21–30 of 102 posts
I read a study a while ago that addressed this exact problem - a CS professor gave an intro class a test on CS. The students who had a consistent view of how a computer works (no matter if it was wrong or not) turned into programmers. Everyone else failed. There was essentially no movement between the groups.
Interesting. Link to the study please?
Do you enjoy programming? If so, you will be good at programming. If not, you most likely won't.
Exactly, this is THE question! Even if you were somehow very good at programming but you hatted it, would you choose it as a job? I'd drop it immediately, don't waste your precious time on it. This leaves one other option: If you loved it more than any other job but you sucked at it, what would you do? I'd say: Do yourself a favor and find a job where you do what you love. If you prove my advice to be bad, you'd be t…
Not everyone has that choice, as making a living and doing what you love are sometimes mutually exclusive. Casey Neistat washed dishes before he got into making viral videos. Einstein worked as a patent clerk. Dreamtheater's Mike Mangini worked in IT to pay the bills before finding a way to make a living doing what he loved.
TL;DR: find a way to pay the bills to make time to do what really matters to you
I read a study a while ago that addressed this exact problem - a CS professor gave an intro class a test on CS. The students who had a consistent view of how a computer works (no matter if it was wrong or not) turned into programmers. Everyone else failed. There was essentially no movement between the groups.
My problem with this idea is that if you have no idea if the thing on the left (when assigning) takes on the value of the thing on the right, or vice versa, it seems reasonable to answer different questions with different assumptions to cut your losses.
My advice would be: don't compare yourself to external measures or compare your skill with other people. Focus on and enjoy the process of learning (because there's always more to learn).
It's a bit like zen... "If I work very hard and diligent how long will it take for me to find Zen." The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years." The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast -- How long then ?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it. How long then ?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that ?" Replied the Master," When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Link to the study please?
I just found it: http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf
People used to say women were less likely to have a "natural ability" at CS, despite the huge amounts of seminal CS work that women did in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
That changed when the Apple II came out, and it was marketed at boys. Boys practiced CS before college and basically drowned out the true newbies in their 101 classes.
After schools realized this, they offered pre-101 catchup classes, and that has totally eliminated the gap that we saw before.
I've still never seen anything to indicate that aptitude to program (as a job, not as a researcher or theorist) exists.
I think how "good" you are at something is a very subjective thing... That said, have you tried programming competitions and projects like HackerRank, TopCoder, the ACM-ICPC, and Google's Code Jam?
PS: if money is not your main motivation, I'd worry more about finding interesting questions/problems that you enjoy solving rather than questioning your aptitude for it.
If you can grasp pointers, recursion, asynchronous programming/callbacks in less than a week (as a concepts, not apply-able skills) you have it.
Pro tip: In order to understand recursion, you have to either just know it or know someone who understands it.
Loops are pretty easy to understand...
I have this theory where people who do these things are good programmers, since they will check their commit a lot of times until it is perfect to push. But maybe this is more about mastery than having an aptitude for it. :)
Do you check the stove 3,4 times when leaving the house? Are you sometimes anxious, that you didn't properly shut the door after haveng left the house? I have this theory where people who do these things are good programmers, since they will check their commit a lot of times until it is perfect to push. But maybe this is more about mastery than having an aptitude for it. :)