[roadtoswe]

Hi Emil, your story is inspiring for someone who wants to become a self-taught software engineer with particular interests in AI/ML (see my previous HN submission).

This article was posted in 2020, would you change anything regarding the ideal curriculum in becoming a self-taught software engineer now? Assume zero prior programming experience (can see my previous HN submission question).

The AI autodidact guideline you gave in 2019, would you change anything now?

Would appreciate any advice or roadmap to follow, your story is inspiring.

[emilwallner]

Thanks! I saw your earlier question related to working with AI at FAANG, from the context of being 30ish, and self-taught. I was around 27 when I started learning software engineering and AI.

I made a free e-book here (https://emilwallner.gumroad.com/l/no-ml-degree), and I believe most of the key points are still valid, however, when I learned software engineering and ML, ML was a rather small field and tools like chatGPT and claude didn’t exist.

Imo, asking about a curriculum is the wrong framing, for me, it was more about how to find resources to focus full-time and being in an environment that increases my motivation.

I started learning software engineering at home taking courses, but I procrastinated too much to be effective, maybe I did around 10 hours of effective learning per week. For me, studying C at 42 (https://www.42network.org/42-schools/), a free peer-to-peer school was crucial, and I recommend something similar. It enabled me to focus 70-90 hours a week, and after 6 months I was good enough to get competitive startup job offers.

During my time, the FastAI course (https://www.fast.ai/) was the best practical AI course. I'd probably spend a week looking for ambitious projects made by recent autodidacts, and ask them which course they think is best now. And spend max 1-2 months taking the course.

As for picking projects and building a portfolio, the advice in my e-book is still valid. An ambitious but realistic timeframe for landing a FAANG job is 3-5 years. Once you have a solid portfolio, I’d recommend joining say a YC-startup or similar with ex-FAANG employees to get up to speed and references. My first gig was at the YC-startup FloydHub with ex-FAANG employees.

If you are self-taught it’s often easier to get on the FAANG radar by making highly domain specific portfolio projects that are core to their business, or making open-source contributions to their projects. The other route is applying for jobs, however, most people without an ivy-level degree don’t pass the screening stage. If you choose this path, plan for at least 6 month to learn the first part of Ian Goodfellow’s book (https://www.deeplearningbook.org/) using say ChatGPT as your tutor, also grasp the key content in Chip Huyen’s books (https://huyenchip.com/), learn cracking the coding interview, and get good at solving leetcode hard problems.

[roadtoswe]

Thanks for the advice and the link to your e-book!