Step from beginner to advanced

Question

For experienced programmers: how it felt to transfer from newbie to actually writing useful and complicated programs and what it takes to take that leap between newbie working with simple loops and simple logic to serious programs with advanced topics? Just coding every day (max every other day), discovering something new and implementing it in your code, reading books or something else?

Answer 1

There's no leap, it's a gradual thing. All the experienced programmers use simple loops too, just in awesome ways!

Books help but nothing beats writing code. I for one have only read a single book on software (and that wasn't really about programming) and I'm doing fine!
The most important skill is probably being able to properly google about what problems you have, and if you're serious about programming you'll encounter some maths and computer science theory eventually along the way. And once you're in the flow of things you'll never run out of ideas for projects :P

So go write code! Don't be afraid to ask questions (IRC and stackoverflow are great) but also try to figure out solutions to problems youself first.

Answer 2

I don't think I am an experienced programmer, but for me it's always threatening when I meet firstly with a bigger code base and need to start solving problems and adding features in it. With big patient as I'm trying to understand the things behind the scenes, I realize that's not that complicated as it seemed and after a while I feel like a god, who can modify and understand everything.

For me it's like climbing a big mountain, threatening at first, but thrilling at the end :)

Also I really think, that if you know the basics, know everything, you just need patient and time.

Answer 3

Would like to know that too... but already feel like pretty miles away and deviated without practice or making new ideas....