Programming, Do I Have What it Takes?

kensai — Mon, 02/18/2008 - 15:48

Here is my story; I was raised having a computer in my house since my early years, when I was around 8-10 years old. It didn't took me long after that to find out that computers were of great interest to me, gaining knowledge about them and learning to fix them were my passions. But programming, it was never on my priorities list, not even when I was trying to learn the ways of a computer and its applications. In the past I always had the impression that programming was something tedious, and not something that I would enjoy, or even need on my life or career. But, now that I'm finishing my Bachelors Degree on Networks and Telecommunications, I feel the need to learn programming, in fact, I now look back and say, what have I done with my life all this years? Why haven't I take the time to learn programming?

Well, along the way I have started reading books about programming, but unfortunately I always get bored after a few days. It feels like I don't have the right motivation, sometimes I go as far as to think that I don't have what it takes to become a programmer. All this leads me to ask myself, Am I ever going to learn programming? Do I have what it takes to become a programmer, the motivation? How can I get going and keep going, to actually start writing useful programs other than the 'Hello World!' that almost all of us get to write as explained in the beginning of the book?

Now, my questions for you, the readers, is: What is your motivation? Is there any recommendations you can give to help me become a programmer? Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

Programming

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Program for fun

peets (not verified) — Tue, 02/19/2008 - 10:15

I "learned" to program when I was a teenager because I wanted to write games.

Then I learned to program because I worked in a software company.

Now I like to learn new languages because it's very fun to explore the mindset that comes along with a language.

I write programs because it's fun and because it can make my life easier. Right now I'm finishing up a little program that reads the RSS feed of a few webcomics I like, extracts relevant info (title, date, commentary, etc.) and adds it to the comic image which gets saved locally on disk. It's not very useful, but it saves me from going to the websites, and mostly it's fun to write.

When I was considering learning to program, I too thought it was a tedious and boring task, but worthwhile because of the applications. Now that I've been programming for a bit, I realize it's quite the contrary: programming is the opposite of tediousness. It's about finding a way of abstracting tasks so that they don't need to be repeated. It can be quite artistic.

Also, programming will give you power over your computer. There should not be popup balloons telling you what to do. As a programmer, you tell your computer exactly what you want it to do. I don't believe in power over other living beings, but power over a CPU can be quite a good feeling :o)

Start simple. Maybe a good introduction to programming is beginning to use the command line shell for your everyday tasks. When you understand its power, you'll only want more. And there is always more! Hooray for Turing completeness!

To be a hacker

Kinch Zhang (not verified) — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 03:38

I learn programming because I want to be a hacker,as great as possible.And I'd say programming brings me much fun .

Yes. Hacking is very good

Borbus (not verified) — Sun, 03/02/2008 - 16:05

Yes. Hacking is very good fun.

Motivation

Henrique (not verified) — Thu, 02/21/2008 - 23:32

I would recomend you trying to write a small app to automate some tasks you find boring - or taking some app, trying to understand the code and making modifications on it.

It's a great exercise, the algorithms are very simple to think of because you know them beforehand - you do all the steps everytime, so you just need to translate what you do mannualy into a computer language. On the way, you will stumble on things like "how I do I/O with files", "how do I organize data", "how do I search and match text (regular expressions)", and so on... In the process, you will learn a programing language itself, and will also absorb concepts as you start researching for solutions.

You can try some scripting language like Perl, Python, Ruby - well, even Shell Script can cut it.

I hope my advice gives you motivation for starting!

Why do you want to learn

JMG (not verified) — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 05:15

Why do you want to learn programming ? Just for the sake of it, or because you will be able to create applications you will enjoy create and use ?

Learning to code 'hello world' is boring, useless and brainless. Forget it. You never learn anything that way. I just remember my days back in college, where I was to learn C by programming useless tasks. It was deadly boring, and I didn't learned that much. We only enjoyed ourselves after class, programming things we were interested in.

Pick up a nice language (eg: Ruby), get a good book about it [ http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/ http://qa.poignantguide.net/ ], and check out what you could do with it. Focus on things you like or will find useful. Writing something you will use (even for just a few minutes) is entertaining, and maybe you'll start to (really) like programming.

There's a lot that can go wrong

Leslie (not verified) — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 05:46

It's a real jungle you're about to enter, so I feel very inclined to give you some advice.

You asked for one's motivation. A lot of people are motivated by money, and those mostly end up doing what they wanted: churning out lots and lots of mediocre code for a monthly salary. My personal motivation is using the computer like I would use a musical instrument: as a means to give my ideas and creative urges form, along with the kick of writing beautiful code. Others just like to fiddle around with the innards of the machine all day, moving stuff from one register to another.

If you think that the reasons for your wish to learn programming is akin to mine, I have more advice.
Use a sensible language. Don't use C, C++, Java, PHP or Perl. Try Ruby, Python, Haskell, Scheme or Common Lisp (the latter one being my personal favourite after years of draught). The Icon language is also nice for beginners. Stick to one language at the beginning.

Using the command line and programming small scripts is also a good way to get started, but not for everyone.
In any case, try not to rely on IDEs. Use a good editor that you feel comfortable with. If a language is almost unusable without an IDE (think Java), kick it out of the window.

Start small and experiment. Feel what it's like to expand your capabilities with each new language construct you learn. Feel the goodness of looking at and using your creation. Try to do something with nice graphics to aid you in this, especially if you're an artsy person (the aforementioned Icon gives results here very quickly[1]).

If you don't succeed on your own, send me a message (polzer@gnu.org) and I might be able to help you.

Good luck! :)

Leslie

[1] http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/gb/progs/progs.htm

Thanks for your help so far

kensai — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 11:04

I have in fact enjoyed your comments guys, I have taken a bit of wisdom from everyone of them and a bit of motivation. Well, to inform you I have taken Ruby as my language of choice, so I'm right now reading a book and some tutorials about it. Is difficult, since Ruby isn't as documented as Python, but I feel Ruby is more "artistic" than Python, the code just feels right to me when I look at it.

My Motivation, learning, because I now feel programming is interesting and leads me to express myself, like an artist will do with a painting.

hmm how about doing an

ST.x (not verified) — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 11:53

hmm how about doing an introductory programming course at uni? Learn C. hmm how come it wasn't a recommended course in a degree like yours.

Well, in fact there was one...

kensai — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 20:38

Introduction to Java programming was a course I had to take, but I hated Java. So I didn't learned a thing at that course. But yeah, good suggestion, I will look into taking another introductory to programming course at University. I just took Programming Logic, and it wasn't about coding, but about drawing flowcharts and how a programmer would think when presented with a project to accomplish. That class is the introduction to a C or C++ class, I believe. Well, I think I will look into it for the next semester. In this semester accounting is driving me mad, why I need accounting? To make my life harder? I guess so.

its not for everyone

syamajala (not verified) — Fri, 02/22/2008 - 23:24

I am exactly like you. I have always wanted to get into programming and do something useful. So, I learned lisp thinking that maybe the languages i tried before were the major barriers that prevented me from getting things accomplished. While, it wasn't. Although I really enjoyed learning lisp, I still had trouble staying motivated. I finally realized that its just not for me. I recommend reading http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html I emailed Paul Graham about my problem, and he said that one way to stay motivated is to write stuff that you and your friends need and want to use. I don't know if that will help you. It hasn't really helped me that much. There are many lisp apps that I started writing, which I actually want/need, but have not been motivated enough to finish them.