The Future of the Future Programmer
Everything starts with the decision to become a programmer. Or does it end there? Does the decision to become a programmer equivalently predict a person’s future and does it also end it all there — the freedom of choice, the alternative path of development?
Of course not. The decision to become a programmer is just one of the many in the series of numerous decisions in a person’s life. But it’s more interesting as to why the person comes to that choice. Often people just know other developers and that factors in heavily when they chose the career path of a programmer.
People want to become programmers because:
Programmers make a lot of money
Programming is very demanded in the job market
Programmers usually have a few cars and good houses
Programmers can easily find a job abroad
The environment in the tech workplace is different — better
IT companies give their employees and their families medical insurance
IT companies take their employees on trips every few months
Programmers at least once a year go rest at the beach
Etc.
Are these the right motivations to be guided by when choosing a profession? What about the essence of the work and the thoughts on the working processes? Maybe this job is not good for your health. Maybe programmers become unemployed after a short period of time. Maybe no one likes programmers, especially their non-programmer colleagues.
But that’s not all. What about following the call of the heart, the intent of your soul? Does the person have to neglect their preferences from school years (art, poetry, blacksmithing, etc.) and take the compulsory career path of the programmer because of the benefits mentioned above?
Now let’s look at the other side of the problem. If I were the CEO of an IT company, would I want to hire programmers whose main motives for work is the list mentioned above… If you were in this position, would you want someone like that working for you?
What about loving your profession? Doesn’t the person have to do what they love? Who needs a “specialist” that complains about work all the time, talks about their back pain constantly and avoids work at all costs?
Don’t forget that being a programmer means growing constantly, sometimes unwillingly. The programmer that stays in one place for six months — loses their value. So if the person doesn’t love their job, will they want to spend their valuable time on professional growth? The person who doesn’t see the beauty of programming, can’t practice it with love. The person who has only seen how complicated, convoluted and how restrictive the program they work with written on Javascript is, can’t love programming.
To love programming, you have to see it’s beautiful side. One has to see the sophistication of the complicated architectural solutions, the willingness of the program to be distributed and work parallelly and at the same time work productively.
And where does the future programmer have to see all this? Who has to be the guide that will bring the future professional into that new and unknown environment. These are the crucial questions. Many programmers, motivated by the aspects mentioned above decide to study something somewhere and become a programmer fast. As a matter of fact, this approach works quite effectively. As a result, we have a programmer, who is deprived of the possibility to get serious education has a very narrow specialization, which will hinder their future professional growth.
So, become a programmer not because of looking at the others’ success, but because your heart drove you to it. Programming is worth practicing not because of money or other benefits, but because it’s a job to love. And when becoming a programmer, it’s worth getting a serious education, talk to serious specialists to see into its true beauty.
The text was originally featured on Vahram Martirosyan’s Medium in Armenian.
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