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How to become a good programmer in C language?

Can you become a good programmer if you only do it as a hobby?

  • It's generally assumed that it takes a lot of time to become really good at something. More specific to programming, is it possible to become a good programmer if you only do it as a hobby, meaning only over weekends, for example. By "good" I mean someone who can build something that is useful to others and self (and not just play around with features of the language).

  • Answer:

    I think there are two questions here. "Can you become a good programmer if you only do it as a hobby?" "Can you build something that is useful to others and self [while programming as a hobby]" This may not be exactly what you are asking -- so I apologize for straying. However, I think that if you break apart your question like this, you'll find the answers much more encouraging. Unfortunately, it's very hard to be a "good programmer" when doing it just as a hobby. It takes many, many, many hours of trying and failing in order to build up a skill set that will enable you to be a "competent" programmer. If you look at people that are hired to be programmers for a living, you'll find that they generally started very early in life (not uncommon for their first programming experiences to be 12, 13, 14 years old) -- or studied computer science in college. Once these people get a job programming, and stick with it for a few years, they could be considered "good." It's very hard to get to that level just working on the weekends. However, you alluded to this in your question details. You are not looking to be a programmer by trade -- you just want to build something that is useful to yourself or others. To be honest -- this does not necessarily require you to be a "good" programmer. There are plenty of examples of people that have created something very useful with only minimal programming skills. Some very highly traffic blogs (such as http://www.postsecret.com) did not need "good" programming skills to create. You may not be setting out to create a blog -- but perhaps your idea is not far off from a blog. As someone that programs for a living (though not a "good" programmer yet) -- I encourage people to try writing code as a hobby. I think it's fun -- and I think that people can create meaningful and useful things on their own when they set their minds to it. I think it's especially important too -- because what they create is often very different than what the normal programmers go out and try to create. Often, the "newbies" will build something wildly different and useful that makes the good programmers do a double take -- and wonder why they didn't do that themselves.

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In principle, yes. Being a good programmer is largely a matter of how long you spend doing it. As long as you have the time to practice, it doesn't matter if you're doing it in the context of paid employment in a company or as self-taught amateur. Obviously being in industry will introduce you to important concepts and restrictions - for example writing a secure application is something you won't necessarily think about doing when you're writing for and by yourself. OTOH it may equally waste your time with a lot of bureaucratic nonsense like UML diagrams and PRINCE2 which have nothing to do with being a good programmer.

Phil Jones

Yes, you absolutely can become a great programmer as a hobbyist, in your spare time, with limited external influences.  It will take much longer: a function of the number of hours you put into it, and the limited amount of exposure you will have to peers and background knowledge. Note that this applies to any field of expertise, and there is a long  history of self-taught amateurs producing great things from their spare moments (authors, inventors, scientists, and so on). In my limited experience (thousands developers I've worked with over the years), the best developers are passionate, obsessive, self-taught hobbyists. Many of these developers spent up to a decade writing software before hitting university or the workforce, where they're able to fill in the holes in their understanding, and start honing their technique and working on methods to reproduce their greatest successes. The common thread is a continued commitment to practice and learning: daily, weekly, never stopping, and never assuming you know it all (because you never do).

Bruce Alderson

I have found that programming by doing it yourself in free time is a great way to learn it. You get to choose where and what you do. Like becoming a web dev or system dev and choose your choice of platform and language. You have that freedom but you will have to find the time yourself. On the other hand, if you work for a company you get to code at least 30 hours a week and that teaches you a lot but a lot of companies have their niche area and you may not work on things that teach you a lot. Not to forget custom systems and platforms that are very young and do not teach anything else other than certain repetitive tasks to maintain those systems. If you ask me, no matter where I work, I have to tinker and learn something on my own, constantly.

AJ Sethi

Yes, though there is quite a difference between playing to learn and hitting project targets and working with others.

Jeremy Hutchings

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