Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Peter Norvig's essay argues that learning to program well cannot be done quickly, drawing on research showing that expertise in many fields takes about ten years of deliberate practice. The essay cites studies of chess, music, painting and other areas, and notes that Mozart took 13 years after his early start before producing world-class music. It presents a recipe that includes programming for fun, working with other programmers, and learning at least half a dozen languages, and concludes that a book bought to learn a language quickly will not change one's overall expertise within 24 hours or 21 days.