There's something amazing about programming in that regardless of whether you're a 100-year tree in the forest like Jeff Atwood or a hapless sapling stumbling about on Codeacademy you can still add value both as a developer and a community member.
I've been coding for 10 years now and have reached the point where I'm reasonably handy but I look at a post like this and the sedimentary layers upon layers of experience that Jeff has and feel like a total novice. And yet I can still build stuff that's useful. I can still help people on StackOverflow and I can still learn from the giants above me.
I had no idea when I got into it but in retrospect it's pretty awesome to have chosen a career with such an updraft for newcomers and where everyone at almost every level can meaningfully teach, learn and contribute.
Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He collects himself and stares at the teacher with a steady eye.
"I want to develop business application enterprise solutions," he says, his words becoming stronger and more confident as he speaks.
"I want to write something that will add value to the community. I want them to walk away from the computer simply because it's 5PM and that's it for another day at the office. I want to write something that will reach out to end-users, and conforms to requirement specifications. I want to write something they are reluctant to upgrade, knowing that nothing they deploy that quarter will be quite as stable, as backwards-compatible, as good. I want to write enterprise data store solution software architectures."
Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It is the teacher's turn to be confused. Jonny blushes, feeling that something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman."
I've been coding for 10 years now and have reached the point where I'm reasonably handy but I look at a post like this and the sedimentary layers upon layers of experience that Jeff has and feel like a total novice. And yet I can still build stuff that's useful. I can still help people on StackOverflow and I can still learn from the giants above me.
I had no idea when I got into it but in retrospect it's pretty awesome to have chosen a career with such an updraft for newcomers and where everyone at almost every level can meaningfully teach, learn and contribute.