I was quite motivated and bright in my youth, and could have picked a number of careers where I had some skills. Decided to go with programming because I was excellent in math (and liked it), and wanted to do something applied instead of teaching. Coming from a poor background, I had ZERO knowledge about what programming is really like as a career, and what other applied math careers exist out there. I thought if you study math, you become a teacher. There were also other areas besides math that I liked and excelled at, so I could have picked a number of those.
So when I started with CS, I was already late in the game compared to others who started younger, had very little support in my learning and no peers to connect with as a woman in 90's/early 00's. It resulted in stumbling around a lot in my career and ending up as a probably below average programmer. Also realized too late that it's going to be very hard to find any math-intensive work as a programmer unless you hold a PhD.
Add to that some discrimination - I think young girls today have it a bit better than before, but women above 35, moms? Not many people want that. I had to remove my picture from LinkedIn because it got me less recruiter hits WITH a professional picture.
E.g. personally after not doing anything math-y for two decades I stumbled into a job doing image processing.
There's also graphics programming, although I get the impression that can be extra toxic environment. However, https://twitter.com/sehurlburt will occasionally post links to companies that aren't toxic that are hiring people, and some of them are welcoming to people without prior knowledge of the specific domain. E.g. https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345
i agree. there aren't a huge abundance of such job opportunities, but there are a few out there. for me it was a few years doing development with splashes of applied operations research (discrete optimisation, liner programming, etc).
I think the role of the programmer has changed maybe from a pioneer / highly technical research to mostly a tool for businesses. All my jobs since 2012 for example have required me to log time into some system an be called up when things take too long, and since 2011 being using 'agile' methodologies of some sort, which are processes trying to in my opinion make programming more like a production process.
I think my best be in hindsight would be to have done a PhD and then moved to the USA and worked for Google for a bit. Then i'd have the killer company on my CV plus the PhD and then can get some cushy jobs anywhere in the world. Not that it would have been easy to get into Google in the early days. But who can predict these things ... and if I could predict that well I'd just have hoarded Bitcoin or something.
the software profession is very two-tiered: you either get a job at a FAANG or FAANG-equiv firm whre the pay is good and there are the opportunities for growth ... and then there's everything else.
in many places it goes like this: you're very much treated like a cog, managers -- and "project managers" especially -- won't have any real understanding of what engineers do, there is disorganization, lack of planning, and/or engineers have never been challenged to grow, and over time you end up dealing with lots of tirefires.
if i knew of a way to do something different while maintaining my current income, i would do it.
I have. My roommate in college. A lot of students in his group studied very year for internships with finance companies.
I am very excited to see what the next ten years or so will bring.
Not an emacs user but that made me smile.
But I regret the way programmers are treated in industry these days. It went from a niche profession to industrial worker. Being a programmer these days is similar to a worker working in a car assembly line.
I studied physics at a well respected, internationally recognized university, and had made all the right connections to get into a masters/PhD programme for particle physics. I ended up not pursuing that path because at the time I found programming & software development more interesting, and more lucrative (this latter is still true - there's no money in physics).
But, at times, I wish I could go back and do it all differently. I often lament the knowledge I've essentially forgotten, and leaf through some old textbooks and papers nostalgically.
Based on that experience, my guess is that those who regret are usually those who just go through the motions. They most likely don't have side projects, or ideas to pursue, and the monotone of programming gets to them. Lets face it, our industry is all about repackaging the same old solutions, but for different clients, and that's quite boring. I like to imagine that engineers in other fields do a lot more than what programmers do, which makes things different even when repackaging solutions, but I could be wrong. In Indian context, there are many people I know, ranging from senior engineer or VP, working in multi national companies, with very good salaries, but are quite disenchanted with their jobs because they are nothing more than glorified bricklayers working in India while the architects send out instructions sitting in USA or Europe.
Super creative and challenging job ! Maybe I was lucky in that I worked in amazing companies but I've never had jobs where I felt like a cog.
I've also never worked at a FAANG. Only think I would say is that every company I worked (for the most part) had an R&D department or mentality and was product driven. Needless to say software was always the differentiator of the product.
The question may also suffer from sampling bias:
-Is a programmer and does not regret it (represented)
-Is a programmer and regrets it (represented, less likely to respond)
-Is not a programmer and does not regret it (not represented)
-Is not a programmer and regrets it (not represented)
Only large downside is the age-ism in the industry. Hopefully I won't be looking for work in my 60s.
You have lived a very charmed life.
I just wish it resulted in people having more choice in how to use their time, rather than cutting regular people out of their livelihood and concentrating wealth.
1 million percent yes!
Have I regretted becoming a programmer?
I have no idea, as I was never given the opportunity to become one!
I'm 36, a genuine generalist, the standard "jack of all trades, master of none", and obviously I'm doomed in this miserable field.
Am I looking for something else to do?
Yep, but I have no prior experience to anything else.
If I had the opportunity to travel back in time and kick my butt for choosing computers and technology, I would gladly do so.
I miss my childhood so much...no cell phones, no internet, no FaceBook or Instagram.
I feel like a 90 year old grumpy grandpa -_-
I do regret going to school to become a programmer so close to 40, because being a 40 year old programmer with newbie skills and no professional experience makes getting hired in an already difficult market just slightly more difficult.
So now I pay down my student loans doing other things and write code on the side and educate myself online.
I have been programming since I was 11 when I first started in Turbo Pascal and Borland C++ (somewhat simultaneously), I then started working as a teenager doing freelance work and getting some cash on the side (which was great). I never had internet back then as it wasn't around yet, so learning to get programs to work and debugging things was a minefield, and I loved it!
I then moved countries and got work visas on my ability, bought houses and raised a family, spoilt everyone along the way.
I'm glad I made those decisions more than 20 years ago, and I still enjoy everyday and what I do!
that feeling when you'd stay up all night long stuck on a problem with nowhere to turn for help, then finally, eureka.
oh also, mode 13h.