this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
114 points (97.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43781 readers
999 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Programming started as a hobby for me as a teenager. I always "liked computers" so thought I'd give it a try. I never intended to make a career out of it because it seemed so hard at first, but over a decade later, I'm decently accomplished in my field and get paid bank for it.
As a hobby, it's fantastic. You can add in missing features to open source software you use (including the one I'm posting this to right now!). You can make your own little apps to fill niches you haven't found an existing program for. You can automate boring stuff from other work. You can make mods for certain types of video games. Or if you're really ambitious, you can even make a video game (but I gotta tell you, video games are hard and need much more than just programming -- I do not recommend making video games as a goal unless you've thought out just what that involves).
If you make a career out of it later, cool. But even if you don't, it's a fun and rewarding hobby that costs almost nothing. As long as you have a computer (preferably not a mobile phone, though it's technically possible to use a phone), you can program. Hardware doesn't generally matter. Any cheap laptop works. All the tools you need have free and often open source ones you can use. You only need to pay for web hosting if you make a web tool and want to share it with others.
Meanwhile my dumbass has been trying to be even remotely functional with programming. A degree and a software dev job later I still don't think I really get it.
That happens to us all. My first year I felt useless. Once I started running projects and getting the opportunity to actually design our framework, I got a lot more confidence. The first project I ran I was not prepared for. But I improved in confidence so much while I did it.
Imposter syndrome affects us a lot. But even if you’re a shit dev, remember this: we literally do magic. Think about it for a moment. We write words in an esoteric script to convince electricity to create things that didn’t previously exist. Even the worst wizard is still a wizard. And the best part is that they can improve! There’s so many resources out there to improve your skills. It might not be for everyone, but I love my job.
I actually got my first real project a few weeks ago after over a year here and just completely screwed the pooch on it. I had like 2 methods written but no functionality after a week with it. I don't know if I was asking the wrong questions or what but the product owner which was one of our senior devs really had me struggling.
I'm finishing up on a course this week that covers a few things that my school didn't cover and then I am gonna start working on my own project to hopefully get my bearings straight. I don't really have one in mind but I'm considering a messenger app or ye ole student registry type app that a lot of people start with.
Hey, we all start somewhere. I remember the first time I broke prod I was freaking out. I skipped lunch and a company event with my boss while we figured out what happened, and we had a few major customers who couldn’t use our software all morning.
Screwing up is what makes us devs in my opinion. When the shit hits the fan and the fire flares, that’s when we find out our real mettle. I like to joke that I moonlight as a fire fighter lol.
Keep at it and I promise you’ll get your confidence when you have that major breakthrough and fix a complicated problem with a simple solution.
If you’re gonna work on a personal project I suggest doing something you want that isn’t easily accessible. Something everything out there is subscription based or something. Do something fun that you will actually use. That helps you stay motivated.
Thankfully what I mostly do right now isn't gonna break anything major but I have had a few after 5 calls from product owners because certain things in our software that is custom configured for each client might have been done wrong(it's kind of common enough that it isn't that big of a deal) and it's mostly a quick fix and from lack of communication. Where I struggle with is that I am first to call for support issues and I still don't quite know the software or the industry like the back of my hand.
The small project I am rolling around in my head is probably already made but I want to be able to create a chat app that has full E2E encryption with chat history/room deletion based on if the chat hasn't been active for a few hours or whatever. Sort of encrypted chat but with the killswitch of a VPN. But I don't know if it already existing matters as much as the experience I would get from just doing it.
Also thanks for the encouragement. Lately especially I have been beating myself up because I should really be further along than where I am.