What does it take to be a Programmer?

The tech industry has been flourishing with incredible growth and people are more inclined to pursue an illustrious career within the field. There are many opportunities available for the aspiring tech wizards and everyone should be able to find their niche, but I will mostly be focusing on what it takes to be a programmer.  There are some personality traits may determine whether or not you’re suited for the job, and if you can actually tolerate it. A common misconception that people have about programmers seems to be that they think an individual needs exceptional mathematical skills. However, this isn’t necessarily true since math isn’t one of the more important aspects to programming.

One of the most important skills you need to be a decent programmer is designing abilities. As a programmer, you basically start from scratch, with nothing. Being able to figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it are necessary in order to write a plausible program. Planning and designing go hand in hand and it can be a very time consuming project, especially when looking at the big picture. Many of the great developers have said that they started with something small, kept adding to it, added a bit more, and it eventually developed into what they had imagined. So another trait a programmer needs would be patience.

Programming is sometimes tedious work as you will probably spend hours debugging, searching, only to find a few silly mistakes. For programmers, patience is a virtue. If you typically aren’t a patient person, programming may frustrate you to no end. Also, this obviously requires spending hours in front of a computer screen. People unable to tolerate sitting for extended periods of time probably aren’t cut for making it as a programmer.

More important aspects would be that a programmer needs to be able to think logically, analytically, and be a good problem solver. It’s critical to pay attention to details and helpful to be very specific. The design of a program should also be reflective of this since an organized format will help make sense of the problems you’re trying to solve.

There are tons of programming languages out there for people to learn and if one of them isn't working for you, have a taste of something else. The Internet has an abundance of resources to guide aspiring programmers, help them reach their goals, and jumpstart some careers. Something I would recommend is just dive into it and don’t be afraid, get started and see how you can do. No need to be discouraged if it doesn't come naturally since everything takes a fair share of effort to become proficient.