I am proud of my profession. I am a programmer

Anyone should be able to change diapers, plan invasions, cut pigs, design buildings, manage ships, write sonnets, keep accounts, build walls, set bones, facilitate death, execute orders, give orders, collaborate, act independently, solve equations, analyze new problems, fertilizing, programming computers, tasty cooking, good fight, dignified die.
Specialization - the lot of insects.

Robert A. Heinlein

Writing about the IT profession is quite difficult, because they are now in every field. In almost every profession, something related to IT.

The work that a person has decided to do in life should be meaningful and necessary for other people, bring real practical benefits. You can cultivate yourself internally and claim that the most important thing is your rich inner world, but, in fact, everything that happens in a person’s mind has no meaning or meaning if it doesn’t give any real tangible practical fruits that affect life and the development of society as a whole. Objectively, a person is his work, this is the end result of the effort. Everything else - just the soil from which such a fruit - the result - can grow. People who fail to realize this in time doom themselves to remain outsiders for a long time, if not forever, who can only whine, complain and wonder why society rejects them ?!
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Once before me there was a question: what to become?



I knew my strengths - mathematics, exact sciences, various calculations, natural science. But at the same time, I am an activist, a public figure; from a very young age I perform on stage, sing, dance, draw, play sports. I have a wide range of interests. Besides, I am an extrovert, I have never been tempted by the prospect of living and working without communication, in whatever isolation.

I realized that I need to look for such a variant of activity, where all these inner needs of mine will be brought together and bear fruit.

When I meet people, they ask me: “Tanya, who do you study for? Who do you want to be? ”, And then I think:“ I am learning a programmer, but what does it mean to become a programmer? I love what I learn, ”then I understand that a programmer is not just a profession, it’s a state of mind, it’s in the blood. Like any profession. “Choose a job you like, and you don’t have to work a single day in your life.” Confucius.

But, like any business, programming has its pros and cons.

The main disadvantage is that you need to work at a computer for quite a long time. It is clear that this may well adversely affect the state of health: hypodynamia develops, vision deteriorates. On the other hand, I, as a modern teenager, already spent more than enough time at the computer, so why not send all my knowledge, skills and abilities on the right track, without harming myself? In addition, you just need to pay more attention to the sport, try to live a mobile lifestyle, and then everything will be fine to balance.

Secondly, it is necessary to become higher than gender stereotypes, which, unfortunately, even in modern society, which claims to be civilized, some people suffer. Sometimes you have to deal with inadequate attitude towards yourself - a programmer girl - from the opposite sex. And to realize that in the future, when the question of employment arises, employers may come across who prefer you as a young programmer, regardless of their professional skills and potential.



As for the benefits.

The very first thing I would like to point out is creative work, and you can create anything that comes to mind to you or the customer. At the same time, this is a work of exceptional social value. After all, few people today represent their lives without a computer, I do not mean only specifically a PC. Everything is computerized literally - from a microwave oven and other household appliances used by any housewife to a smartphone and a car. What car? And the spacecraft; and robots-surgeons, helping doctors to operate on the most difficult areas? And every year more and more similar devices will appear, while primitive things will be a thing of the past.

So who is this programmer? This is a specialist whose task is to teach a computer the skills necessary for everyone. If we are going to teach someone (or something) to something, then we are obliged to speak the same language with our student, whether it is animate or inanimate, and be able to explain our task to him. Moreover, a programmer is also required to know the professions and areas of activity in which a computer is used! And to make sure that the machine and the specialist in a particular area could understand each other and “agree”. Interesting? And how! Here you have the application for my extraversion, the desire and ability to communicate not only with cars, but also with people. And most of all, I want to communicate with customers myself, and not to entrust this to “business informatics”.

After all, many of my colleagues are terribly annoyed by the attitude towards us, IT specialists, as some kind of magicians, when, as a result of solving an elementary, from our point of view, task, people look at us with round eyes reading: “Oh, white man, you brought us fire! ”- and you, in fact, just struck a lighter.

