What is it like to teach yourself programming?

I am a sophomore (soon to be a junior) student in civil engineering. Let me tell you about my experience in self-taught programming. In fact, there is a course called numerical method in the course, but it basically only teaches linear regression, curve fitting, solving second-order partial differential equations, and several algorithms for simulation experiments. Real computer principles, data structures and algorithms, operating system principles, and compilation principles are not taught at all. (Who told us that we are not majoring in computing? The teacher just fooled us and it was over.) End of nonsense, it was very boring when I first started learning programming, because what I learned at the beginning could not bring you any help at all, so Very uninterested in learning. Basically, I learned nothing after three days of fishing and two days of netting. What I really started to get passionate about is doing a traffic engineering peoject this year, and one of them involves the evaluation of LOS (driving comfort, I probably read it by myself. The original text is level of service). The calculation process is very complicated, but (it’s all a set of rules) formulas and look-up tables) and the information is limited. One road section takes at least 20 minutes, and there are many road sections to calculate. Then I tried to use python (the school taught me to use VB and fortune. After using python, I realized that life is short, so I used python.) to write a calculator. What others took a week to complete, I finished in an afternoon (basically I was writing code, and it took less than 2 minutes to run), and it felt so good.

Personally, I feel that self-taught programming is a bit like playing a game. It felt fresh when I started playing, and then it was endless levels of monsters to fight, but the sense of accomplishment brought by defeating the boss (programming is to solve a specific problem) is beyond description in words.