zeeshanl

better choice for unfollowing peoples: http://birdlaunch.biz/

I don't have a high opinion of my musical abilities :), but I agree that catching-up is both a doable and daunting process.

But, finding niches of interest to focus on usually helps, as it does when crafting really good songs in a specific style, one that matches your musical abilities and understanding. You may not have the chops, but you can still create amazing work.

With programming, I have the issue of wanting to catch up on everything and do side-projects (eventually, I'll run through this class => http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay/courses/2012/fall/330/course/...), but I have found success in trying to pick-up things in conjunction with a task at hand. If I have to build a web service, I'll start that research simultaneously. Starting IOS work... then spend time with C, understand Objective-C's runtime, read about the history (and play around with Smalltalk). This piece-meal approach seems to make the jump more "doable" in my opinion.

I think that people without a CS degree can obtain a good, challenging gig if they have a good niche to school themselves in, and of course, pick-up the gaps from the people they work along with who have that background/knowledge.

As a person with a masters in music, a bachelor in film, and now programming for a living, I def. believe that having a persistant interest in learning about those "fundamental software concepts" is what makes such a gig achievable, especially if you keep doing the extra work in your spare time (like taking Dan Grossman's unbelievable Programming Languages class or going through Zed's LCTHW).

Great to see the contrib in action.

this def. hit home with me.

I'm using it to combat the dreadfulness of jira.