Re: Who mentored you and how?

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

Comment on Re: Who mentored you and how?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Who mentored you and how? by cacharbe (Curate) on May 21, 2001 at 18:46 UTC
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 submit that this is exactly what college suggests that it can do, only less focused on what we want to learn in a given genre, and less interested in how well we do as a student. For me, I need to get out of my office for a while, especially if I am trying to learn something new, like a new language or platform. I don't have the luxury of being able to study, etc. A training class, be it a week long or something longer, allows me to remove myself from a VERY interuption prone environment and immerse my self in a topic that I want to learn. Granted, what you say is true, once I've had that exposure, I usually spend my time 'booking' my way to a solution, and then streamlining and asking around from there. C-.	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re: Re: Who mentored you and how?
by cacharbe (Curate) on May 21, 2001 at 18:46 UTC

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 submit that this is exactly what college suggests that it can do, only less focused on what we want to learn in a given genre, and less interested in how well we do as a student.

For me, I need to get out of my office for a while, especially if I am trying to learn something new, like a new language or platform. I don't have the luxury of being able to study, etc. A training class, be it a week long or something longer, allows me to remove myself from a VERY interuption prone environment and immerse my self in a topic that I want to learn. Granted, what you say is true, once I've had that exposure, I usually spend my time 'booking' my way to a solution, and then streamlining and asking around from there.

C-.

[reply]