"Self taught"

[David Ragan]

One of my fave rants:
Frank Sinatra really gets "under my skin"
Know why?
"I did it my way" Elvis sings it too......doesnt he? Who does anything completely their way or completely by themselves?
so folks who say they are "self taught"..... How they can say that mystifies me....
taken literally, it just seems stupid to *not* take advantage of all the media
who is really that isolated?
am i being self righteous and arrogant again, or does anyone agree?

[Jim Koepke]

Maybe it is the difference between actually having someone to teach a person as opposed to one having to seek out their own education.

No one person taught me about wood working. Though some was learned from my father and working in his furniture store and some from a general shop teacher way back in the early 1960s.

In the parlance of many, my woodworking would be "self taught" even though the books read and the videos watched helped me to learn many of my current skills.

Some will seek out classes or teachers to impart learning. Some will glean every piece of information that comes their way, aggregating it all to reach a goal. They will have many trials and errors, but instead of frustration they will find ways to examine the failures to learn what went wrong and what to avoid.

Some here were able to seek and find information before we came into the "age of information" where we now reside.

Being "self taught" is not likely to happen in a total vacuum.

jtk

[Mel Fulks]

...and how about that "fly me to the moon ,play among the stars " Once you get to the moon you are NO CLOSER to the
stars. But on a more serious note,did it my way fits the music better than " You Didn't Build That".

[Jerry Thompson]

I became self taught when I punched Big Ed in the nose.;)

[Dave Zellers]

Well of course no one is strictly self taught.

Except for certain, ahhh, 'private' matters.

But that aside, I consider myself mostly self taught because I jumped into the pool with very little knowledge and had to figure out an awful lot of stuff on my own. Some knowledge was gained just by doing and learning, and some gained by seeking out people and books, mostly books (this was pre-internet). But I didn't have an apprenticeship or anyone close to me to teach me what I know now, I learned it on my own.

When I was starting out on my own 40 years ago, a couple asked me if I could finish the stairs in the house they were building. I said sure! I then spent the next 2 weeks learning how to trim out stairs. I consider that self taught.

[mike mcilroy]

Thoughts on self help from George Carlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCsM35H9TFA

[Tom M King]

It hasn't been That long ago that the only way to learn how to use a saw set was by the instructions in the box when you bought a new one.

[Phil Thien]

When I was in the sixth grade (I'm fifty) I submitted my name to be part of a computer science "class" they were starting at my school.

I wasn't selected. There was a lot of favoritism involved.

A couple of days later I stopped at a pharmacy with a decent magazine stand and picked up a couple of computer magazines that had program listings in the back.

I read the articles and studied the source code listings.

I added some more magazines over the next few months.

And that is how I learned to program.

A year later I changed schools and had to take a math placement test. I finished before everyone else, and was told I could go across the hall. I entered that room and a teacher asked me if I knew anything about programming. I sat at a terminal for the very first time that day.

I didn't know the mechanics of entering code, how the line editor worked. With a little help I was entering code that had been trapped in my head for months.

That summer my father purchased our first computer, it was a Heathkit. He used it during the day (for work), I'd use it late into the night.

When I was sixteen, I was working for a very large hardware vendor.

When I was eighteen, I was working for Capgemini, working in Fortune-100 organizations that were typically staffed by much older programmers, many with advanced degrees. My placements were typically very short, I was there to get PC projects back on course.

I did attend a university but didn't take any computer science classes. I took most everything else, especially a lot of economics. I didn't finish.

And yet I did sometimes sit in on computer science lectures. In fact, that is where I met Phil Katz (the guy that created the ZIP file format). I probably wouldn't have sat through any more of the AI crap, but I did enjoy talking to Phil about the some of the philosophical concepts surrounding compression. He asked me a few times if I'd be interested in porting code to big iron, I declined.

But in a nutshell, yeah, I think people can be self-taught.

Formal education is obviously critically important and nothing I've done negates that need for what we all know to be the more conventional path.

BTW, I don't feel I'm so unique; anyone could do what I did. The trouble is, most people don't believe they can. And I think the blame for that can be laid squarely at the feet of a system that tells us we need a mentor, that we cannot mentor ourselves.

[David Falkner]

I'm self taught at dozens of things - playing guitar, woodworking, photography, building engines, plumbing, electrical, etc. But I play guitar with other people and I'm certain I picked up some things from them through the years. I've been woodworking as long as I've been into cars, go-karts, motorcycles, basically since I was about 11. Sure, I've looked at books and magazines through the years but what I use most is common sense. That and I just dive in and go to work on something. It's a great way to learn and 'self teach'. About 35 years ago someone told me that guitar sides are bent on a hot pipe, so I thinned some wood and started bending. It was years later when I actually read how others do it but my way worked just fine.

Anyway, I agree that you can learn on your own if you're determined to accomplish whatever you've set your mind to. My $0.02...

[Larry Edgerton]

If no one was self taught we would still be living in caves...........

[Mike Cutler]

My interpretation of "self taught" is no rote, classroom, butt time, in the seat. This doesn't preclude a person's ability to become very skilled on their own initiative though.
Many people "pick up" things on their own from magazines, books, other people, and now the computer. They can be become very successful, but there will always be "holes", some big, some small, depending on the individual, in their application. I see this at work with the people we have that have "self taught" themselves electronic theory, and PLC's.

