How I learned to program
His 'ineffective fumbling' and 'high school' seem to mirror my experiences. Using a bunch of mismatched books and computers with no real goals, no mentor, and no real results.<p>However, it's amazing when you read about <insert famous programmer>. They grew up with Apple II's and Commodore 64's, but they <i>mastered</i> them. Or at least that's the narrative from the author of the articles that talk about them.<p>They don't just write silly BASIC programs like the rest of us, they started using assembler and learn the machine like the back of their hand. They learn how to optimize the living crap out of their code. Maybe their schools just had better books in their libraries or they subscribed to the good magazines of the day. Or they were just that much better at programming and smarter and more focused, one of the above, or all three.