Do you enjoy programming?
If so, you will be good at programming. If not, you most likely won't.
If so, you will be good at programming. If not, you most likely won't.
Even if you were somehow very good at programming but you hatted it, would you choose it as a job? I'd drop it immediately, don't waste your precious time on it.
This leaves one other option: If you loved it more than any other job but you sucked at it, what would you do? I'd say: Do yourself a favor and find a job where you do what you love. If you prove my advice to be bad, you'd be the first human who made it through childhood without the ability to get better by practice, so don't worry. (And certainly don't think you have be on the Linus/RMS level to do meaningful things.)
(The options for sucking and hating and for loving and excelling are obvious ;))
Not everyone has that choice, as making a living and doing what you love are sometimes mutually exclusive. Casey Neistat washed dishes before he got into making viral videos. Einstein worked as a patent clerk. Dreamtheater's Mike Mangini worked in IT to pay the bills before finding a way to make a living doing what he loved.
TL;DR: find a way to pay the bills to make time to do what really matters to you
source: https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/einstein/einstein-at-the-pate...
Take that as you will.
TL;DR: It may be worth programming even if you don't like it, because it pays well. Also, life sometimes deals shitty cards.
I'm in the same boat!
I increasingly believe I may have an attention deficit disorder on top of diagnosed depression I'm dealing with
Have you tried exercising, getting enough sleep, eating healthier, doing more "outside" or social activities and/or testing out nootropics like citicoline/noopept? All of these have helped me greatly! BTW, highly recommend checking out The Healthy Programmer book: https://pragprog.com/book/jkthp/the-healthy-programmer
life sometimes deals shitty cards
Virtual manly hug mate!
Oh, the usual stuff ;). Tried all of these at various points; haven't noticed much difference, but I think I might not have tried enough. Going item-by-item:
- Exercising: probably not enough; the amounts I did didn't really affect much (except weight), but I'm going to try again, at a gym this time.
- I have problems going to sleeping due to depression and anxiety (I constantly feel I haven't done enough yet, so I can't go to sleep yet), combined with being generally a night person (after day spent with people I really appreciate the late hours without any face-to-face distractions). But when I finally fall asleep, no force on Earth or in Heaven can wake me before I get my 7-8 hours. Which annoys my employers.
- I try, but I just don't like green food :(. Cutting out sugar from diet did wonders to my weight and dental health, but didn't improve mood issues.
- I'm a very social person, people call bullshit on me when they hear me describing myself as an introvert (I usually send them this classic then: [0]). I frequent various events, both as an attendee and speaker, help run a local Hackerspace and have uncanny ability to serve as a translator between technical and untechnical people.
- Piractem & noopept - little to no noticeable effects. Nicotine (pure, in gums, I'm not a smoker) - helps stay up a little longer and improves my alcohol tolerance. Adrafinil - does wonders when I need to skip a night's sleep or feel the stress-induced tiredness during the day. I didn't try anything else.
> BTW, highly recommend checking out The Healthy Programmer book
Thanks, I'll check it out! I highly respect the Pragmatic Bookshelf for Pragmatic Programmer and Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. The book you linked is one hell of an expense, but if it could help, then I guess it may be worth it.
> Virtual manly hug mate!
* hug *
#HNTherapy
[0] - http://imgur.com/76HUN
The feeling I have is more of a "I've done so little today and there's still so much to do, I can't go to sleep yet".
So yeah, I've worked for several companies where I've absolutely loathed the project, but that's what I was assigned to do, so I have to program for it, even though it bores me to tears.
Even when I was making games for a living, I sometimes ended up working on games that I knew were awful, but I wasn't in a position where I could switch to something else easily (I live in the Midwest, where gamedev jobs are scarce anyway, which is one reason why I got out of that industry anyway).
What do I want to work on? Whatever game or app concept I came up with that excites me at the moment.
Who's going to pay me good money to do that? No one.
So instead I'm currently working in an enterprise environment to help pay down my school loans while working on my own stuff with what little energy I have after work hours.
I've seen plenty of people in the past (less so in the recent past) that did the job, weren't well-suited or it, didn't particularly like it, but they did it anyway. Why? Money. The kind of money that has you ordering stuff on Amazon and never once asking yourself if you have the money for it. You quit balancing your checkbook years ago. That kind of money. Not bathing in $100 bills kind of money, but enough coming in every year that you don't sweat small financial details. You don't do that on the median US income of $50K/year.
You claim if you hated it, you'd "drop it immediately". I don't know you, so maybe you would. But before you commit to that answer, recall that your annual pay might very well get cut in half or more. No more BMW leases for you. Now, maybe that's fine for you (and admittedly, if I could be a professional musician but only making half what I make, I'd take it in a heartbeat; don't need a BMW that badly).
But I knew plenty of folks in 80s (back when programming was the "hot new thing") that got into it because it paid well. They hated the job (probably because they weren't very good at it), but when the kids come and the spouse has become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, it's hard to give it up.
Once you start being serious about it there might be bad days or weeks as in any other profession.
Quality comes only from quantity. And quantity can only happen if your efforts result in bruises you can tolerate.
On the other hand, it is harder to make your monitor explode while trying out fancy graphics effects...
I'm interested in the practical aspects of programming, like being able to create something that produces value out of nothing. That's something I can get excited about. I'm not stupid; with enough thought I can solve a lot of Codingbat-esque problems. But it feels like high school math class.
The act of trying to build something that works is an incredible learning experience, and will teach you a lot about whether or not programming is something you should pursue.
What I actually love is scripting / automating repetitive tasks... Still programming, but somewhat different in satisfaction (for me anyway)