The BEST Way To Become A Software Engineer

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By: Lane Wagner | x.com/wagslane?s=20
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[@efenollal]

When I worked at NASA everybody asked me if aliens were real.😂

[@user-vl4gh7pt3d]

Well...?

[@echoptic775]

R they?

[@E8A590]

And ..?

[@maksa22242]

I became curious instead of laughing

[@sirk3v]

Are they?

[@AlexanderHyll]

As a side note, this is why I recommend also reading books. It's a great way to learn slow where you get more of the background than maybe you thought you wanted, but helps build better intuition than many realize, and a lot faster than trying to only discover it as you go. Someone has put in 5-40 years of knowledge into helping you not have to discover fire again.

[@etorty_dev]

Absolutely correct 💯

[@vicolaprecisione]

what would be the essential books? especially as a Business Analyst such as using Python

[@AlexanderHyll]

It depends a lot on your current level and what your requirenents are. I quite like ”Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and Tensorflow”. It has a mix of some data wrangling with dataframes, visualization and some analysis with a practical emphasis. Its at a relatively beginner friendly/internediate level. Its quite useful even if your goal is not doing ML. ”Matplotlib for Python Developers” is quite good for visualization. For more software, and less analysis focus, to develop your Python skills you may like: ”Python Design Patterns: A Step-by-Step Guide”.

[@Dawsatek22]

especialy if you can find one in your own language that helps so much

[@tedroscourt1205]

I don't think reading books makes a difference. Information is Information. Using your critical thinking, testing and experimenting with what you've learned builds the intuition.

[@danielvaughn4551]

"Short cuts lead to long delays" love that. I like saying "the only way out is through; you cannot go around".

[@SimGunther]

0. Find what problems you're passionate about solving 1. Learn the fundamentals 2. Solve problems while learning interesting things about the languages you're using to solve the problem 3. Find a way to show off your work in an appealing portfolio for the work you want to do 4. Network relentlessly 5. Repeat 1-4 until profit!

[@astrolemonade349]

saved me 12:44 minutes, thanks

[@hamzakhiar3636]

i DON'T EVEN KNOW what i'm passionate about to check whether they have A TECH PROBLEM

[@CapsAdmin]

This is more or less exactly what I did. I spent 10 years on steps 0-2 because it never crossed my mind I could work as a developer. Then 5 years ago I started going to meetup events to get to know other programmers with the same interests. I showed off what I made to someone and they invited me to come work for them. It occurred to me later that those events were actually for networking.

[@zeendrom]

this

[@meltygear5955]

@@astrolemonade349 You could've just googled the article...

[@RaveYoda]

I'm glad someone else has said what I've been thinking and doing throughout my entire journey in becoming a well rounded developer. I build things that I want to use. That really helped me get the foundation as from there, because of that process, I've naturally grown interests in other technical areas which acts as a positive feedback loop to further expand my skills.

[@nicholaskipchumba9189]

Was a civil engineer in SF. I taught myself some basic and advanced DSA using Leetcode. Became really good at solving those problems and started interviewing. Got a job and learned building stuff on the job!

[@AnimeReference]

Always learn on the job.

[@janaakhterov]

God I love the honesty up front for being sponsored, thank you!

[@TomNook.]

This channel is one of the best on KZbin, it has the best quality advice to time ratio too

[@LuisJimenezr01]

Loved this video and loved the article, thanks dude!

[@hazrulfitri6524]

Was recommended your channel by the algo. Loving the contents so far. Thanks for sharing this video!

[@hikatashi]

Thank you for this video, I'm currently a student at 42, and I'm seeing too many people getting their way thtough with git copy. I'm glad that I'm taking the slow path to learn how to code, how to build something !

[@CapsAdmin]

I used to be a developer at some R&D department in the national postal service in Norway. When people asked me what I do, I would always get questions about lost packages and things way outside my scope. And especially at parties people would start pitching ideas or rant/banter about some bad experience they had with the service.

[@thisbridgehascables]

As a frontend/backend developer.. I’ve learned to disassemble other people’s code and have a good instinct to know when someone else’s answer to a problem is garbage and only makes things worse. I’ll do tutorials only to see or understand a part of it.. then I go build something different, if similar, try to build it in a unique way, change the ui, do it in another language .. or try to build a MVC in js, without a framework.

