The 1000 hour rule of learning something new

This will be my last update about learning to program.

After several hundred hours, I feel I've finally overcome the gravitational pull of not knowing and am now in orbit. I can build complicated enough things and can self-teach from documentation — I’m self-sufficient and can fend for myself.

There's that 10,000 hour rule of thumb for becoming an expert; I think there's a similar one around 1000 hours for learning something new. Around this time you're no longer struggling with the basics, can do useful things, and aren't at risk of giving up. To mix metaphors and compare it to a spoken language, even though you may not have a big vocabulary yet, you can have a good conversation, get around the place, and read whatever you need.

Most importantly, the risk of giving up and going back to how things were has gone to zero.