What are the biggest mistakes self taught programmers make? |
One of the first things I learned in the Navy was that a college degree can turn out some of the dumbest officers you can imagine.
If I was hiring computer programmers, I would hire 10 self motivitated self taught programmers for every college degree one, assuming they were at the same skill level.
The college guy would probably be in charge of spreadsheets or something trivial that wouldn't get in the way of the ones doing the real work.
Someone who learned C++ because they wanted to, is worth 50 college degrees, maybe more.
The advantage the college guy has is that he's been given assignments to write something he really didn't want to, or know anything about and was forced to learn. He may have worked on a project with a few other programmers or solved some computer program problems that to us self taught programmers aren't interesting enough to spend time on right now.
The biggest mistake is to think your not good enough. Motivation, and willingness to learn is what you need, good organization, teamwork and people skills is good to have.