How long until you are competent?

I'm a high school senior who is very interested in programming as a backup option for if my acceptance to music school does not happen, or happens with too little scholarship money to afford it. I'm pretty big on math, and have done a bit of Learn Python The Hard Way. I guess my question is, with or without college, how long does it seem to take until most people are able to begin programming for money?

I know it's a lifelong-learning experience, but surely there has to be a point in which you can support yourself on your work.

Whenever you can bullshit yourself a job. To get competent: Read SICP.

I'm 27, programming since I'm 18, and still isn't competent enough to get any job.

Beginner developer here. Life story as follows:

I was an Economics major in a Memphis, TN Community College from 18 to 19. After one year, I realized that I would not be taught anything useful so I switched to "Information Technology with a focus on Application Development". That's a long way of saying that I took 2 years of programming courses with a couple HTML/database/web classes mixed in. I graduated a few days after turning 21. I then went to a 7 week "Java bootcamp" that was a 9 hour, 5 days a week crash course on how to be a professional programmer using Java. After passing the course, I was hired by Nationwide Insurance and Agribusiness in Des Moines, Iowa. I moved here 2 months ago and began my first real programming job. I will be turning 22 in 5 months.

So, for me it took 2 years with assistance from community college and a bootcamp to become a developer.

>>2
Studied SICP, Мир Лиспа, AoCP, TAPL, LoL... still no job.

>>4
So you work with Java? Poor soul.

>>5
I was giving two separate answers.

>>4
You're a Zionist Jew.

>>6
So you work with Java? Poor soul.
Jews have no soul.

>>4

OP here, very interested. If you don't mind answering a couple questions based on that:
1. What was this Java bootcamp?
2. Was the bootcamp a direct connection that got you to your job?
3. Is it a job that is a comfortable living salary?

Well that proved to be popular.

>>9
1. It was a course being offered by a local IT company that was directed at fresh out of college kids who were interested in becoming developers. It was free of charge and offered employment immediately upon finishing the course. They cut half of the class, so passing wasn't ensured. To be fair, the people they cut stood no chance of becoming programmers in 7 weeks. They taught my college education in the first 2 weeks, after that they taught Hibernate, Spring, JSP, JSF, and some other stuff.

2. Yes, I am technically not an employee of Nationwide Insurance. I am an employee of the company in my home town, and have been contracted out to Nationwide by them.

3. Depends on what you call comfortable. Being 21, with no loans or debt, I don't need much to survive. If I can pay for food, rent, internet, and cigarettes then my life is pretty good. I walk to work, so no gas needed except for the weekends. The catch to the "free course, free job, free everything!" experience is that my initial salary is quite low. There are promises of examinations every 6 months for the first 2 years (4 in total) that will result in 10K a year raises if you pass the examination. If you do not pass, you may retake the examination at a later date at the cost of postponing your raise. My current salary is 31K.

Sorry guys, I'm new here. If you don't mind me asking >>7 , what exactly makes me a "Zionist Jew"? I am confused because nothing in my post suggested I was Jewish, or religious at all for that matter.

Also, I'm sure Java isn't the best language out there. I know it's been quite painful for me many days(read: months). That being said I do honestly enjoy the feeling of solving problems with the kind of creativity that object oriented languages allow. What language do you prefer >>6 ?

Check my email address.

OP, it takes Dedication and passion. So there is only the time you deposit on learning. Looking at the economy, you want to take music as a minor, and do hobby work while you program instead.

There are more online resource for free that a college can give you of what is on the market now. Anything from ARM architecture, webdev, *nix administration, etc.. The main question is where do you want get income from. The current market is going for mobile ARM applications, webdev (losing value although), hosting (anything really), and Defense (the spying kind, for when "cyber warfare" begins on 2014-2015)

>>11
Java is based on C/C++, which is based on Algol, which was designed by Jews. Java is also used by major Jewish banks to do computing.

>>14
Non-Jews: Python
Jews: Everything else

Better sell your computer, Nazi.

>>10

This is incredibly interesting to me, and perhaps ideal even. I'd much rather start off with a 30k salary with huge career advancement opportunities, than automatically go into a 50k a year career and stay there forever. Do you know if there is any way to find programs like this? That sounds pretty much right up my alley.

>>15
While Guido van Rossum is 1/2 Jewish, his brother for some reason looks like 100% pure Israeli kike. Another proof that Jewish women are whores.

Jews: Everything
And that is not a joke.

Alan Kay - JEW
Lev Vygotsky - JEW
Seymour Papert - JEW (http://www.papert.com/papert/new.html)
Jean Piaget - JEW or HALF-JEW
Jerome Bruner - JEW
Noam Chomsky - JEW
John McCarthy - JEW
Karl Popper - JEW
Marvin Minsky - JEW
Terry Winograd - JEW
Gerald Sussman - JEW
Salman Khan - JEW
Alan Cooper (inventor of Visual Basic) - JEW
Joel Spolsky (co-inventor of Visual Basic) - JEW
Alexander Stepanov (co-inventor of C++) - JEW
Roberto Ierusalimschy (inventor of Lua) - JEW
Arthur Whitney (inventor of K) - JEW (http://kx.com/media-coverage-arthur-2004.php)
Philippe Kahn (inventor of Delphi and Turbo Pascal) - JEW
Andrei Alexandrescu (co-inventor of D) - JEW
Guid van Rossum (inventor of Python) - HALF-JEW
Jeremy Ashkenas (inventor of CoffeeScript) - JEW
Valentin Turchin (inventor of Refal) - JEW
Brendan Eich (inventor of JavaScript) - JEW
Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (inventors of PHP) - JEWS

>>14 Wow, that's subtle. If you can't beat them, join them?

