Is the programming life for me? (Part 1)
People ask questions before getting into programming. Questions like: “Why should I become a programmer?”, “What kind of people can be programmers?”, “ What skills do I need?”, “My math skills are terrible. Can it be a barrier?” And so on.
Why do people go into Programming?
There are a couple of reasons people go into programming.
- To begin with, the profession is in high demand. Lots of companies these days actually look for software engineers, mobile developers, security engineers to come work for them.
- Another reason is that most people have software engineering roles where they get to work remotely. You get to work from literally anywhere. Married people or people that have kids get to spend more time with their family when they work remotely. You can go on vacation, enjoying scenes, while coding away. That feels so good to even talk about, not to talk of experiencing it.
- There’s also the economic benefit of getting good pay. One can decide to learn how to code and get a high-paying job.
Before you go into Programming
We will discuss the things that you want to be prepared for if you want to go into the software engineering space. We will not be able to cover everything in this post, but we’ll talk a little bit about a few things that you can evaluate and think about before venturing there.
- Problem-solving
One question you want to ask yourself is “Do I like solving problems?” Are you okay with thinking through and analyzing problems? Are you patient enough to stay on a problem until you find a solution? This is something you want to be ready to do as a software developer. Lots of times, you won’t figure out problems in a short period of time. In fact, some issues take days before they get solved. And as a programmer or an aspiring one, you need to be okay with staying on issues and figuring out solutions to problems. Trust me, there are times where you would wish you were in a completely different profession. Some issues you face will question your decision to become a Software Engineer and not a TV presenter, Surgeon or Artist. You would literally just want to change professions, because of some issues that you would face. In this space, you question a lot of things; you’d question your knowledge about a lot of things and sometimes it gets so frustrating. Generally, the typical workflow of a programmer is solving problems — you’re either fixing something that is broken, maintaining an existing product, or creating and building a new tool while figuring out possible edge cases and handling them. Most of what goes on is finding and fixing problems and there are actually cases where you create problems and then go ahead to fix them. Funny right?
- Adaptability
You want to be sure that you’re flexible — ready for change when it comes. Change is something that happens a lot in the software engineering space. Are you the kind of person that will be okay with throwing out something you’ve done for say three weeks because of a new development? There are two sides to this that I‘d like to touch on:
The first part is more high level. Now imagine this scenario: Your team has been building a tool for four weeks, and just before it gets launched, Mr Kyle, the Product Lead goes like, “Hey guys, so we’re gonna have to stop this and move on to a new initiative.” Mind you, he didn’t say pause he said stop, implying you no longer need all the code you‘ve written. This happens quite often, both in startups and huge establishments. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are situations where a company or organization might still be figuring out stuff, and as such, it will look like things are changing a lot. In some cases, it could appear like a rat race. So it’s up to you to figure out what part of the spectrum your company of interest is and make an informed decision to either be part or look for a better fit. The point is, there will always be some level of change. I’m going to repeat that — there will always be some level of change.
The other angle I would like to talk about is your work as a programmer or developer. In a typical software team, you have your teammates review your code and give you feedback. As much as possible, you want to be receptive to the feedback, regardless of how it comes. And I say this because, in a lot of software teams, people are not always nice in giving you feedback about your code. There are some times where you get great and actionable feedback that would spur you on to do better, while there are other times where you’re not gonna like what comes at you when your code is reviewed (this is actually a topic for another episode). So it’s very important that you want to be very adaptable in situations like this.
That will be all for now. We’ll conclude this topic in the next post.