With respects to woodworking;
There are many things I've taught my self, by video, books, and reading other folk's stuff here, but I am not a self taught wood worker. I had 5 years of it in school, and did vo-tech after classes and during the summer for extra credits.

It looks like I'm going to become "self taught" at repairing and replacing fascia board and gutters after this winter though. Maybe some light shingle work too.;)

[Jim Matthews]

The beginnings of empathy stir when you realize that you weren't first.

The sum of human knowledge expanded with every external storage media.
Just writing stuff down isn't enough though, you've got to publish.

Otherwise, it's 'selfish help'.

[David Ragan]

Thanks guys-that helps my perspective...... I don't like getting upset about petty stuff anymore

[Art Mann]

I think the OP is trying really hard to misunderstand what someone means when they say they are self taught. Almost everyone is self taught in some area or other. How could someone view Phil's example as anything other than self teaching.

There are also people who go through life insisting that things be done their own way. Frank Sinatra appears to have been such a person. A few such people are huge successes, at least from a financial standpoint, but far more are failures. Either way, it seems to me the people who are like that are not very happy.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

David, many are self taught through necessity. If something costs to much to afford, but you need it, then you figure out a way. Those process are usually learning by disassembly, then reassemble into a proper system of some sort. An example is, I could hire someone to plumb and assemble a GPS variable rate fertilizer system on a planter, but it would be done in a cookie cutter way and too expensively to justify. By thinking it through, I can do the same thing, better, for a tenth the cost and then make a profit with the system at a much lower revenue level. In that situation, I couldn't expect to get advice from the "pro" as he feels offended that I am doing it myself, so I must self teach to figure it out.

Personally, I think that many of the brightest people are the ones who do not go the traditional education route. A recurring theme I hear from people like that is that they have a clear vision of their goals, and the traditional learning process is to meandering. Anyone who makes a new discovery is self taught, as it is uncharted territory.

[Phil Thien]

My interpretation of "self taught" is no rote, classroom, butt time, in the seat. This doesn't preclude a person's ability to become very skilled on their own initiative though.

Many people "pick up" things on their own from magazines, books, other people, and now the computer. They can be become very successful, but there will always be "holes", some big, some small, depending on the individual, in their application. I see this at work with the people we have that have "self taught" themselves electronic theory, and PLC's.


A more conventional education really is no guarantee against a different set of holes, but holes nonetheless.

I was once brought into a project at a very large insurance company. A project rollout had been delayed well over a year because the code just kept crashing after a period of use (1-2 hours). The software did what was intended, but was pretty unstable, I was told. The longer it was used, the more likely it would bomb-out.

Nearly the entire project team was in a giant meeting when I arrived. I got there at about 9am, was shown to a cubicle, and told to just hang-out. After an hour or two passed, I went looking for trouble. I found a guy I recognized (also from Cap) in an office on the other side of that floor, and he showed me the code. He was lobbying for a rewrite from the ground up. Ugh. BTW, this guy had a masters from a good school.

Looking at the code, I spotted the culprit in about five minutes. They were testing for whether a file existed by masking errors and attempting to open the file. What they didn't do is, close the file if they had successfully opened it. So within not much time at all, they would simply run out of available file handles.

BTW, that bit of code had been copied straight out of the reference manual for the compiler they were using (bad technical manuals were the norm).

I pointed-out the error, and told the guy to add a couple of lines to close the file if it was successfully opened, and announced I was leaving. I got home and the phone was ringing. The account rep. that sent me to the client said everyone was upset that I had left. I told him I had fixed it and wanted to work on another project from home (for a client that was out of state). If they were that upset, I told him, they didn't have to pay me.

After my rep. pushed me a little I told him the truth: I was immensely embarrassed for these guys, I didn't want a face to face. I didn't want to be there for the stages we'd go through, which would be denial mixed with anger, acceptance mixed with embarrassment, and ultimately excuses and finger pointing.

I did get paid, BTW. It was a thirty day assignment, subject to extension. I was paid a full thirty days wages, my rep. saw to that.

[David Ragan]

All great things for me to hear.
In regards to formal education, my personal experience has been-from my own, and seeing young folks come through-is that about all it does is teach one the vocabulary, perhaps some basics skills
As hard as it is to ask others for help sometimes, it really is a great way to progress, cause that person who helps me benefits me: (1) i get the help (2) i usually learn more than i came for (3) Also have the relationship w that person......and as much of a hermit as i am-life is about the relationships- that is what upsets me about the "i did it my way" and the self taught thing---neither leave room for other people in my life

[Myk Rian]

I'm self taught at many things. I had to teach myself which books to buy in order to learn what I wanted.

[David Falkner]

Thanks guys-that helps my perspective...... I don't like getting upset about petty stuff anymore

Yeah, sometimes it's hard not to get upset about the petty stuff, but if I've learned anything it's this: Don't sweat the petty stuff and never, ever, pet the sweaty stuff.

Sorry, that was really bad! :rolleyes: