Anyone else hate not being a programmer?

My programming skills are about as basic as you get, but I figure I should learn enough to at least help me understand when I receive something that is of quality. I feel like you would have to hire an outside consultant to review the work.
 


mpbiz said:
Good luck hiring a team in india to design or develop anything that will change the world. They are great for some quick php, javascript, etc. but you're not going to build the next twitter with a team from India.

If you do pull that off you deserve all the riches in the world... but you won't.
Click to expand...

damn right, indians are fucking shit. all programmers on odesk are shit apart from westerners and eastern europeans/russians.
 
It's stressful when shit has bugs and you're on a deadline and everyone focuses on you. Been going since 7am, just got home (9:50pm) and am waiting on the build I just sent myself from work to finish unzipping so I can keep working on it. Then I have to get up at 6am to setup equipment for company A so I can be at company B by 8am.

Just for example, I have 3 parts of a project developed by different people that have to be integrated together for a physical exhibit in another state in 2 days and a demo tomorrow morning. And even though each piece works fine by itself, weird shit arises for no reason when put together and I'm tasked with making it work by start of workday tomorrow.
 
shindig said:
It's stressful when shit has bugs and you're on a deadline and everyone focuses on you. Been going since 7am, just got home (9:50pm) and am waiting on the build I just sent myself from work to finish unzipping so I can keep working on it. Then I have to get up at 6am to setup equipment for company A so I can be at company B by 8am.

Just for example, I have 3 parts of a project developed by different people that have to be integrated together for a physical exhibit in another state in 2 days and a demo tomorrow morning. And even though each piece works fine by itself, weird shit arises for no reason when put together and I'm tasked with making it work by start of workday tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Good luck man hustle hard. Keep us updated with your threads. I really enjoy those.
 
I've honestly mulled over the idea of being a programmer, but the amount of training I'd need seems likes it's not really worth it, since it doesn't align as much with any of my current or future projects. I would mainly learn programming for the hell of it, to be honest.
 
TheSuperiorPen said:
I've honestly mulled over the idea of being a programmer, but the amount of training I'd need seems likes it's not really worth it, since it doesn't align as much with any of my current or future projects. I would mainly learn programming for the hell of it, to be honest.
Click to expand...

Coding experience builds on itself. Once you learn the basics you open many doors. You don't have to be writing software to benefit from coding experience.

Nowadays, you don't "have" to do low level coding. There are tools for just about every need, you don't "have" to learn OpenGL or DirectX to create 3d games, just like you don't "have" to be proficient in C++ to build web apps.

It's not hard at all to hack together shitty code, and while doing so you learn why it's shitty and you refactor as your experience grows. And at some point your knowledge transfers to whatever language you need for a project.

Also programming isn't something you are "trained" per se. You can sit through all the lectures or classes in the world and won't learn as much as opening a text editor and a book, or example projects from whatever sdk and hacking them up. For the most part when shit doesn't work you get a line number and error message, and have debug statements to track the flow of code.

It's more of learning through "trial and error".

To get good at programming, or arguably any non-trivial challenging skill, you have to spend a lot of time doing it. Hundreds of hours, perhaps even thousands.

There is an innate pleasure associated with learning. Some people experience it more than others. Programming is unique in a sense, in terms of how many opportunities it can present to solve a puzzle and how unpredictable puzzle resolution can be.

I am not a neurologist, nor have I conducted any formal studies, but anecdotally and empirically, I've noticed that many great programmers may have become great because they experienced a pleasure incentive that got them so addicted to the activity, that they spent so much time doing it, that they just inevitably became quite good at it.

Part of how they got so great is that they continually needed ever more complex and challenging puzzles to solve so they could go through the incentive cycle again and again as a person does not get the same (or any) pleasure experience from learning something they already know or solving a puzzle they have already solved.
Click to expand...
I've had the same experience as above. I got addicted to programming when I discovered game development. I go off on tangents every now and then, just making something random out of curiosity, once I figure it out I move on. It's very rewarding and self empowering. More fun than playing games.

Also time spent working for others isn't wasted, you can remake the same thing later for yourself in 1/10th the time it takes to initially design and build a working solution.
 
(O_o) said:
Every successful Internet Marketing IS a programmer or has an excellent programmer biz partner [:

There is nothing nastier than a team of capitalist internet marketing programmers.
Click to expand...

I've heard this before. The most successful, the ones who are banking hard, know how to code.

But why is this?
 
Fiver said:
I've heard this before. The most successful, the ones who are banking hard, know how to code.

But why is this?
Click to expand...

I'm just guessing but when a software engineer costs upwards of $120,000 a year, being one or partnering with one reduces start up cost by a significant amount.
 
Because of those thoughts i'd actually started learning Computer Science at the university, gonna finish this year and get my B.SC in Computer sciences.

I always loved to program mostly internet stuff but even through my high-school i was drawn to it and it was my major.

Doing IM for the last 8 years I knew that my future wasn't in development even though i had work proposals from Intel and such during my degree. but the reason i thought about learning it was the Quality of my ideas.
I knew that by learning real programming and algorithms my level of ideas would be much better then it is now, Also i knew that i may think of deeper SaaS or other products that i just wouldn't have though about without getting the peek at those subjects.

This year i'm actually investing most of my courses into AI and machine learning and i'm waiting for approval on a project that will learn Adwords campaigns and different strategies so it will optimize them on it's own mixing different strategies according to the right situation and performance.
 
If you hate something, change it or accept it.

I hated it, then I committed myself to learning php and now I know php. If you're the type of person that can fully dedicate his attention to a single task you can learn a shit ton in like 2 weeks.

I don't understand the thinking "I wish I did x before"... Yes, it'd be good to learn it back then but the next best time to do it is now. It's not a big deal.
 
acidie said:
I'm just guessing but when a software engineer costs upwards of $120,000 a year, being one or partnering with one reduces start up cost by a significant amount.
Click to expand...

Sure, there's that.

But I was under the impression that coding skills could be beneficial for grey hat/black hat stuff that would give you a leg up on the competition. I know you could build your own cloaker but what else could you do with a good background in PHP or some similar skill that would help you immensely with your IM career?
 
Took me 6 months to go from zero code knowledge to be able to bang out decent php builds for minimally viable products. But I am also a super fast learner.
 
The big problem with this whole debate is that plenty of people outsource shitty programmers and get lucky enough to have a satisfactory product.

Forget about the term programmer and assume that any "developer" will do some amount of programming, but as you get better and better you do more high level design work. Eventually you'll be better off being the guy who manages, then who hires programmers.
 
Bump.

Wanted to bump this real quick and see:

A. How many of you that said you just started learning to program when I first created this thread are still going strong?

and

B. Did anyone start learning to code after reading this thread?

I started a C programming course 8 days ago. That's 8 consecutive days for a total of about 21 hours. Been keeping a journal of "aha" moments I have like when I finally figure out a problem.

I'm thinking about making a journal on here soon too so people can follow along, offer advice etc.

If anyone is interested this is the course I'm taking: https://www.udemy.com/objective-c-for-iphone-developers/?couponCode=udemy_blog&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=udemyads&utm_content=post13254&utm_campaign=content-marketing-blog&xref=blog

And I'm currently stuck on this shit here: http://www.wickedfire.com/design-development-programming/177617-code-not-running-when-trying-display-pointer-values-pointer-addresses-c.html#post2138442

I decided to start with the above course and learn C first after reading this article: https://www.udemy.com/blog/learn-objective-c/

Next up is objective C and then Cocoa touch.

DISCLAIMER: The C course on udemy is good but not great. There have been several times now when I run into problems, thinking it's my fault or my code when really the instructor gives shitty/un detailed directions or subpar code in the labs that are included with the course. I have showed some of this to a couple programmers now and they agree that the instructor either did a rushed job or is just an average instructor.

I plan on keeping up with C and double checking everything I learn through this guy's courses with other programmers on stackoverflow, and on here too so if you decide to take these courses you should probably do the same.
 
No new development knowledge, but I pretty much learned to become an online server / software security expert since this thread was started. Does that count?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom