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I don't want to be a Real Programmer

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Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#11

Post by JimmyM »

ses wrote: post #5

Its interesting to hear from someone who's more of a hobbyist programmer. You don't meet so many, mainly I think because once you become half-decent at programming you have access to a range of well paid jobs. Of course as you say, those jobs come with certain conditions that aren't for everybody. I've often thought of quitting professional programming and it to become a hobby instead. I think sometimes great things…

I'm a hobbyist programmer, but I'm able to use my programming in my work - even though it's not strictly related.

Programming skills can be a nice extra to a creative or administrative skillset, especially in smaller & boutique companies.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#12

Post by collyw »

walshemj wrote: post #7
Spearchucker wrote: post #2

Time. Work. Those two things are the only things that can deliver on your aspirations. By your definition I'm a real programmer, and yet after well over 20 years programming I'm still humbled by what I don't know. There's so much I could write here about where to focus (focus on a real problem, forget about agile or lean, focus on the joy of the moment, worry less about whether you chose the right stack), but I've go…

There do seem to be a lot of rather "precious" induhviduals coming into the industry these days who seem to easily get obsessed with trivial stuff whilst missing the bigger picture.

coming to the industry? I am working with a bioinformatics team leader who seems to be obsessed with his hipster stack Mongo, Node , Angular, hang on... nope, changed to Tokyo Cabinet, Nope, its Elastic Search this week.

Its basically a relational problem we are trying to solve, but because it is moderately big data (will be a few terabytes in the end), we NEED to use NoSQL.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#13

Post by collyw »

ses wrote: post #5

Its interesting to hear from someone who's more of a hobbyist programmer. You don't meet so many, mainly I think because once you become half-decent at programming you have access to a range of well paid jobs. Of course as you say, those jobs come with certain conditions that aren't for everybody. I've often thought of quitting professional programming and it to become a hobby instead. I think sometimes great things…

I have worked as a maintenance programmer for a large bank. Fucking boring. Crap stack (VB6). Stressful. No care about code quality, just have it working by Friday. Better pay options, and career potential than where I currently am - programming the database and web interface for a sequencing centre. I choose the stack, I get to design it. I see that when I make good design decisions it often pays off.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#15

Post by RyanZAG »

The real issue is a guy who has been programming for 3 years is trying to compare himself to people who have programmed for 30. Practice makes perfect - if you've only been coding for 3 years, I can almost guarantee that you don't understand a big chunk of the code you use. Once you've been coding for awhile though, you really can get to a stage where you understand everything from the bottom up. At that point, creating new frameworks, languages and algorithms becomes an obvious task.

I've noticed the best programmers are the ones who have actually coded their own compiler, frameworks, etc even if they were only toy implementations. The understanding that comes from building a 3D engine or high performance message bus is usually impossible to obtain in any other way.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#16

Post by adamors »

Nonsense like this

> For sure, they are plenty of Real Programmers out there, who easily agree to the 80+ hours/week workload.

has to stop.

I think the opposite is true: if someone is working 80 hour weeks they either overcompensate for their lack of skill or are being willfully exploited.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#17

Post by Dale1 »

nightski wrote: post #9

It seems the OP is trying to compare himself with the internet. We may hear about great achievements every day, but often those achievements while only taking minutes to read about took years or even decades of work and labor and were hardly achieved by one person alone. A Real Programmer is simply one who keeps on learning and doing. It is important to look back occasionally on what you have achieved, instead of wha…

Tech is such a rabbit hole anyway no one person can learn everything and the internet can be a curse throwing constant suggestions of the stuff you 'need' to learn!

Some times in work i feel inferior to my buddies until someone asks a question about something close to my heart.

A detailed explanation later which no one within 100 miles could give and it hits you, we're all excellent at something no matter how bad your impostor syndrome gets!

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#18

Post by chriswarbo »

It can be quite humbling to realise how large a particular field is, but it in no way makes one an 'imposter'.

Pro tip: Those 'Real Programmers' who's JS experiments make your CSS look quaint aren't the world's best programmers. They're 'yet another frontend guy' to, for example, those who write Java servers. Guess what, those writing the Java servers are 'just end-users' as far as the JVM hackers are concerned. Likewise, the JVM hackers are 'just end-users' for the OS developers. The OS developers are 'just end-users' for the hardware guys. The hardware guys are 'just making an interchangable commodity' as far as the sysadmins are concerned, as they virtualise everything away. And, of course, the frontend devs laugh at the sysadmins for not being programmers.

You might think of some Node.js guy as a demi-god, but I've never heard of him since I don't particularly care about Node.js. Likewise there were a lot of tributes being paid recently to a Ruby developer who passed away. It's touching to see how many people he'd positively impacted, but again, I've never heard of him because I don't particularly care about Ruby.

Am I an 'imposter' since I don't care about these things? Not at all. I have a high-level knowledge of what they are, and I even played around with Node.js a bit (unfortunately it was just after 0.4 had broken compatibility with most libraries in NPM!), but I can't go too far down those rabbit holes because they're not the stacks I use. Likewise, I don't expect those who are deeply into Node.js and Ruby to care about, for example, the recent death of John Reynolds, or Robert Harper's kidney transplant.

Just stick with the rabbit hole you've chosen, as long as you're enjoying it; let the work of others guide you down, and if you reach the bottom you'll suddenly find yourself to be a 'Real Programmer' who can help with the digging. Alterntively, if you disagree with or don't understand some of the decisions/conventions on the way then you should absolutely start digging in your own direction, even if it doesn't go anywhere.

PS: Knowing APIs inside-out does not make one a 'Real Programmer'. My day job is PHP, but I still tend to Google the most basic built-in functions (which, admittedly, is an artefact of PHP's poor API). You should instead strive to understand your problem inside-out, from multiple perspectives, then you can pick and choose any API/stack you like and let the docs guide you through the tedious act of plumbing it all together. Or write your own :)

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#19

Post by gearoidoc »

adamors wrote: post #16

Nonsense like this > For sure, they are plenty of Real Programmers out there, who easily agree to the 80+ hours/week workload. has to stop. I think the opposite is true: if someone is working 80 hour weeks they either overcompensate for their lack of skill or are being willfully exploited.

Agreed. If there's one danger to our industry, its notions like this.

(Most) humans aren't supposed to work 80+ a week. I say most because there are always those superhumans you come across that just seem to be able to do it; but most can't.

I always try to look at statements like this through the eyes of a would-be programmer. If I was about to start down the programming route and was told I could never achieve my aims without accepting an 80 hour work week then I'd run a mile.

Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer

#20

Post by dlange »

loladesoto wrote: post #3

great essay. ime, the best programmers are equal part artist and hacker. but, the synthesis would be impossible to describe or even recognize by most non-programmers. and: conversations about their abandoned or unrealized projects are sometimes more interesting than their completed ones.

they are also engineers and computer scientists. Even in these fields creativity allows one to look at problems from different angles, and through experience, recognize or innovate solutions. This may not always be a vocational skill picked up by anyone over a few years
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