This Simple Question Made Me Hire a Couple of Junior Programmers

You’ll be surprised by their answers.

Photo by Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash

I don’t believe in the saying when you start writing your first code; you are a programmer. I don’t buy it. To me, it means that anyone who can write a single piece of code is considered a programmer, even if he doesn’t want to pursue it as a career or a hobby.

So, when I asked a Junior programmer in an interview, I thought I’d hear the most common answer, but surprisingly, I did not. So, instead, I listened to the following responses from people I thought would not answer differently.

My question was: When can we say that we are programmers?

1. When you abstract from the tools. That is, you think about what is essential, solving problems through computational tools, regardless of whether you use X, Y, or Z technology.
2. When you think of other developers, you create code for humans rather than for a machine. Therefore, documenting and writing readable code is a must.
3. When you avoid arguing about nonsense. “This tool is better than this other” are things that someone who knows to program left in the past because he knows that each can work to solve a different problem.
4. You share what you know and participate in communities. For…