Just How Good Are You?
What do doctors, lawyers, programmers and strippers have in common? The need for continuing education (ok, strippers probably don’t but, you know, strippers. Think about it).
I realized early on that I was never, ever, EVER, going to be done learning about programming. Until I retire, and probably not even then, I’m going to spend a good portion of my life with my nose in a book, reading blogs, and/or diving into subjects WAY above my head.
stripper
I don’t think this is as bad as it might sound though. I really love this shit. You have to if you want to be taken seriously. I accept that I’m not a Wozniak or Cutler; I have to actually work to understand this profession.
Oddly, I’m in the minority here. In my, limited, exposure to other programmers I can say definitively that the majority just plain suck; mostly because they refuse to grow and learn.
I’ve heard all the arguments before, “My weekends are mine”, “I work hard enough; I don’t have the energy”, and the best ever, “My employer should pay for this like Google does. Whah!!”. (I know Google doesn’t, in fact, do this but people still say it.) All just pure crap excuses for maintaining a level of competence just high enough to not get fired.
Bottom line: working 8 hours a day is just not enough to matter. If you think you’re a programmer and you don’t spend time improving your skills you’ll quickly, really quickly, become obsolete. It just doesn’t matter if .Net is going to be around forever and your employer won’t ever upgrade from 1.1; you’re a hack (and not in a good way).
The crappy developers rarely, if ever, read blogs, books or articles on anything related to development. And when they do, it’s usually just to reinforce a preconceived notion they already had. You’ve seen it; “See! Look, I’ve been saying all along Java sucks and here’s an article on Reddit.”
On the other hand, good developers spend time thinking about their projects. They read books about programming concepts like Code Complete and The Mythical Man Month. They’re interested in the past; learning about how Windows NT was built or how AOL was founded is a good read to them. When asked for weekend plans they actually weigh programming against it.
I’m a little sick of the discrepancy here; there are just way, way, too many crappy programmers out there. Just lazy, untalented, bastards.
If you’re not living programming to your bones chances are you’re just not going to succeed. Sure, you can make a living but you’ll never be anything more than what you are right now. If the idea of never excelling doesn’t scare you do us all a favor and just stop writing code. Just stop right now.
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This is one thing that worries me about any future career I may have in programming (I’m at uni at the moment). What if I can’t keep up? Still, you’re right about the fact that some programmers really obviously just don’t care, I see it with people at uni.
Good article, it’s a point a lot of people don’t realise about programming, and one of the first they drilled into our heads at uni.
Eldris,
The simple fact that you’re worried about keeping up ensures you’ll be able to. It’s like the idea that crazy people don’t question their sanity; bad programmers don’t even bother thinking about this stuff.
They’ll never read this post because it’s just not in their nature. They don’t know any better and the thought that, “dear god, I need to improve myself constantly” has never even occurred to them.
You’ll be an excellent programmer by just keeping up with what you’re doing.
Yet another elitist idiot, I see. ; )
When will you guys learn that programming is nothing but an everyday 9 to 5 job nowadays? That’s just how it is for some people. Being in this field doesn’t automatically make you a genious anymore. This isn’t 1965. ; )
When will we learn that programming is nothing but an everyday 9 to 5 job nowadays?
Ummm… when it becomes one? (rimshot)
Seriously though man, what kind of product are you putting out if you aren’t constantly learning? How big of a nightmare are you forcing those after you to maintain?
It’s funny that you say “That’s how it is for some people”. Those “people” are the ones making it tougher for the real professionals by creating crap the professionals have to fix.