5 Reasons Why You're NOT Becoming a Programmer

There are five things that cause a lot of aspiring self-taught developers to fail. In today's video I wanted to share with you these common issues that people have when they are teaching themselves to become a programmer.

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[AndySterkowitz]

Are you guilty of any of these behaviors? Did the video help clarify anything for you?

[NickSkye]

Was a Programmer, Watched this, Got fired the next day...

[kirkb]

I'll condense this entire video in one phrase: "Practice makes perfect."

[AethernaLuxen]

You know, every single person who clicked this video is already or becoming a programmer

[WarrenLeggatt]

I have done 40 years at the code face now. Golden rule early on while playing with your own projects..

Move fast, break stuff, make mistakes and don't be afraid to box yourself into a bad design corner. Then step back, think about what went wrong and refactor the crap out of it to improve. Rinse and repeat. The reality is you need to screw up to understand what bad code looks and feels like so you can spot it in the future. If you skip this you will end up a copy/paste from stack over flow programmer.... so not a programmer :)

Most work is in the imperative world and that is where the jobs are BUT learn a functional language to add to your tool box, such as Haskel or F#. You will learn a whole new way of thinking and how to approach problems from different directions.

[yt-dman]

"5 reasons you won't become a programmer"
me: *was programming a few minutes earlier*

[williamgrace]

For some of y'all: #1 reason -- you can't become something you already are.

[jthomasaurus]

Your videos are always my favorites of my subscriptions, simply just for how relatable your content and story are...but this one really resonated with me. I do suffer from a few of these delays, especially the perfectionism and fear, due to my fear of “if it’s not perfect, NO ONE will ever hire me!” A lot of it has to do with being self-taught in my mid-thirties and knowing I’ll be competing with the fresh young college grads when I start putting out resumes. Thanks for this super helpful video Andy, and keep them coming! I love getting notifications that you’ve uploaded a new one!

[Retamor]

Developer for 8 years and agree completely

[michaelsvoboda]

Despite the slightly clickbait-y title, this was quite constructive.

[dantedycer]

Very insightful video, been struggling with some of these for a while. Thank you!

[Andrew-bfoj]

Im starting my first job as a software engineer out of college (computer science) and this is great advice. I think one of the things that nailed the interview for me was showing a bunch of demo apps on my iPhone to the interviewers. Also, apply and try to take as many interviews as you can. My first interview was horrible but as I got more comfortable with the process, the better I got. Also, apply even if you don't check all the boxes for qualifications. As long as some of the qualifications are met they'll be willing to still hire you and train you if you prove to be productive yourself.

[ayelaii]

I've only recently discovered your channel, but I love how clear and concise you are. You provide really valuable information and insight. I'm about two weeks into my programming journey (self-teaching) and am excited to keep learning! The first two weeks have already been so fulfilling. Thank you for the insight and inspiration.

[olganova]

I personally have been facing tons of fears and therefore, resistance in progressing with coding. Takes a lot of energy to push anything that doesn't seem to be perfect (clean scopes, comments, documentations). Eventually, you just need to put your foot in the door, no matter how much you've crapped your pants out of fear. Andy, awesome content! Thank you for your updates!

[robertzeurunkl]

"Everything has to be perfect"

30+ year career programmer here. I start every project thinking, THIS time, it's gonna be perfect. It never is. And, usually, because technology is always changing, and you're always learning. Each project, you do things a little bit differently based upon what you learned in the last one, and since the last one. And as a consequence, you usually end up making small (and sometimes big) errors. But hey, that's why code reviews are so important. ;-) Programming isn't something you learn - like, "Well, that's that. I learned it". It's a lifelong discipline, and you are always learning, always changing, always doing things differently.

[rathelmmc]

This could be retitled to “Why you won’t succeed”. All these rules apply to any skill set.

[JASDKA]

Thanks for keeping it so rich.
No changing the topic, no going astray etc.Staying diligent and consistent.

[TheCrusaderRabbits]

Thank you for telling us that we have to persist in the boredom. So true. I am very, very bored, but I push on.

[aakashvishwasjadhav]

You inspired to me start my programming dream again ..Thanks Brother

[XavierSmithXcellence]

This was quite helpful. I'm about a month into learning front-end development, and I've certainly been struggling with the perfectionism bug. Glad to see I'm not alone!