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Comment by choward93 | Hacker News Reader

I know this is amateur question, but I am taking my intro to programming class this quarter, and we are learning with Python(and pseudo-code, if that counts) am I doomed to being a crappy programmer? I was notorious for being a Lego addict when i was a kid, and i am taking the classes because i need a formal education on programming, so i would like to think I am not part of this group, but am I getting off on the wrong foot?

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If you're not a 'hacker' now, then the odds are against you becoming one.

On the other hand, you don't really need to be a hacker to make a good living. I know quite a few really excellent programmers / software engineers / designers who can perform all those roles, and who are emphatically not hackers.

For most programming tasks, like billing software, or web-sites, there is a fairly straight-forward way to design something, and a reasonably straight-forward way to implement it. Reliable, predictable timelines and implementations are the high-end of business software consulting.

You can be pretty good at software engineering, and be fairly well-paid, even working regular hours and not letting it consume your life.

You can get a good education at almost any school in almost any language. Like much of your life, it depends entirely on what you put into it. If you only do enough to satisfy the core requirements of the class, and you are not motivated to explore the field on your own, then you're going to end up being a "crappy programmer."

No, python is great to learn on.

What school do you go to?

MIT recently changed their curriculum from Scheme to Python.

If it's good enough for MIT...

Eastern Washington. Heard of it?

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