I disagree with number one. If you like programming and want to make a career out of it is probably the best reason to get into programming. If you want a solution for something there is little reason not to just use one of many currently existing solutions to whatever your problem is. Ultimately if you don't like it at least a bit and have a reason for learning it then you will quit. Having a problem to solve is piss poor motivation unless the problem is of critical importance. For the average person that is usually not going to be the case.
Another thing to tie into #1 is: do you like fixing things? If the answer is yes it's a lot easier to relate the same thought processes to coding. Myself, I enjoy working on cars more than coding but software pays substantially better. Once I realized the thought processes are similar it made coding much more palatable to me.
I agree that if you are wanting to study programming, you really should have an interest in making a career out of it. At the same time though, it is much easier to get into programming if you have something in particular that you want to produce with your code. The money is not necessarily everything, and only trying to study on that premise may lead to a lot of frustration.
I disagree that having a problem to solve is poor motivation. I couldn't imagine learning to program without some sort of objective. I always absorb the most when I need to learn something into order to accomplish something else; not learning for the sake of learning. You should at least be applying what you're learning in some way.
Well, I think that there's a difference between wanting to make a career out of something and wanting to make a lot of money doing something. I think that the article is talking about someone who wants to learn programming just because they heard they could make a lot of money doing it as opposed to someone who is doing it to try to find a career path.
One more barrier I feel like really new people often have: the inability to know how to look something up.
When they get an error compiling some code, they have no idea how to Google for an answer to that problem. Or when their syntax is incorrect and the JavaScript terminal just throws a scary error, they have no idea what to look for.
At least they look at the terminal, my friends learn javascript in school, they write it in notepad so no linter and when they call me it's often a syntax error and it's write exactly what wrong in the console but it's too scary to open the developers tools.
For me, it was/is knowing which and how many tools to try to incorporate into my learning. Should I just focus on JS? or should I be rendering all my web pages in reactJS components ? or should I really be learning backbone or angular? Should I switch all my work to coffeescript? should I already be using ES6 ?
Some days I see job postings for angular, sometimes people message me about reactjs jobs. Exposure to this sways my thoughts as well. I often think I should have just learnt angularJS by now, but then it seems almost old and less popular in the business world already.
Same goes for the side-projects I work on, it's hard to stick to one through to completion because I can't be sure when something is actually finished, and different projects seem more important on different days.
TLDR; The programming world is infinite. It seems like feeling lost and unready is a neutral state.
10 comments
7 u/Scko 12 Jun 2015 22:04
I disagree with number one. If you like programming and want to make a career out of it is probably the best reason to get into programming. If you want a solution for something there is little reason not to just use one of many currently existing solutions to whatever your problem is. Ultimately if you don't like it at least a bit and have a reason for learning it then you will quit. Having a problem to solve is piss poor motivation unless the problem is of critical importance. For the average person that is usually not going to be the case.
3 u/yotamN [OP] 12 Jun 2015 22:07
I think he is right you shouldn't do it for the money but for the fun, not for solving tasks.
1 u/refugee610 12 Jun 2015 22:56
Another thing to tie into #1 is: do you like fixing things? If the answer is yes it's a lot easier to relate the same thought processes to coding. Myself, I enjoy working on cars more than coding but software pays substantially better. Once I realized the thought processes are similar it made coding much more palatable to me.
1 u/ndguardian 13 Jun 2015 00:57
I agree that if you are wanting to study programming, you really should have an interest in making a career out of it. At the same time though, it is much easier to get into programming if you have something in particular that you want to produce with your code. The money is not necessarily everything, and only trying to study on that premise may lead to a lot of frustration.
1 u/Uni 13 Jun 2015 01:15
I disagree that having a problem to solve is poor motivation. I couldn't imagine learning to program without some sort of objective. I always absorb the most when I need to learn something into order to accomplish something else; not learning for the sake of learning. You should at least be applying what you're learning in some way.
1 u/dpalacios 13 Jun 2015 01:42
Well, I think that there's a difference between wanting to make a career out of something and wanting to make a lot of money doing something. I think that the article is talking about someone who wants to learn programming just because they heard they could make a lot of money doing it as opposed to someone who is doing it to try to find a career path.
4 u/a_of_s_t 13 Jun 2015 02:22
One more barrier I feel like really new people often have: the inability to know how to look something up.
When they get an error compiling some code, they have no idea how to Google for an answer to that problem. Or when their syntax is incorrect and the JavaScript terminal just throws a scary error, they have no idea what to look for.
0 u/yotamN [OP] 13 Jun 2015 07:57
At least they look at the terminal, my friends learn javascript in school, they write it in notepad so no linter and when they call me it's often a syntax error and it's write exactly what wrong in the console but it's too scary to open the developers tools.
0 u/clubmate 16 Jun 2015 12:54
For me, it was/is knowing which and how many tools to try to incorporate into my learning. Should I just focus on JS? or should I be rendering all my web pages in reactJS components ? or should I really be learning backbone or angular? Should I switch all my work to coffeescript? should I already be using ES6 ?
Some days I see job postings for angular, sometimes people message me about reactjs jobs. Exposure to this sways my thoughts as well. I often think I should have just learnt angularJS by now, but then it seems almost old and less popular in the business world already.
Same goes for the side-projects I work on, it's hard to stick to one through to completion because I can't be sure when something is actually finished, and different projects seem more important on different days.
TLDR; The programming world is infinite. It seems like feeling lost and unready is a neutral state.