am I self taught ?
Can someone who studied at a university be considered self taught ? In my situation I’d say 80% of what I know is because I took the initiative and spend time to learn new skills by myself. While I was doing that of course, I was also pursuing a Computer science degree. But after graduating I cannot say that the degree “boosted” me or it helped me or that it opened doors for me.
But for most people that don’t follow an academic career, I believe it’s a similar situation for them.
33 Replies
It's up to your own interpretation
Unknown User•3y ago
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everyone is self taught tho
some are spoon fed tho (annoying breed)
Unknown User•3y ago
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I personally don't see courses like freecodecamp and theodinproject as "self-taught"
My view on it, and emphasis on my view, is that a self taught person is someone who didn't depend on a course, but researched on his own, and took traits from left, right and center being able to form his own opinion.
Unknown User•3y ago
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this, don't devalue your uni degree. We tend to underestimate how much a benefit thinking about more abstract CS topics help us. We spent 4 years rewiring our brain to think like computer scientists. Just because you had to learn application development skills outside of your degree doesn't make the degree itself useless.
Unknown User•3y ago
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Don’t bring gender into it.
Unknown User•3y ago
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just shut up?
Unknown User•3y ago
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@Moderator ? making a problem out of nothing
Unknown User•3y ago
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Both knock it off
Barry used ‘his’ instead of ‘his/her’. Not quite sure how that turned into this, but as Jacob has the right of it.
Can someone who watches educational YouTube videos to learn be considered self taught?
Don’t think so, but for most self taught people I believe that’s the starting point
I think "self-taught" can be one of those terms that gives noobies imposter syndrome because they see the massive amount of "self-taught" developers and think "Wow if this person figured out all this stuff by themselve's why can't I?"
That's the main reason I don't like considering watching youtube videos, running through a bunch of courses that somebody knowledgeable pointed you at, and having some guidance from a community actually being self taught if that makes sense
If you're learning outside of an institution or externally defined structure (syllabus, curriculum, etc.. ) it's self-taught. If you are the driver for your learning, it's self-taught.
Based on your definition Humble, nearly no one except a Luddite with a coding book in the desert could be self taught.
"but but the people making tutorials give you a structure"
You don't have to follow it and it's not a determinant of your success. This is not the case for institutions
A great example of this would be Kent C Dodds Epic React, you can literally do the whole thing for free completely unguided or even start at the end and get massive learning value from it
"Based on your definition Humble, nearly no one except a Luddite with a coding book in the desert could be self taught." basically yeah that's my definition exactly, and the reason I like that definition is because it's dismissing the notion that there even is a proper way to learn how to code in the first place because there really isn't, and it also reflects the reality that most "self-taught" programmers aren't learning alone.
Time and time again I've watched students do poorly because they try to learn in isolation, that's why I think it's important to broadcast the fact that "self-taught" developers often aren't really alone in their journey(most of the time).
But I do see your point as well
I'm all for "community-taught" (huge advocate) but gatekeeping the "self-taught" because it's semantically doesn't work with what you think is actually best is more than likely just gonna chase people out of communities not bring them in.
I feel we are on similar pages
Or at least the same book
I mean I guess that's fair if the phrase is being used as a badge of honor
I think my point is that it probably shouldn't be
am i self taught? <a:thonk_spin:767750597411078174>
Sure why not.
Like I'd rather people take pride in the value of community learning
i put it in my website but now after reading this im not sure
We are all self-taught together therefore community-self-taught
I'm a
community-taught developer lolThat's the rhetoric I push on Twitter with Danny Thompson and others
honestly I'm not even that I went to a bootcamp haha
but I still stand by the notion haha
Helps to also get people in the mindset of don't isolate and burnout, get support and help
yeah that's totally my main point
we're in violent agreement