[@arpitaggarwal135]

Most practical advice, kudos prim 🎉

[@mytechnotalent]

Be smart is true, it is like you have said in the past, get hands-on. If one wanted to become an Olympic Gymnast, they would get on the beam and fall down and get back up and keep falling down. The only way forward is practice and working through docs however it is actually DOING by coding, using print debugging or actual debugging to understand primitives compared to more complex objects, etc...

[@rickwoods5274]

Interestingly, I think this is the main value a formal software education provides. I went to college for four years to study computer science. In my case, I did it because I "was supposed to" (I had a very rigid upbringing and very fortunate financial circumstances), but looking back on it, it provided the environment needed to build skills _slowly_. That environment included explicit teaching of basic concepts, projects in which to apply those concepts, and scrutiny of those projects to correct mistakes. One critical aspect of this is that, while it required discipline to stay on track and make the grade, some amount of the "discipline" requirement was removed thanks to the curriculum and benchmarks being set externally. If you can get those things without a formal education, it can be much cheaper! But you will have to build your own curriculum and set your own benchmarks, which requires a mountain of discipline that a formal education would give you automatically. I don't know that I necessarily have a point here, only an observation that formed while I was watching this vid.

[@bigzigtv706]

Word

[@anon-fz2bo]

it depends dude, just coz ur experience with a formal background was a good one does not mean other share that same sentiment. its extremely variable & in my case, ive learnt more about programming thru my own self experimentation & grind, so much so the kids in my class call me a "genius" when i come up with a solution to a problem that even the lecturer did not think about. in reality i just grinded my ass off for years alone & it paid off.

[@meltygear5955]

While the pacing was slow I bet there were many people as part of your class who were "damn, I already know that stuff, let me go faster please".

[@EbonySeraphim]

I full agree. I was self-taught in high school through gamedev projects + motivation, but formal education was still very helpful. It exposed me to other programming paradigms (functional, declarative), and languages in general (gamedev was 100% C++). It exposed me to other programming problem spaces: XSLT, database, networking, and systems programming. While 85% of my core capability on the job for 14 years was self taught, that remaining 15% slowly picked up in college was very broad and is highly valuable because it's what allows me to pick up any programming industry job and know that I've probably already seen the core difficult problems. Only the surface level problems will be new, as they would to almost anybody who isn't directly knowledgable. When you're limited to looking at someone's value in one team, it can be hard to distinguish who learned slowly, and who learned and applied things "quickly." Those who applied knowledge quickly will quickly be unable to solve more difficult problems because they fail to learned and are barely able to identify the difficult problem at hand. Those who learned a lot of things slowly will comfortably move to different surface level frameworks, languages, or libraries as needed whereas those who don't really have the underlying knowledge will be far less comfortable with this.

[@nullptr.]

For me, the community factor was extremely important. I wouldn't be able to study half as much had I not been in contact with other high performance students, and of course inspiring professors, every single day.

[@ANONAAAAAAAAA]

My honest advice is: if you like software development / engineering, then come to this industry. After all, passion and professionalism are all the things which do actually matter.

[@samdroid37]

reminds me of an old memory.. when I was a kid learning to skateboard I really reaaaaally wanted to grow up to be a pro. beyond obsessed. an older skater told me once while I was learning "don't learn this trick to become pro.. learn this trick because it's fun.. pros are addicted to the fun of learning tricks.. that's all you need." oddly some of the best advice I've had. don't suck the fun out of what you do. being pro won't even be worth it lol.

[@bfkgod]

Lane is 100% right. His site is great too. I did the trial and am seriously thinking about subscribing. It's legit a fun way to learn coding.

[@re_detach]

I agree with the statement "Tutorials aren't for learning"; you are literally copying with the extra perspective from the tutorial maker. An actual learning experience would be to modify the tutorial as you are following it, add extra features you would want; or after you complete the tutorial, use it as "boilerplate" for a personal project.

[@DD-cf2iv]

This. Following tutorials without modifying and building just leaves one feeling lost when they actually try to build something. And painter can only get better at painting by painting a lot. The same can be said about programming.

[@KingsKeep]

@ 7:30, The Seven Levels of Tutorial Hell makes so much sense for the things that were listed 😂

[@minimumt3n204]

Ive learned this the past year or two with my programming career while studying for my CS degree. I thought I knew how to program because Ive used some javascript and python. Wasnt until I actually starting building projects for fun that I realized I learn when trying to solve problems I actually want to solve, not following tutorials.