Recently I was asked to write a program for one printing house - a calculator. I worked for a month as an assistant in a printing house. Spent a lot of time talking with employees. I started to write a program, but I realized that I do not own the tool well enough, so far, I am gaining experience, as well as knowledge in the field of typography. This is for you as an example of what you need to know and the scope of the program, at least superficially.

The second plus.

Continuous self-improvement, continuous advance. This science does not stand in place, it is constantly evolving and transforming, new and new information appears, so it is necessary to keep your hand on the pulse of time day after day, not to fall behind. But at the same time, it is not enough just to stay afloat, it is also necessary to change something, supplement, search and find unexpected moves and solutions, invent something that your colleagues will continue to study.

The third plus profession. Profession relevant and highly paid. If you go to all sorts of sites for job search, you can see that in the field of programming a lot of vacancies. The main ones are specialists in 1C accounting, website development, C programming (most often), as well as Java. At the same time, the average payment for a project that can be completed in a short time is 50,000 rubles. It all depends on the responsibility and ability of the employee. Abroad, the activities of such specialists are even more expensive, and the language is the same.

The next plus.

There is every chance of becoming an indie developer. That is, to fully work for yourself, without the need to depend on someone else and to exhibit exclusively your projects. Indie programmers motto - “Do It Yourself” - do it yourself.
The fifth virtue: the opportunity for professional growth. There is no definite bar for me to reach any level, everything depends only on me, on how curious and hardworking I will be. Let many people say: “If you have dedicated your life to programming, then you will not be anyone higher than a programmer!”, I want to challenge: a person can become anyone, many professionals and famous personalities are revealed at a rather adult age. And the programmer? He has an exceptional opportunity: after all, creating programs in different areas - we are starting to understand these areas, which gives us a chance to understand what we want and whether we want something else?

I recently read one post about inequality: "A nuclear physicist can always become a painter, and a painter will never become a nuclear physicist." I believe that a programmer is both a cook, a painter, a nuclear physicist, a dancer, and a videographer. After all, how many sites are created, do you really think that they were written just by programmers? In every soul is invested, it is very difficult to write the site "Cakes with your own hands", never having made a cake with your own hands or at least a little without understanding what it was about. When you write a program, a site, you want it or not, you will figure it out in “cakes”. And this is not only my opinion:
“Yes, the programmer should not know everything. To write a translation program, you do not need to know all the words of the German language in order to read their translations from the database. But the basics of grammar will have to learn. The programmer has to adapt to the projects surrounding him, continuously receiving new knowledge and teaching this a stupid computer "from" Habrahabr.

Sixth plus profession. A specialist in the field of applied IT technologies is definitely not facing unemployment, since in the near future, programming will be in increasing demand. I was just shocked to learn how dizzying the prospects of this profession! These are new solutions in the field of processing a huge amount of data, and the design of interfaces for all kinds of equipment, and the development of virtual worlds, and digital linguistics (here, by the way, it’s a great opportunity to combine general, including humanitarian, deep education, a sense of language, , purely "technical" skills), and what is today called architecture of virtuality - in the foreseeable future, even school education will be based solely on working with computers. And the design of neural interfaces, which will allow to “tune” digital technologies to the individual neurophysiological and psychological characteristics of each user! I'm not talking about the fact that almost any mass production will become fully automated, and household robotics will go into every home. And medicine, specifically - surgery and the creation of cyber-bioprostheses, which will allow incomparably improve the quality of life of people who have lost their health for one reason or another? It is clear that it is impossible to do without programmers here ...

During my studies, I met many programmers on the net who described in detail to me why being a programmer is hard. Much comes down to the only minus that I found, but it turns out there is one more: the head works all the time, there is little time left for the family, you live all the time in the world of your profession ... On the other hand, this is the path of any professional for whom - first of all. As Margaret Thatcher said, “a house is just a place where you go when you have no more interesting activities.”

Every day I take new steps towards my goal towards what I want to do, what I plan to devote to life, and I think I made the right choice. I want to achieve a lot - now is the time to achieve.