Hiw long it takes to learn the basics?

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PoMoAnachro@reddit

You can learn enough to build cool little things for yourself in a weekend.

To become employable as an entry level junior I'd say 4000-6000 hours.

Think of it like being a mechanic - anyone can learn to change their own oil or swap out a headlight bulb pretty easily by watching a youtube video or two, but becoming like a fully ticketed journeyman mechanics is like 7200 hours.

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trevorthewebdev@reddit

I think that's smart, but there are so many variables ...

you just want to be a web designer (lot less, but those positions aren't really too much of a thing) or work for a small-to-mid company as an accountant where their pivot-table Excel guy was the wizard before (but now you can do SQL and joins and what not) or you are at a newspaper where you are the D3 graphics guy and can do can do all sorts of Python things ... all different stacks in a way but you need fundamentals.

If you want to solely go CS and work for Amazon or Meta or Google, it's a whole different story.

Then of course AI changes everything, the 7200 can shrink to 720 pretty fast if you know what you are doing.

It's just very fluid these days and what I think matter is how does your other skills pair. A 4,000 CS person and a 800-hour person with a background in something might be a different story depending on the job.

But all that said, the job market is rough as nail right now. There are no jr dev positition in any filed. It's not great.

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gm310509@reddit

IT depends upon what you mean by small projects.

For example, I do how to videos for embedded systems and one of them is a morse code generator. I also teach the basics of the language needed to do that. The video is about 4 hours and also includes a bit of background and history of programming languages.

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GryptpypeThynne@reddit

I swear these posts are some kind of bot farming or something. Beats me what the goal is, but the number of zero effort posts of people asking open ended vague questions with abysmal spelling/typos...

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ReReReverie@reddit

define by project?

i myself thought projects as complicated but cant believe that in terminal stuff count as projects.

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desrtfx@reddit

cant believe that in terminal stuff count as projects.

You couldn't be more wrong. The most important programs, the ones hidden in high security server clusters in enterprise environments all run in the terminal. The vast majority of internet servers (web servers) are terminal programs. Basically everything that drives banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and much more are terminal programs on the back end.

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Aglet_Green@reddit

It varies, but most college courses figure that they can teach you the basics in about 15 weeks, a single semester. You may pick it up a little faster or slower, but that's a good ballpark figure.

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Crafty_Magazine_4673@reddit

print hello world is the basic, by some hacker. and i kind of agree it, programming is about constant learning, we’re all beginners at some point. if you want to start a project, hello world is all you need.

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Environmental_Gap_65@reddit

Man programming is a really vast field.. "learn the basics" of what? Web dev, Game dev, Backend, Frontend, Cloud, Security, Embedded Systems... ?

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Classic_Ticket2162@reddit

depends what you wanna build tbh. if you just want to make some simple websites maybe few months with html/css and javascript. but if you're thinking about mobile apps or games that's completely different timeline

took me around 6 months before I could make anything that didn't look like complete garbage, but everyone learns at different speed

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TigerAnxious9161@reddit

This field is very vast, do you enjoy learning it?

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RonaldHarding@reddit

I've been a professional for almost 15 years. Still working on it! Suffice to say it's a long road and adjectives like 'small' don't really do enough to explain what it is you want to learn to do. If you think making things is fun, just strap in and start building. Learn as you go. Be patient with yourself while you pick things up. It'll take time, but it's worth it.

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ConsciousBath5203@reddit

To start doing small projects? Idk, an hour or two. Depends how efficient you want them to be.

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DTux5249@reddit

Basics of what?

Game Programming? Maybe an hour.

Cybersecurity? Months.

Quantum Computing? Pfffffffffft.

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Overall-Worth-2047@reddit

Learning the basics isn't a years-long grind if you just want to build things. If you're consistent, you can get to a functional project in about 1 to 3 months.

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waffleassembly@reddit

I don't know if I'd say there are "basics." There is generally a starter level where you learn about variables, arrays, and simple functions. But every level you move up to there are going to be new respective things that are "basic" to that level, and those might be completely different from one language to the next. But to kind of answer your question, you should be able to learn the starter stuff in a day, in theory, but it depends on how well you grasp what your learning. Like, when I took the CS160 class, I was trying to explain to a classmate, passing 2 variables (3 & 5) into and add function that returns 8. That seems totally simple to me but my classmate couldn't grasp it because it was a foreign concept. In retrospect, I had the same issues grasping similar concepts when I took JavaScript about a decade prior. It just seemed back then like what my JS teacher was saying didn't make any sense

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GhostXW01F@reddit

There isn’t really an average timeline for people to know the basics, it can vary. Also depends on how you’re planning on learning it. School could be quicker than self taught, but in some cases it isn’t.

If you wanna start trying a project, then you just kinda gotta go for it. Be ready to read a lot of documentation. If you’re just starting out, there are games you can find that teach basic concepts decently well. Some examples are The Farmer Was Replaced, Bitburner, Human Resource Machine.

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cqsterling@reddit

I'm a newb, but right off I'd say this depends on your time commitment, current knowledge, aptitude, and resources. Without at least this info, it's going to be a bunch of replies rooted in personal experience only.