There’s a lot of hype out there about the latest and greatest programming fad.Ī lot of progress is being made in the programming world, but in general, there’s not one, silver-bullet technology someone can learn that will immediately cure all their problems.īeginners are often encouraged to start digging into solutions for problems they don’t understand yet. Problem #1: You NEED to Learn HTML9 Responsive BoilerStrap JS (or whatever JS Framework is trending today on HackerNews)
While the image of developers has changed- and I don’t have to feel embarrassed telling people I program computers for a living anymore- beginners that are looking to become software developers face a whole slew of problems that I never had to face. If you don’t believe me, there are a bunch of talks on YouTube where you can watch people brag about how awesome they are because they can code, to an audience that is actually listening and impressed. If you’re reading this, you still may not believe me when I say in certain circles, it’s very cool to say you can code. How the world viewed developers in the 90’s and today: With the prevalence of social media and the epic rise of companies like Instagram and “tech celebrities” like Zuckerberg, it has never been cooler to be a software developer. When I was teaching myself to program in high school, the attitude people had was, “ that’s just because Ken sucks at football,” not that I was some kind of glamorous rock star. When the heck did learning to code become cool? Although the Internet has made our lives collectively easier, the dynamic of learning to program is totally different from when I was starting out.
If you, like me, became a software engineer before the Internet was at scale- back in the good-old-days when AOL was spamming our physical mailboxes with CDs - you may not appreciate how becoming a software developer has dramatically changed.