Tuesday, June 2, 2015

A three months developer.... yeah right

All over the news we see reports about the need of developers and if we do not teach programming skills to youngster we might run out of
developers in the near future . I am all in to teach and encourage people to try programming. 

Becoming a developer is not for everyone, and as a society we need people in other professions as well. So showing what programming is to young is a good way to let them choose if this is the carer for them.

All is good but like always, there comes people that to my opinion are into this to only make money. Making promises to young people that in three months they can become excellent developers and land a job with a lot of money. That my friend in bull.

There is no way that you can go from zero to senior in three months, not even to beginner. There will always be people with talent that can achieve a lot in short period of times. And even those (minority) need to get some typing time, and they will because they love what they do. However the regular person will not have the born talent and require a lot of practice. It takes practice and dedication to become a good developer as everything else. Snapping together some web framework and a beautiful template  (downloaded) does not makes you an developer, and even less a good one.

All this crap about three months excellent developer is like a loose weight without diet and exercise. It does not works like that.

What would happen if a people buy into the dream of senior developer in no time? Well a lot of people asking for a lot of money to copy/paste code from web and create crappy code. The ones paying are not stupid, and when they keep spending money and not receiving good products in return will force them to look for other alternatives. What are those alternatives you may say, not other that outsourcing.

To keep my rant short. Do not buy in the idea that anyone can snap their fingers and make you a good developer with a simple programming course. To become a good developer you need some fire inside that keep you eager to learn and keep on learning. When the lights goes out you still want to  keep on going because you are in the flow of the moment. Do it because you love it, not because of the money.

It is easy to point fingers into a doctor and say they are into that only for the money and in doing so risking the life of he/her's customers. Same thing apply to IT professionals in all areas.
In conclusion practice, practice and practice is the only way. Work day and night and eventually you will get better and better. There is no substitute to good elbow grease.