[@nasukeuchiha7884]

im from germany and its a little bit hard to follow but mannn - i love your tech talk. You have something from the "Great Teacher Onizuka" style in Software Engineering

[@rodion_bozhenko]

It's a great advice in general, but for some people programming is a way to finally have some money to be able live their life. So for people struggling without money it's actually great to take shortcuts to land a job. And after this point this advice about learning programming deeply is really great, because that's how you advance your career and can provide for your family way better

[@mainendra]

I totally agree. Don't just fix the bug, fix the root-cause. Just to add to that, yes, sometimes you need to take shortcut and just fix the bug. But in that case I would say add tech-debt story to fix it later 🙂

[@dopecello8670]

I am beginning developer. At a certain point I just wanted to improve so I started building the apps I wanted to build even if I had no idea what I was doing. I feel so much better when I find a solution rather than watching a whole completed tutorial.

[@paulywalnutz5855]

I need to do this lol

[@elbaraaabuaraki327]

Honsetly this at 10:20 has become clear to me after I built a chat client at work then watch prime build it on his other channel and it was so fun because i got to see how someone way more experienced build it and I think I learned more just by watching

[@taranveerjohal175]

Can you link me the video?

[@lainiwakura3741]

That reminded me about reading physics books. Specifically for the rigorous books about theoretical physics, people always said that those books are not for learning the material as a noob. But when you already understand the material, you can read it and really appreciate how well written the book was lmao

[@rinzler749]

do you have a link of that video?

[@bluesillybeard]

As someone who has been through tutorial hell many times, this is so 100% true. Learn the fundamentals, it's majorly important.

[@NerdyWasTaken]

i can't understand the tutorial hell thing, i just installed linux and automated my way to do things

[@jeremiSZ]

Honestly, what if there are no problems you are interested in/have a passion for? Ever since I left college, I've found to be in that spot.

[@GoWithAndy-cp8tz]

Shortcuts lead to long delays - outstanding, premium thought. It hits the target.Brilliant! In technology shortcut sometime is a cause of short circuit. Jumping over the doc details can lead to serious issues in emergency situation. I enjoy Tolkien's books very much. Cheers!

[@skilz8098]

I love that you quoted "Tolkien"!!!

[@Vaenivo]

I spat my coffee out laughing when you attempted to say, "clusterf*ck asterisk". Pure comedic gold.

[@huyoken7953]

I am new to development. Took a js bootcamp. In the middle of it life threw me a curveball and I got canned from a stupid sales job because the manager had it out for me… idk how I completed the bootcamp but I did and after that I was forced to take the a+ by my field it job… then they canned me lol.. seems tragic but every hurdle life throws at me I have kept faith in god, I have a work from home job now(not dev) but I am finally able to spend more time developing my apps… it’s amazing to learn new things and branch out. A+ may seem stupid but you can understand so much more about software when you keep it interesting and never let life get the best of you. No matter how many times you get canned 😂

[@undergrounder]

Got my first “real” job because I did a project in django. Whatever people people say it’s not set in stone. Go around breaking and fixing stuff. You’ll find your way.

[@AdamLeis]

Dang, this is golden. Shaaaariiiiing

[@gungun974]

This article is true but the thing I'm chock was I discover this was possible in Go to recover from a panic and so I search on internet and YES ! There is someone that use it to implement a try catch style library ! I'm chocked xD

[@ItsKatsuragi]

I use chatgpt, but only to ask about the methods and quirks of the language itself. I still bang my head against the logic wall myself all the way through. And frankly, that's how I LOVE doing the learning. I have to say AI has been a blessing for someone like me, who has no attention span for tutorials and courses, and learns hands on.

[@joshmillere6263]

its not about attention span or tutorials and courses, its about how much time chat GPT saves you. I could google my way through a problem, and yeah ill find it eventually... after checking 5-10 links that lead me down rabbit holes that dont do anything. OR i could go to GPT, describe my problem, and it will find a solution in a minute, and if its wrong, ask for another one. I think this is where people go wrong though, like in the video, dont take the steps at word value, you have an infinite source of knowledge that gave you these steps, if in any of them you have a question about what it used or something youve never seen before, literally just ask gpt and it will tell you. now not only are you going through rabbit holes, but now you are going through them with it actually being relevant to your problem, and now you've learned so much about stuff you didn't before. Another thing, NEVER copy paste anything gpt gives you, type it out. learn by doing, not seeing.

