Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
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I got a question about the best way to learn audio programming which might seem like a
little bit of a strange question since I don't really know much about audio programming per
se, but I think that, really, this could represent any kind of technology that you're trying
to learn, any kind of thing that you're trying to learn.
I'll go ahead and answer this question and this is from Charlie.
Charlie says, "Hi, John.
I'm currently teaching myself web development with a burning passion to break into the industry.
My goal at this point is to dedicate the next few years of my life to this end.
However, producing Digital Audio tools is where I see myself in 10 years.
Should I start learning software development now alongside web development or concentrate
on web dev first?
I have a passion for both, but I am not so much interested in software development for
business/enterprise."
He's interested in being a web developer and then he's got some initial info here that
I'll read.
He says, "Amazing channel.
Your attitude is infectious.
That's awesome.
I like to give people infections.
I have learned music production/DSP for the last eight years.
I learned C# for two years when I was a teen and C++ or most viable technologies for DSP
in terms of potential performance, and job market.
I live in Bristol, England with a thriving technology music industry."
I got to tell you—I think it was Chris, right?
Chris or Charlie, sorry Chris.
Sorry Charlie.
What are you doing, man?
You're doing the wrong thing here.
You want to learn audio programming.
You see yourself in 10 years going down the road of becoming essentially a software developer
who does DSP audio programming, stuff I don’t know much about.
I know how to edit audio in Audacity.
You're getting into web development and you're going down C# when you said that all the tools
for DSP, for the audio stuff that you want is C and C++.
Here's what you need to do: Start learning the tools for the audio—learn all the audio
software.
I'm sure you already know all the audio software.
Start building plugins for Audacity.
Start working on actual tools.
Build your own audio program.
Start learning that technology.
There's definitely going to be jobs there.
There might not be as much, but try to find the overlap as much as possible, so that you
can be doing the relevant stuff and on your side projects be creating audio filters or
plugins for Audacity or for, I don’t know, what?
Adobe Premiere or Adobe Audition.
That's the audio for Adobe.
Start creating that stuff.
Start programming that stuff.
Forget the web development if this is where you want to go.
Now, if you want to go web development, that's totally fine, but if in 10 years you see yourself
being an audio programmer, that's what you need to work on.
That's what you need to start doing.
It's like saying, if you said to me, "John, hey, I really want to be a professional football
player.
In 10 years, I want to be a professional football player.
That's why right now I am going to just like build up my endurance by swimming."
I'll be like, "What?
What are you talking about?"
You want to be this thing but you're going to like—it's fine, yeah.
I get it like I get what you're saying like if you build up your programming skills, you'll
be able to program.
If you want to specifically become a football, yes.
If you swim a lot, you could build up your physical endurance and become really strong
and build up your general constitution, but it's not going to be as applicable.
You got to practice the thing that you want to do.
I just read a really good book on this.
I'll recommend this book again, which is Peak.
A really good book.
I love that book because he also hates Malcolm Gladwell, which I don’t like Malcolm Gladwell.
I'm sorry, Malcolm, but I don't like his books and I don’t like his attitude in life.
In Peak, he basically says that the 10,000-hour rule is bullshit, but what he does talk about
a lot is deliver practice and how important it is.
What he basically says is like there's a study in there where they have these chess guys.
These chess guys that are like grandmasters, they test them with memorizing or recalling
configurations of boards.
Some of these guys can play blindfolded chess for like 24 matches at the same time.
That means that someone just tells them where the pieces are and they tell them where to
move.
They actually see the boards.
What they did was they tested these guys, these grandmaster chess champions, against
your average Joe on memorizing positions on the board, where the pieces are on the board
in two ways.
One, in traditional chess setups that would actually happen in the game and the second
way in setups that would never happen in a real chess game.
Just random pieces and random positions in the board.
You could probably guess that the grandmasters that they did really well.
I mean they don’t even need to see the board.
They could play blindfolded with positions that would actually happen in a chess game,
but guess how well they did against random Joe at memorizing positions of random pieces
placed on the board?
Not better at all.
The same.
In fact, in some case, worse, basically the same.
Why am I saying that?
Because it really demonstrates to the point that what you practice is really important
that you can't just develop your "memory."
You can develop your memory at a game like chess.
You can develop your memory to memorize numbers or decks of playing cards, or whatever it
is.
The same thing here, I would say in your case here, yes, becoming a good programmer is going
to give you some base level of programming skills and knowledge, but if you really want
to go into this audio programming, dedicate everything that you're doing.
Do deliberate practice, specifically train, specifically make your program and your learning
path to being a digital audio engineer programmer, like do that stuff.
Write the code already.
Don't say I'm going to go swimming and then eventually I'll become a football player when
I have a lot of endurance.
No, no, no.
Start doing football drills right now.
Start doing the combine, right?
Start doing all the stuff that you need to do in order to become a better football player
if that's what you ultimately want to be because that practice will not carry over from the
swimming to football.
That's kind of what was demonstrated with chess and there's a lot of studies that back
that up as well.
Focus on the thing that you actually want to learn.
Forget the web development unless that's what you're going to go into.
Don't do that temporarily.
If you think, "Oh, I'm just got to make a bunch of money in web development," no, no.
I would really recommend against that.
I would recommend that you go into what you actually want to do and you're going to be
better off, especially if you've got a 10-year time frame.
All right.
I hope that helps you, Charlie, or anyone listening.
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If you want to email me a question so I can tell you that you don't know what the hell
you're doing, you need to do something else, email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com and
I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.