Gottcha! But seriously, there is still this misconception that programming is easy and that anyone can do it. Although, I do believe that anyone can become a programmer it certainly is not easy.
Get rich quick
"You're a programmer? Oh boy, you must be rich!"
I hear this far too often, though it is true that programming jobs pay well, this is not always the case and most of the time not for those that are starting their journey or in junior positions. This does, of course, depend on where and as a what you work as but the majority of the time it is, unfortunately, the latter.
I was interviewing graduates for a grad placement in the company I work for. 4/10 of the graduates asked me what my salary is, albeit it is because I am around the same age as them and I don't see anything wrong with this as it can be an incentive to sign up with us but, its the idea behind it that was evident from their follow up questions.
You can get rich from programming, but probably wont. If this is your only incentive to start or continue, I suggest you look at other career choices.
You need a certain mindset
I would argue that this is very much the case, you do need a certain mindset for this. There are several nights and days that I have spent staring at my monitor thinking 'It looks fine.. why are you not working!!?' Only to find a typo, improperly called variable or an unset property. This is frustrating beyond belief and can and will most certainly make you doubt yourself and your skills but you must keep pushing through and not give up. I am guilty of such crimes and have given up on many of my earlier projects because I've just become frustrated and did not enjoy what I was doing anymore.
Programming is problem-solving. Before you even type a single line of code you are solving a problem, your idea or your work has stemmed from an identified problem regardless of what it is.
Times have changed
Many languages are becoming more and more beginner-friendly and this is a good thing! but is it a great thing? The problem with simplifying things is that you lose the ability to do certain things. Take C++ and C#. In my opinion extremely different; C# supports garbage collection and automatically handles memory allocation (to mention a few) while C++ does not do either meaning you need to code the 'low-level' stuff.
It is getting easier and faster to do things, but by speeding down the highway you lose control over a few things... Sometimes important things. Take this as you will.
A few points I'd love to discuss in the comments;
- Is knowing one language enough?
- What would your response be to the title?
Still no gin,
Rus
Latest comments (55)
I read your article. Looks very apt.
Well, I too, have my set of ideologies about programming that I have shared, seems quite similar to yours.
Maybe you can read my article.
Feel free to drop your views as well. :)
ohmyscript.com/2020/07/25/programm...
I can relate so much to the frustration part. Trying to solve those issues make me lose my confidence slowly and get me starting to question myself. But I could never quit because the feeling of solving the issues is so addicting and I always crave for more.
I've been programming for sixteen years and have learnt dozens of languages. I'm a work in progress. The one character trait I have that I think is probably is the hall mark of a competent programmer is perseverance. I have some psychological need in me to keep at problems until I reach a satisfactory outcome. I'm never satisfied with the final result because I can always see room for improvement.
Perseverance = key!
Thanks for sharing!
Programming should not be seen as a exclusive club for geniuses. That's not healthy for the scene, not useful for the startup economy. In that regard, "programming is for everyone" that means that any person that wants to have some approach to programming should be able to do it without hitting a wall.
Since hardware, software and courses are expensive too, making approaching programming accessible and friendly for newcomers is a step forward in equity and a responsibility for all of us. Having the time and resources to program is a privilege for which I am grateful.
Having said this, there's a huge field of what a programmer can do and in what level of professionalism. Anyone can write a novel. That doesn't mean that there's no merit in writing a great novel.
"Programming should not be seen as an exclusive club for geniuses" - Could not agree more, but some people don't see it this way, they see us as going on a few courses and boom, we can write code with our eyes closed which is just ridiculous.
"Anyone can write a novel. That doesn't mean that there's no merit in writing a great novel." - A good novel doesn't make history, a great one does ;)
Thanks for sharing!
To be fair, it’s not the programmers saying this - it’s the shysters selling python boot camps to wannabe coders. Every other junior I meet here in China who wants to learn development will give ‘I want to learn python because it’s easy’ as their primary motivation. It’s so sad - where’s ‘because I want to build cool stuff’.
Moreover, the ‘it’s easy line’ is driving down salaries because business owners who commission projects are starting to hear the ‘it’s easy’ line and won’t pay for their software any more.
This gave me chills. So much marketing for technical tools is targeted at non-technical managers. The sell point is that the software solves problems, when the reality is that they provide tools to solve problems.
For example take subscribing to Cloudflare Enterprise for their Bot Management features. They provide very powerful tools in the form of full logs, granular firewall filtering and advanced metrics. The sales pitch involves a viewing of beautiful dashboards in which they show you the data and analytics you could be seeing.
But in reality, it is 100% up to you to do something with these logs. You have to pull them from their servers (Lambda), store them (S3), parse them (Logstash?), load them into an analytics backend (datadog, elastisearch) and build your own dashboards (kibana / grafana), draw your own actionable conclusions and write your own firewall rules. The power potential is there, but it will require a bit more investment and time and research if you don't already know these things.
And when they’re told they need to pay someone to do this... ‘but it’s easy... I’m not paying that...’
Exactly your first point, and that's the issue.
Tbh, I welcome those kinds of people, makes my life better.
When their stuff breaks and they can fix it, who are they going to call? Us ;)
Thanks for sharing!
Coding is easy, computer science is not. In order to write good code, you need to know both. Additionally, to write the right kind of code you also need to have the end to end perspective on good design, a firm grasp of process and methodology, and ideally the product domain you are working in.
That part is actually hard and the difference between copy pasting some python/javascript/whatever and adapting that and engineering proper solutions.
Part of the problem is that several of these things are not really covered by education programs. Most of this is either self taught or absorbed through having worked as a junior engineer with some seniors. Basically, like many crafts, you learn through apprenticeships. Your first jobs are about learning this.
So, it's not about the number of languages you know, what books you read, or what institution put their logo on your diplomas, etc. but what you have done in terms of building real world systems and what you have learned from that experience. Some people are quicker than others to pick these things up.
Couldn't agree more, I have started recommending apprenticeships to those looking to get into the tech industry, sure you don't get paid as much, but:
You usually have a job guaranteed at the end of it.
You will learn a crap ton more than you will at university.
You're getting paid to learn and will get a qualification at the end of it.
Thanks for sharing!
• Is knowing one language enough?
- Nope
• What would your response be to the title?
- "Programming is easy… and 99 other jokes you can tell yourself" lmao. I do agree that mindset plays an important role here.
Lmao! That's a good one.
You need to have the mindset to learn new things daily on regular basis.
Also
C++ has RAII.
Becoming a programmer is at least a 3 years journey, working in a company of course. There are very bright students who create individual projects but at the end of the day it is and will always be the business needs first. From my practice, I know clever guys who outsmart me but couldn't bare working as a team or in a company for someone, doing tasks and stuff so they decide to study and go for a master or above and delay the actual work. Of course some chase a job in R and D but still, being a programmer and being a programmer for a living are two different things.
We wrote an article called "Programming is hard because you decided it was easy." It seems like the idea that everything so be 'quick' or 'easy' - isn't just programming. Our phones and all of the micro interactions and dopamine are messing up the brains! RE: "Just a dude with mediocre code skills" (those are the people the make the world go round ;)
Also, had a look through the blog, interesting stuff. The sum-up video was really good too!
Hahaha! This might be my favourite comment ;)
Thanks for sharing.