October 2021
Beginner
224 pages
5h 23m
English
Content preview from The Self-Taught Computer Scientist
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
17Self-Taught Inspiration: Elon Musk
Today, Elon Musk is best known for founding Tesla, Space X, and PayPal, which revolutionized their industries. But long before he became an entrepreneur and one of the richest men on the planet, Musk was driven by a simpler idea: he wanted to design video games. How did self-taught programmer Musk go from a kid playing games to a billionaire? In this chapter, you will learn about Musk's education and how his interest in gaming led him to learn to program.
Musk's education began across the world from the Los Angeles home where he resides today. Born and raised in South Africa, Musk became interested in computers when he was ten years old. Musk was a driven child who would sometimes spend 10 hours a day reading books. He was also obsessed with video games. Musk explained that his love of video games drove him to learn to program. “I thought I could make my own games. I wanted to see how games work,” Musk explained. “That's what led me to learn how to program computers.”
Musk started with a book on the BASIC programming language, a popular language in the 1960s, which many computers still used in the 1980s. The book offered a six-month program to learn to code, but Musk raced through the entire program in three days. It wasn't long before Musk programmed his first video game. In 1984, when he was just 12 years old, Musk created Blastar. The space-based shooter drew inspiration from Alien Invaders. In Musk's game, players shot down spaceships ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.