[@ThePolarpop]

can you give an example ?

[@seleckt6600]

I use chatGPT and Phind. But there is a specific prompt you need to give it so as to not compromise your learning. You need to specifically tell it not to give you a snippet, full answer, or an example of it's use. Just give you the element or attribute that is related to what you want. For example; Bad prompt: How can I color this box red? This will have it give you the full prompt you need to copy and paste in there. But what do you learn? Nada. Good prompt: What attribute can be used to color a box red in HTML? Do not provide a snippet or example. It'll spit out a list of possible solutions to this problem, and you need to figure out which one is suitable, and how to use it.

[@fgfanta]

Can't like this video (and the article) enough.

[@0dsteel]

Documentation for learning. Lectures / courses for additional information. Talks / presentations for interesting information. Tutorials for telling people "I'm learning ".

[@doctorgears9358]

Netflix business plan for 2025: Remove auto playing trailers

[@albinocake]

me comparing many tutorial for the same project so i can evaluate which is the most efficient one :

[@Tomyb15]

Tutorial hell is the bane of my existence, but just having a goal/project that you want to do and going at it is also a terrible experience. You end up taking a chaotic path towards the goal, quite possibly learning very bad habits or patters in the way. Spoon fed instructions are not very useful, but you need some sort of mentoring to not only learn properly, but learn efficiently.

[@questofanswers]

here are my takes from this video: find your interest (its linux, vim, android, and java) learn one language at the core leave (got a core java book, from today i will read it), and love what you do. i guess

[@user-lz6jl6hk3v]

all my friends who are doing internships tell me to watch tutorials to learn the swift language, i on the other hand only use books and chatgpt , becuase you can learn alot from those two than watching any tutorials, also i told my friends the exact same thing about tutorials leaving mostly 70 - 80 percent of the knowledge you can gain from books and chatgpt, also another thing i would like to add is that watching tutorials for a long time, you will start to look at it as entertainment instead of learning.

[@gavinvales8928]

Ive found that i learn the best when im solving my own problems

[@homelessrobot]

be the tutorial you want to see in the world

[@paulderscheid4816]

"Google your way into the building:" sounds like pentesting ^^

[@the.real.ipatch]

thumbs up for the LOTR quote 👍

[@LawrenceDCodes.]

Yes. to all of this, yes

[@desertedislander]

don't get a tutorial, become the tutorial!

[@bobanmilisavljevic7857]

Like Pimpin says, "short cuts lead to long delays" 😎

[@michaelkornelakis8507]

Holy shit this one was good!!! 💯👊

[@gerdokurt]

1:13 I wonder how this conversation would go with an engineer at prnhb! ..could lead to some interessting questions!

[@u9vata]

Hey! Tutorial IS for learning! I never learned as much about assembly programming than writing a tutor :D

[@LordmkKING67]

Yeh, in my opinion/experience tutorial is the best way to get introduced to a subject and see how people organize code and files. Unless you have a mentor your code is gonna look messy otherwise and well you know some things exist. But then again, it is just an introduction, we gotta take it for ourselves to learn about why it works that way and try to edit the given code and experiment further by adding our own ideas

[@andrzejdubaj3726]

I like this!

[@user-td5gy2fh3p]

What extension is he using to get that dark mode? Doesn’t look like dark reader

[@nicknico4121]

yeah i wanna become an employee!

[@bigzigtv706]

Me when i found my passion for computer graphics 5 years into college

[@terrencemoore8739]

I'm baller at chat got 😂 I'm decent at programming too but I love that chat got allows me to learn and adapt faster

[@terrencemoore8739]

**** stack overflow

[@neruneri]

Perfect sponsored content imo. Just reading articles like you always do, so being sponsored to do articles on a particular site is completely fine when the quality of the articles are up there to begin with.

[@FragmentJS]

My Php framework use file system for routing😂

[@mfpears]

When I worked for Tesla people wanted discounts on cars

[@user-cg6gc6pe3z]

i don't care i am going to master C and only then move on 😿 to cpp or rust (tho i am doing go too hehe) (electronics major)

[@a4cfee]

Wait next js is a fs libary kekw

[@kc.88]

Back then, when we started doing Java decades ago, the Java API documentation is perpetually opened in the browser. Nowadays, the new devs, it's StackOverflow, and now Chat Gippty. 🤣

[@blitzritter7867]

Are you Dr Disrespect in disguise 🥸?

