Where do I start my programming learning curve?

Why so many people are so much concerned about "learning curve"? Marketing people made it a scarecrow. If you are the one who is interested in learning, not some stupid administration of something, you will quickly find that steepness of learning curve does not matter at all, because the initial difficulties in the steep part of the curve is absolutely insignificant compared with the total volume of work needed to master something.

Yes, there are certain "losses" related to steep parts of learning curve: some never complete learning. But this is a losses in statistics of people; it has nothing to do with individual goals. You have to consider yourself as an individual. You just should know that you are going to master certain thing, right? Then why thinking in terms of that stupid "learning curve" at all?

Now, even in terms of statistics. Let's say, you hire people and want to teach them. You may think that technology A has places of steeper learning curve than technology B. Is A beneficial for you? It depends, but I doubt it. How can it translate in your statistics? Only in one way. Let's say, with A, 60% of candidates will complete training, and 40% fail. With B, 90% will complete training. As I said, steepness has nothing to do with total amount of effort, which is also different. But what this difference in percentage means? Probably it means that among 90% of successful learners the are 30% of those who would pretty likely fail learning A. Now, ask yourself, do you really want to work with those 30% ? :-) Again, it depends. All this paragraph is hypothetical and not related to your personal goals. It was just to illustrate some fallacy of "learning curve" concept.

Let me tell you that your competency in mathematics and physics is a very good sign, as well as you wide interests. In these fields, the "learning curves" are much steeper then in computing, but it's better not to take computing as something not serious and purely practical. There are theories and false theories, interest groups and misconception, bad and good, a lot of philosophy and social science (because engineering is social phenomena which is good to understand), a lot of useful and useless knowledge, and so on; it's both art and science, tactics and strategy. And so on…

Now, I have to apologize: I'm not going to answer on what technology should you use and what to start with. What to use is totally up to you. That said: to know what you want, you have to learn a bit in many different fields. How? The recipe is simpler to explain than to follow: learn to sort out fundamental from ad hoc and devote most of your efforts to the fundamental. As to "what to start with", I have a simple idea, similar to my idea about "learning curve": it does not matter where you start, it much more important how you continue. That say: start with something; later on, it will help you to see what to learn next. I don't say that you should not set firm goals; you actually should, only you should also understand that some of your goals could be based on your insufficient understanding of things.

In connection with that, I want to depict the role of formal education. It is not designed to tell people sacred secrets. Instead, it just help students to waste less time by directing the activities and advice. With self-education approach, you loose this benefit but gain better adherence to your individual character and background.

Still, it would be great to create some kind of "learners club" with your fellows who can share their experience, problems and finding. To certain extent, this site offers such collaboration, but perhaps some more narrow group can be very useful. The major problem of isolated individual work is: inexperienced people tend to incorrectly estimate their work; most usually, we tend to over-estimate ourselves. The is nothing more productive than friendly criticism.

So, here is my advice: forget "learning curve", start learning.

—SA