Learn programming is not that important to become developer

Alexis Montoro — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 11:18:10 +0000

Bootstrap hooked on newbies

Yes, the world needs more developer, yes everyone could be one, thanks to nice on/off line school in a short time. 3/6 month could sounds crazy for some senior developer all over the world to learn how to become a programmer.

So on the internet pop a new kind of articles/video, tutorial. Let's call them "bootstrap hooked on newbies" :

4 easy step to XXX
10 points you didn't know about XXX
10 Surprisingly Useful Tools for Every new dev
31 free online courses you should read before interviews
4 Myths About Programmer Motivation

The motivation post to still learning programming, because it's hard you know, is one of my best.

I'm kidding about the catchy tiles but most of the time (not all time) the content is good to read. There's plenty of nice articles about the right tools, the right programming language or the right framework you could read.

After 17 years in front of a computer almost everyday from junior dev to CTO I can tell learning about programming to become a developer isn't the most important part.

CURIOSITY is the key

Welcome newbies to this new world, it's a BIG one, bigger than 10 years ago. The computer science world is huge today, from the essential html/css to the deep understanding of deep learning, going by database/devops/security/GDPR (european laws on data) and more.

If you want to be a developer or already one, you will quickly understand this new world evolving in a crazy fast & furious way. Yesterday you had to best the best javascript developer, today you should know python and tomorrow a devops/AI/go fullstack something.

Of course you will be a dev at your own speed but to enjoying this new life you should see this world as a train. A train that race with the time, are you IN that train or OUT ?

Sometimes it's nice to stay at a station to focus on one tech but staying to long will make you a good PHP 4 developer. During this time your brothers in arms are playing with PHP 7. (if you are a javascript guy replace PHP 4 by jquery and PHP 7.3 by react/angular/vues or ES10)*

Tell me how to survive in this new world ?

(yes I can play with catchy to :p)

This is the easy part, just be curious, that's all.
There's just one ingredient of the magic potion of best developers in the world.

By being curious I obviously doesn't mean about programming, I mean about EVERYTHING.

Today companies try to hire some new kind of developer (cyborg I guess) focusing on soft skills AND hard skills during interviews.
Being curious on everything lead you to adapt faster on new environment. To be a good developer on a food-tech startup as well as front-end bank company or python dev at google. You going to be a dev for the next (10/15 ?) years but the "why do I code today" will change (a lot).

Being curious everyday as a developer help you not to be afraid of new framework, new language, new breaking change, new tech. Doing like 1 hour everyday of continuous intelligence will make you highly employable in front of the guy who stay to long a the station ;)

Being curious make you a reader not an asker.

Before asking on any forum/slack/facebook group or whatever, do your own research by google-ing it, searching on forum and definitely on READING THE FUCKING MANUAL (RTFM).

The nowadays developers did a huge effort on making nice documentation, so please read it.

By reading the documentation of you favorite language/framework, 99% of the time, you will find solutions of your problem. Also makes you understand 1% deeper your language/framework. A remarquable difference with the crook that copy/paste code from stackoverflow.

Worth-it.

Of course there's nice communities to ask whatever you want but it will be more relevant if you did your homework first.

At least being curious make you want to read more books and that is the most important thing to grow your curiosity.

I trying to make this post as shorter as I can so in conclusion, create your own routine on curiosity, open you mind, cultivate yourself. When something is unknown go to it.

Oh, oh, I almost forget that you're still half human, and curiosity seems to works on human too, so when you talk to someone, what will you do ? YEAH, being curious ! Ask him everything !

Do you know CHAOS ?

If you like this post, I'll go deeper in the chaos part, but keep in mind that, everything is exponential and changing really fast. That sounds a bit like a madman but nobody tell you that you have to be aware with change, accept it, embrace it. Everyday at work, client needs, managers, colleagues, users, your position, your framework, change all the time.

Be prepared !

Thank you

Hope everybody understand that it's a simple sharing of my humble opinion and only to make the journey more enjoyable, not to scare anything. I swear it's gonna be fun, really fun, you will find some crazy things around there.

If you ask I could share some website to find new interest/subject and going further on chaos part

Of course feedback is a gift, so please I'm curious of what do you think about my post.