Ask HN: How to Get Back into Programming?

2 points by sir_unix 2 years ago | 1 comment

I studied CS as an undergrad at an Ivy and my programming skills were above average. After graduating I entered consulting and am now a growth equity investor. I like my job, but there's always a part of me that regrets studying a subject I deeply enjoyed for four years and then stepping away from it. A few things are driving me to get back into programming so I can become proficient again and start building. First, the AI rush is obviously going to result in lots of new companies and opportunities (aka ways to make money). Second, I feel like I would be remiss to completely lose my coding skillset (especially with all the copilot-like tools that make it so much easier now). My problem is I never coded outside of a class environment, and I haven't even done that in years. Does anyone have suggestions on projects to work on, bootcamps, etc. that I can do in my spare time to become proficient at coding again? Would like to avoid things like leetcode, project euler, etc. and instead focus on actually developing useful software (however trivial) to ramp up on basic software engineering principles / best practices.

PaulHoule 2 years ago |

Gotta pick some project that matters to you and do it. Putting Python code into production with multi-person teams is outright maddening, but for the individual who wants to put their skills on wheels, Python is a great place to start.

Another fun thing to try is

https://www.arduino.cc/

I got started with that buying an Arduino and a breadboard and a handful of 74xx logic chips and I started writing Arduino programs that would generate inputs to the 74xx chips and verify the expected outputs and thus taught myself C coding for the Arduino and how to make circuits with discrete logic at the same time.