Mohammad D.

Is Programming right for me?

Mohammad Dohadwala3 min read

Kelly Sikkema

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

IT is booming, there is no doubt about that. Even during the pandemic, it is one of the many industries that not only kept going but thrived. While other businesses were struggling to stay afloat, people working in Software felt secure.

There is a common question that comes to mind when someone is thinking about starting or changing their career. They want to know if programming is right for them. Several indications can help you answer this question. Let us look at a few of your character traits and how you work and approach your tasks.

You like solving problems

You will like coding if you like solving problems. If you are not afraid of puzzles and enjoy combining, guessing, experimenting, and understanding complex tasks then programming is something you will love. In coding, troubleshooting is something you do day and night. Most of the time, programmers are solving problems they encounter when writing, changing, or refactoring code.

We often think a programmer's job is to pat on the keyboard all day long and fill their dark screen with green lines of code. In reality, we spend more time on Google and finding the best way to approach a problem. So if you like taking broken things and fixing them, then you will do just fine in programming.

You are persistent

Another trait that is useful for programming is persistence. It involves the same problem-solving described above. But it's not that the answers always come to you within the first fifteen minutes. Sometimes you sit on the problem for hours (or sometimes even days!). If you are persistent and don't get demotivated by lack of quick results - go and code. If you don't give up easily, you can sit on your butt for hours till you find that pesky bug 🐛, and like drying your eyes out by tirelessly scanning hundreds of lines of code, this will come in handy. Don't worry though, you will forget all that struggle once you finally find the solution. That feeling of seeing your code work after hours of debugging is the best thing in the world.

You are creative

When we have a problem, persistence alone is not enough to get rid of it. The ability to come up with new ideas is also very essential. You need to have the ability of thinking of new ideas and knowing how to present them (to yourself or your team), and then putting them into practice.

If you are not afraid of testing new solutions, you don't abandon things at the very beginning, and hundreds of crazy ideas flow in your head when you start working, try coding. The ability to approach a problem from different angles and testing new approaches is invaluable in programming. If you have the gift of creativity in your soul, don't be afraid to give programming a go.

You like working with people

Last but not least, this is a little less obvious, but if you like working with other people, that will also come in handy as a programmer. Both in a team and with a client. A programmer's job is not just coding, it is also team meetings, presenting ideas, submitting reports, writing emails, contacting the client. You will excel as a programmer if you are already good at communication and collaboration.

So, is every programmer a great problem solver, persistent, creative and an extrovert? No, very rarely. These are only some non-technical traits that can complement your programming career. If you see any one of these in yourself, you will have an easier time learning and practicing programming. If you have a profession that seems very distant to you from programming, look for values in it that you could use while coding. We often don't realize how much we already have to take a step in starting a career in programming.

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