The Getting Started Questions

I hear a common set of questions from beginning programmers who feel they are struggling to get started.

- Why is programming so hard?

- How long does it take to be a good programmer?

- Should I consider a different career?

It is difficult to give a general answer to these questions, because the answers depend on the characteristics of the questioner.

I was fortunate to be a beginner when I was 13 years old. My parents saw a Texas Instruments 99/4A computer on sale at a department store and, on a whim, made a purchase. I find it ironic that department stores don’t sell computers anymore, but you can use a computer to buy anything you can find at a department store (as well as the junk bonds issued by those stores).

Despite all the improvements in the hardware, software, languages, and tools, I think it is harder to get started today than it was in the early days of the personal computer. Here are three reasons:

1. Applications today are more ambitious.  ASCII interfaces are now user experiences, and even the simplest modern app is a distributed system that requires cryptography and a threat model.

2. Expectations are higher. Business users and consumers both expect more from software. Software has to be fast, easy, available, and secure. 

3. Information is shallow.There’s plenty of content for beginners, but most of the material doesn’t teach anything with long term value. The 9 minute videos that are fashionable today demonstrate mechanical steps to reach a simplistic goal.

In other words, there is more to programming these days than just laying down code, and the breadth of knowledge you need keeps growing. In addition to networking, security, and design, add in the human elements of communication and team work. This is similar to the point in time when, to be a good physicist, you only needed to grasp algebra and geometry.

My suggestions to new developers are always:

1. Write more code. The more code you write, the more experience you’ll gain, and the more you’ll understand how software works. Write an application that you would use every day, or try to implement your own database or web server. The goal isn’t to build a production quality database. The goal is to gain some insight about how a database could work internally.

2. Read more code. When I started programming I read every bit of code I could find, which wasn’t much at the time. I remember typing in code listing from magazines. These days you can go to GitHub and read the code for database engines, compilers, web frameworks, operating systems, and more.

3. Have patience.  This does take time.

As for the career question, I can’t give a yes or no answer. I will say if code is something you think about when you are not in front of a computer, than I recommend you stick with programming, you’ll go far.