Unfortunately, I have never been in a position to receive instruction from a mentor, the main reason being a lack of time, the other reason being that I do not learn as well from others as I do myself.

I have a feeling that a lack of time is often the case in the professional world. Because of this it is important to spend as much of it as you can on methods that are most beneficial to the individual. When I decided to apply for my current job, I had to teach myself the skills needed to administrate a UNIX enviornment in less than a week. In a situation like this, the only way you have a chance is to totally immerse yourself and experiment/practice constantly.

When I decided to start using perl at my company in place of kludgy shell scripts, and even VB at times, I knew nothing about it except that I had just decided it would be the language of choice on a new project that was due in a couple of days. The only thing that I could do was program...get stuck...read, find a solution...get stuck...read, not find a solution...go about it another way... I think that this can be a great approach to a langauge, but you have to be resourceful, determined, and work well under pressure. The things that I found most helpful (and still do), are meaty textbooks (O'Reilly is great), online documentation (linuxdoc.org, cpan.org, this site), and tons of experimentation. I also think that it is really important to have an enviornment at home that can emulate the one at work.

The bad part of having a single mentor is that you will pick up all the bad habits and only one person's set of skills. I think that a community such as this one is a much better place to field questions, as you usually get a pretty immediate response from many knowlegable people.

I also want to say something about these certification programs that promise to teach you everything you need to know in 6 or 9 months. I think that they are very, very bad. I do not like the whole ideology behind them. I think that if you are motivated enough to throw five or ten thousand dollars at a "technical institute" then you should be motivated enough to pick up a few books, sit down at your machine and teach yourself in less time and for a fraction of the cost. I really do not think these programs are a good solution for anyone.

To sum up, I think that your friend should determine how she learns best and spend her time on that. Documentation, experimentation, and motivation are what got me along, and places like this are great for when you don't understand something or need a quick answer to a question that is holding you back.

tigervamp

In reply to Re: Who mentored you and how? by tigervamp
in thread Who mentored you and how? by jptxs

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