad programmer, ie that working through errors IS programming, and that a lot of mistakes are happening at the abstraction level (eg, version incompatibilities) rather than at the level of predictable logic

Its so fun to browse youtube after finishing some studies (to become a frontend developer) and constantly be blasted by youtubers saying our efforts to become something is useless. ”Why programming is dying” ”Why you wont succeed in 2024 as a programmer”

Current comp sci uni student here. I have friends who went through boot camps instead of uni like me, they constantly are learning, however when it comes to low level concepts like memory management and building real algorithms they struggle. I think that the uni path is easier because we get to focus on one thing at a time.

I was a little confused about what you were talking about at first, but I think I understand and... I agree. The problem that I find myself running into is that there's a tool for just about everything, which means that any time you do anything you need to learn a new tool. For example, I recently wanted to set up a Minecraft server on my home server. I had to learn how to SSH into my server, then I had to learn terminal commands, then I learned about systemd and had endless issues with that. Then I had to try and learn how to use GNU screen just to find out that that wouldn't work for what I wanted, so I ended up giving up on that and learning about tmux. All the while trying to even figure out how linux worked from a shell-only environment. Oh, but then the server works when I start it manually but every time systemd tries starting it it just goes into an endless crash loop? So I need to go in and adjust my startup script that I had taken from the web for systemd, which means I need to learn how to write scripts for systemd. In the end I realized that it still wouldn't work for what I needed so I ended up using docker instead, except that then I needed to learn how to use docker! Every little thing that you try to do means that you need to learn a new tool that someone else has made. I've learned about JSON, YAML, TOML, bash, Powershell, OpenSSH, SCP, Docker, SystemD, SystemCTL, JournalCTL, Tmux, GNU screen, docker-compose, BASH commands, BASH script, etc. etc. etc. just to get a stupid minecraft server running. Honestly the only saving grace that I've found is that chatGPT is great at helping learn these things. Things that in the past would have required hours of scraping through forums and reading through documentation can instead be answered and explained within a couple of minutes. And it does a good job of explaining it nowadays, too.

Based take Prime! I don’t 100% agree that DSA is easier but that also could be my uni bias. Good ish on this one, def opened my perspective to how starting with these web technologies in todays works could be extremely overwhelming.

Self motivation and application is a big part of what makes a good software engineer. You can go through a full 4 year university program and learn all of the theory, but if you never actually apply it in ways that you find meaningful you'll never truly understand it. Bootcamps tend to provide a very fast way to get to something "meaningful" to a lot of people, but I suspect that speeding through some fundamentals will ultimately mean that all other things being equal, the individual that went through university and did their own projects on the side with what they've learned thus far will be far better off long term than the same individual speeding through a bootcamp (that is, unless they're also doing their own things with what they've learned on the side)

I too started with Apache and htaccess files to upload my cat photo. But then I became an aircraft mechanic and focused on that for almost 10 years. Then returned to programming and it’s so different. And the shitty thing is that there are so many technologies now it’s hard to feel like you are making the right decision learning one of em.

literally me. a few years ago my first web app was the exact stack mentioned lmao. Now i am a "senior dev" but getting there took a while. even when i started my first job and even after a 2 years or so in my professional career, there was tons of abstract stuff that I hadn't had the time to look into and would have to ask people what to do whenever there was a bug.

Would be super interesting to hear about if there was / what kind of pressure people faced back in the day. Feels like the hustle culture / startup game has people rushing for minimum viable learning to produce something they can try to sell or even just market themselves as more skilled than they are… Was there equivalent things back in the days?

As a new programmer, that is why I am trying to learn C and assembly. Using languages like Javascript can be easy but they make me feel like I am not learning much since everything is already built in.

Ig university is useful in a sense. We had a networking lab where I learned about socket connections, TCP and UDP and how to manage TCP connection for just a simple client server chatting in CLI. We had introduction to workings of operating systems like how CPU scheduling works and how disk scheduling works etc... Also DSA, Analaysis of Algorithms, Compiler Design, Automata Theory etc.. I got a introduction to how all these things work. I would've never known about these stuff if I didn't go to university. I would've been stuck in this web development world. I'm still in university, Now I feel it's kind of worth it

I am new programming (a little over a year now with only 1 internship under my belt) and everything you said in here is spot on, at least for me. I personally would have benefitted from a more traditional route where you spend two years on DSA vs the huge amount of technologies you're expected to learn in a week and be proficient at. Nothing wrong with those technologies but the layers of abstraction are unreal.

I'd say on average, every 4 days the overwhelm of it all really gets to me. Then I bounce back and learn as much as I can before the next wave hits

As a veteran programmer, I completely agree with you. Sometimes I think about these bootcampers that have no motivation to dig deeper than what their short course taught them, and if they happen to land a job creating life-critical systems... This keeps me awake at night!

I started 3 months ago not even knowing what code means or what is a class or literally even how to even open up VS Code. Now 3 months later i built 3 flutter apps from scratch with help of GPt teaching me along the way, by seeing the class and functions so much u start to get it an idea how it works, especially when trying to make a very specific app that u know wht u want it to do. This alone taught me everything and i now consider myself an intermediate programmer, i figured out the concept of how to create my thoughts into algorithms and learned riverpoe and the concept of managing state to easily pass data around. In THREE month but with jus about i think every single day 2 to 3 hours a day full concentrated coding, some days inwould jus keep coeing n learning till i fell asleep on the computer!

So much this. I have been working as a desktop dev for a maritime industry for 5 years now. Do you know what I technologies I use? C# and WPF (C# GUI technology) and some SQL. That's all. I make applications for ferries, cargo, luxury yachts, oil tankers, oil derricks, wind farms etc. I have considered changing companies but basically 99% of job ads are for web dev. I read the required technologies and I am like that meme dude "Mhm, mhm, yeah I know some of those words". It's mind blowing how much technologies and frameworks you have to know to develop a freaking website.

Unlike the title of the video I feel really good for new programmers that are starting today. The more time that passes the easier it is to get into this field, because there's more way to access it (nt implying it's becomeing easier, don't misunderstand) I think that of you want to learn CS or get into programming, TODAY is the best moment to start learning. Even if you are skipping some abstraction layers, you are learning and lets be honest, there are so many layers of abstraction that it is definitely overwhelming. If you start right a the high level, you might miss how stuff really works, but if you start at the lowerst level, it is so alien that you will not even understand the purpose of it. Sure, one has to start with a general picture first, then pick one abstraction layer and start learning there and then explore bit by bit higher and lower layers of abstraction. And never stop learning new stuff. Modern bootcamp devs that think learning stops after they graduate from their bootcamp, they are just wrong: learning never stops. You stop, you get stuck, become obsolete and that's it, its over. Never stop learning new stuff fellas.

man, you're speaking from my soul. I didn't start out studying IT so I'm fully self-tought and just setting up an environment to follow a tutorial is such a drag. 27 embedded layers wrapped in 4 virtual dockers just takes the fun out of creating code.

You are so right.... I started learning next.js and then i meet a backend node/express programmer and then i realized i am being pampered and cuddled in nextjs abstraction. It is overwhelming, i just got a junior developer job... And it is!!!

Uni's chemistry hits home. I had to go through 3 semesters of printing technologies. I was literally taught what kinds of industrial printers exist and how to use them. All for nothing. At least I've learned programming from the ground up, I doubt I would force myself to learn low-level CS to such depth.

Relatable, few days ago we were having feedback session and one of the guy stood up and said python should be taught instead of C because projects are easier to make and relate better to current ai hype.

The problem is job requirements need a lot more these days and getting a job is really a higher barrier to entry…

my experience in uni from 2001. Started basic programming (for loops structs etc) in Pascal, then Delphi (object pascal), for classes. Got my design patterns in (gang of 8), then C, then C++. also some hardware programming on 8051 microcontrollers. Then only in the last year of uni, started web development in java, with struts (uuugh, still gives me nightmares). then in my job learned the rest. In my free time applied it to things i liked, wrote an IRC bot with raw tcpsockets. made trainers for games in 86asm. tried cracing stuff. but got the basics from school

in the network/voice engineering wheel house, its a lot of the same problem - 'do the thing'. The more engineers trek with this mindset, it becomes (vendor) syntax mastery. how many actually can appreciate what the code piece is doing though? Sadly, there isn't enough time to learn it and keep up with the practical work scenarios you have to get done.

You can get a math degree, or you can take courses on how to use a TI-84. One will teach you the fundamentals of math enough so you can learn how to use the TI-84 yourself, the other will screw you if a new type of calculator is invented. I graduated during the height of AngularJS and Gulp, if I went through a bootcamp, I would've been screwed. I'm sure Assembly programmers thought the same as C programmers who thought the same as Java who thought the same as PHP and so on. And now with AI the abstraction level will only get higher. That's why I hate it when people complain that their CS degree was useless because they didn't learn how to program. These are only tools, learning the fundamentals of how a computer runs code gives you a holistic view where you can learn anything

It's frustrating sometimes having all these frameworks, libraries, abstractions, and APIs, that just do everything for you. Yes, I know it's not good to "reinvent the wheel", but how can you get truly creative with programming when 90% of your code or data is imported, required, or parsed by some 3rd-party library or service, and the little bit of code you do write has to follow some strict paradigm of a framework. I know writing your own crappy web app, or making your own solution to a problem that already has a package, from scratch, is not "good practice", but sometimes I feel like modern coding lacks any creativity or personality--most of it feels "cookie cutter". P.S. ..and most of the little code that we do write can often be generated by AI software like Copilot or ChatGPT. It saves a lot of time, but sometimes I feel like coding no longer has any "personality" or "soul" put into it like it once did.

I started with python, and by now I'm home in the C-family, and snooping into asm now and then. It's incredible too see the inner workings, what It's really doing. Even if you'll use a high level lang later on, get familiar with how it works, that'll let you write way more efficiently, besides the satisfaction of knowing what the silicon does

I mean, part of it is, there are very very few *good* teachers out there when it comes to learning programming. Most of them are adept coders who are abysmal teachers. They are so far removed from the mindset of someone who is new to coding that they add several layers of abstraction by themselves. That is to be expected though. As a lifelong coder, the last thing you exercise is what happens in the mind of someone else.

Learning specialized topics like compiler optimisation is also a big reason to go to university.

I think the PHP setup in and of itself is pretty helpful for understanding a lot of how all these technologies work. You have a web server, the server has both the web server (what shows the website) and PHP installed. You also have a database to store informaiton. PHP handles the POST requests with a simple capture - $_POST[''] and then it can use mysqli to write it to the database (or query based on the value, etc.) PHP can also do the math and other logic you need done based on either the HTML form input and the query output. PHP is server side - so hard to understand at first - but helps with the 'give and respond that' logic. There is a back and forth and you need the services - the same services you need to set up in production - to be running. The whole structure is really good for learning. There is a lot PHP cannot do - like real-time interaction, single site funcitons (at least not with the base code) and that is where Javascript and all the many tools around Javascript come into play. PHP could be replaced by other things, though with PHP 8 it seems to be in a pretty good place. Point is once one gets over the hurdles, PHP teaches a server-side, service-focused mindset which is useful for learning more of the "metal" to see how things can be used together.

We have more access to more information than ever before but now that means that we're also inundated with information and its hard to find a place that will start from the bottom up. Thats why i like university more since there is the structure to help guide you since they'll teach things you wont necessarily always find in bootcamps. Also university also provides opportunities for networking and meeting people in the industry depending on what you want to do. But the tradeoff as mentioned in the video is having other stuff that doesn't matter to the degree while a bootcamp focuses only on the topic at hand. I think there are pros and cons to both routes in the end but university wins out a bit more personally.

I'm glad that when I started programming (web specifically) I purpusfully refused to use any libraries if I couldn't do what they offer without them. So it wasn't as deep as it cold be, but barebones php, htnl, css, js and mysql. And so many times I heard smth like "yeah, you need react for this." and... no, you don't. You don't need to rewrite whole project to make an ajax request. Just write this fing request.