[@AlgoristHQ]

The best way? Be an 11 year old. A neckbeard busts down your door and says "You're an SE, Harry."

[@derek1908]

Does anyone have an honest answer as to how much more money one can make doing things ‘the slow way’ in the long run? ‘Not everything is about money’ is not an honest answer btw

[@-SHEESH-YIKES-]

8:53 👀🫡

[@user-sv3dc5nz8w]

Haha, free subscription. Id prefer my friend to work at Uber or booking then 😂

[@a13m34]

That is way I started with rust :)

[@kakwa]

That's the way I've not started Rust yet. The language looks fun, but the hype was too high.

[@jonforhan9196]

skill issue

[@hydrobolix3365]

Spring io and React

[@vincentrouilhac4532]

I don't really like tutorial, give me the documentation and give it to me raw!!

[@joelinman6455]

take shortcuts, get cut short...

[@Ultraporing]

so asking for help apparently got my comment deleted. thanks :(. No joke, is this video for absolute beginners?

[@x6andrey]

What I don’t understand is what are you missing if you go with higher level languages? What are those fundamentals that is very important to have?

[@fullaccess2645]

Data structures, memory management, etc. Higher level languages are great for getting things done quickly, but imo they dont allow the programmer to dig deeper and uncover the inner workings of what the computer is actually doing.

[@vitalyl1327]

You're missing a systematic, comprehensive knowledge and instead getting mythical thinking. If you don't know how things work and how everything is connected you're only capable of cargo cult programming.

[@antran1686]

wait why is jumping into nextjs bad? I’m in uni and i wanted to be able to build apps so i learned nextjs and now i’m a full stack dev at a startup using nextjs. tbh i don’t know anything about what else is out there beyond web dev but idt that makes me a bad engineer. there’s so much to learn and so many uses cases for code that you can’t necessarily compare people making different things. at least in my environment web dev is always required and most things are crud apps. am i missing out on something?

[@vatsalkamani8937]

I like thid 😊

[@MrSquishles]

1:00 Another time for that, if you ever go back to school, don't tell people you work as a developer in the computer science program. Outright lie say you're a dog walker.

[@TheDahc1]

Did you write this article yourself there Prime? 😏

[@meltygear5955]

Hot take: People want to go fast because the industry romanticizes the demonstration of "quick learner". It's a case where the metric of who's a good hire turns into the goal or heavily affects the goal itself.

[@sp3cterproductions]

13:12 - sounds like copium prime....

[@Supersonicboom7]

Number one take away, after the first few months do not use tutorials anymore! Tutorials are good for reference but ironically not for learning...

[@SushilSharma-vp8cx]

Why people create blogs on such simple topics ? because they don't have to code

[@AnimeReference]

I reckon the whole hobby angle is nonsense. Same with learning on your own time and money. You will get good by doing your job. And you'll get good at doing the thing that brings you money by doing your job. There's no rush to get better faster.

[@SamuelHauptmannvanDam]

10:30 suchs bullshit. Seeing one way to do it, is the first step to learning anything. I get what he is saying. But he isn't saying it. Which is kinda ironic. There's knowing A way, then The way, then the way for this project. That's often how it goes. And he is making the argument for the way. Or the way for this project. But that's a step too far for beginners. Imagine wanting to make your first burger as a kid and your dadPrimeTime comes in and says, google your way. Don't do the burger tutorial, search for how to cut onions. Talk about making things harder at the beginning than needed. Just relax. It's sort of like the difference between building something such that it works vs such that it doesn't break. This slow learning. Telling that to some sucker without a job. What are we smoking here?

[@mr_wormhole]

hahaahahahaahahaahhahaaha, ex-java dev slamming recover() hahaahahahaa that's the funniest shit I have ever seen on the internet that's ok tho, we welcome all ex-java devs, we will consume them and train them to be better

[@notapplicable7292]

People have massively underrated a college / university education. A breadth of knowledge has so many transferable skills that you will never foresee.

[@michelvandermeiren8661]

Software dev = loser or minion of rich capitalists

[@DD-cf2iv]

😢

[@emptybottle1200]

broooo 😢

[@HolocaustShmolocaust]

Upper middle class?? 😂😂😂😂 On what planet?

[@ProVrakian]

14628816388282 cool points for the Mary quote.