The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally
Paperback – January 24, 2017
Description
"I always keep a few copies of The Self-Taught Programmer around to give to anyone that comes to me for career advice."-- Robin Abrams , Board Member, HCL Technologies, FactSet Research, Lattice Semiconductor and Sierra Wireless"Want to learn to program professionally? Follow Cory's advice."-- David Phillips , Co-Founder, Hackbright Academy"I am incredibly impressed with this book."xa0-- JoAnn Buchanan , Senior Research Associate, Allen Institute for Brain Science"Learning to program is increasingly important in finance. Althoff's book taught me the skills I need to stay competitive."xa0-- Derek Schaefer , Senior Finance Manager, Charles Schwab" The Self-Taught Programmer was a pleasure to read--something I never thought I would say about a technical book."-- Melinda Sacks , Former Writer, Editor, San Jose Mercury News "One of the best Software Design books of all time" -- BookAuthority I spent one year writing The Self-Taught Programmer . It was an exciting and rewarding experience. I treated my book like a software project. After I finished writing it, I created a program to pick out all of the code examples from the book and execute them in Python to make sure all 300+ examples worked properly. Then I wrote software to add line numbers and color to every code example. Finally, I had a group of 200 new programmers "beta read" the book to identify poorly explained concepts and look for any errors my program missed. One last note: this book was written for new programmers. If you are an advanced programmer, this is probably not the best book for you. I hope you learn as much reading my book as I did writing it. Best of luck with your programming!
Features & Highlights
- I am a self-taught programmer. After a year of self-study, I learned to program well enough to land a job as a software engineer II at eBay. Once I got there, I realized I was severely under-prepared. I was overwhelmed by the amount of things I needed to know but hadn't learned yet. My journey learning to program, and my experience at my first job as a software engineer were the inspiration for this book.This book is not just about learning to program; although you will learn to code. If you want to program professionally, it is not enough to learn to code; that is why, in addition to helping you learn to program, I also cover the rest of the things you need to know to program professionally that classes and books don't teach you. "The Self-taught Programmer" is a roadmap, a guide to take you from writing your first Python program, to passing your first technical interview. I divided the book into five sections:1. Learn to program in Python 3 and build your first program.2. Learn Object-oriented programming and create a powerful Python program to get you hooked.3. Learn to use tools like Git, Bash, and regular expressions. Then use your new coding skills to build a web scraper.4. Study Computer Science fundamentals like data structures and algorithms.5. Finish with best coding practices, tips for working with a team, and advice on landing a programming job.You CAN learn to program professionally. The path is there. Will you take it?