>>19
I doubt you can join Jews, unless your mother is Jewish. Jews strictly follow Halakha in building their society.

>>11
Welcome then >>11,4-san. >>7 thought that since you work for an insurance, you are profiting out of bogus claims, and that in 2015 that job will go away. The implications of a Zionist (Jew), means that you only seek profit from nothing, like national bankers, at the expense of others (most National bankers call themselves Zionist, which imply something about their philosophy and how it affects the world socio-politica-economic landscape quite well). But he did not know you worked as a contracted employee, if you are >>10. So we would call you a poorfag or goyim, since you work for someone else, who is profiting like a Zionist.

Also, try to unlearn OOP. It is an abomination. Functional and S-expresions are better methods. I like Array programming too.

>>16 Very sorry my friend, but there is little I can do for you. From my understanding programs like this are very rare, and the one I went through was the first attempt at anything like this in the area (maybe the country, not sure). I discovered it through going to user group meetings, which occasionally have recruiters available. You can find info on your local Java User Group, or JUG if you prefer acronyms, pretty easily I imagine.

Also, it's 3:20 AM so I'll throw this out there: I'm clearly the most successful of my high school / college friends, but in many ways I'm quite sad. I miss my home, my family, my friends, and the warm southern sun very much. It's only been 2 months though, maybe I'll get used to this frozen cornfield. At least the people are nice here. The mall is pretty cool. So don't get in a rush I guess. Being happy is a lot more than being successful (but it sure helps a lot).

>>22
I appreciate it regardless. Thanks for the help, and likewise with the others in the thread.

>>11
Lisp, coding without at least first class functions is terrible.

>>22
Bad choice. Never tell your time. Now we knoe you live in CST (-6 UTC). We can find out from you IP address exactly were you live now. All ways say the system time.

>>24
I KNOW!

>>21

Thank you for the explanation and welcome! About Functional programming, I've been fascinated with it recently. I've written Functor classes in Java for fun, just for kicks. Yeah, it's not really functional and definitely impractical, but at least I'm interested. I would like to learn it, but being a newbie who is only really competent with Java you have to start somewhere right?

I don't have anything against Jews. As far as banking is concerned I will say that I admire Islams restrictions on usury, so that somewhat ties in with what you are saying about the banking system.

Also, what's up with all the Jewish stuff in this board? Seems pretty prevalent. I didn't know programming had so much to do with Jewish people until now.

>>26
When you take the time to learn that Most governments are ruled by "Zionist" National Bankers (I.E. Parasitic humans that believe on an abominable Fairy), you will encounter as a programmer these insane Neo-Aristocrats, that will try by any means to rip you off everything (thing you love, even credit for work), as you work for their bidding being a debt slave. Most us are read of soci-politica-economic landscape, and understand their plan for global domination as "Fairy's Chosen people", and utterly dislike or enjoy their goal and working for and against it.

/prog/ was not like this, until some people invade the our forum with stuff from /newpol/. And because we know how "Zionist" affect us /prog/riders, we defect to reply, regardless of the position in the discussion at hand. You should read /prog/ in the ancient threads. They are awesome. We were gods in 2005-8. But it was turning to shit these days.

>>26
I didn't know programming had so much to do with Jewish people until now.
Every fucking major programmer is a Jew, from Spolsky to Zawinsky. Fuck! Even Linus has some Jewish blood in him.

>>28
Some of your blood is jewish, go gas yourself.

>>27
We were gods in 2005-8. But it was turning to shit these days.
yeah. economic crisis get us all.

>>29
Nope. All my ancestors were peasants.

>>28
K&R, Niklaus Wirth, Steve "Slug" Russel, Alonzo Church, Grace Hopper, etc, yeah fucking right.

>>30
No, they are newfags.

>>32
You forgot Straustrup, but the real mastermind behind him was Alexander Stepanov, who did templates. And Grace Hopper here is just for feminist reason. Like there should be always a nigger in every Hollywood movie, so that nigger won't feel excluded.

Alonzo Church is just some minor mathematician. Haskell Curry and Moses Schönfinkel are much more famous.

>>34
While the name of Grace Hopper is used for Feminist propaganda, like Straustrup for OOP followers, She is accredit with the first compiler, and the written concept of Higher level languages. With out her idea, C, Forth, COBOL (sadly), BASIC, etc., would have never been made. But yes, you are right, Haskell Curry and Moses Schönfinkel are much more famous.

>>18
While I don't doubt the more obvious ones, I don't think everyone on that list is a jew.

I looked up Salman Khan and Alexander Stepanov, and there's nothing that links them to jews. Well, I guess the latter could be because he's russian, and russians are slaves to the star, but still.

Salman was born to indian parents in the US. How is he a jew?

>>36
Look at his photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov

Typical kikes and 1/2 kikes have sloped skull (easy to see due to early loss of hair due to genetic disorders), curly nigger-like hair, prognathism (big lower jaw, protruding forward), darkened skin (due to nigger ancestry), almond-shaped brown eyes (or just big eyes), enormous distance between eyes, puffy nigger lips, ingrown earlobes, acute ears (growing at significant angle), different nipples form and color. Jewish smile exposes gums, making Jew even uglier. Some kikes also have this specific Jewish stench.

>>36
Salman was born to indian parents in the US. How is he a jew?
Jewish-Indian family moved to US. That is very common. Jews from different country also frequently intermarry to maintain genetics and better contact.

How long until you are competent?
Exactly 10000 hours of deliberate practice.

>>37
BTW, look at his co-authors:
http://www.stepanovpapers.com/
David, Aaron, Szymanski... that is fucking synagogue!