- So do you need to be smart to be a programmer?
Let's talk about that in today's video.
(upbeat music)
Welcome back, my name is Tim Buchalka
with another programming tip of the day
and the question again was, do you need to be smart,
quote, unquote, smart to be a programmer.
Now, I'm putting the quotes up there
because being smart, or the word smart,
to me is a subjective thing.
What does smart mean?
Does it mean that you've got an IQ of 500?
Does it mean that you're a rocket scientist?
Does it mean you can turn a computer on?
What is smart?
So, in general I would say that no,
you don't need an IQ of 500 to be a programmer.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist.
You need to be, you need to have certain skills, yes,
but I wouldn't necessarily say
you need to be smart in that sense
so, again, smart's a very subjective word
but let's go through some of the things
that I think you need to have to be a programmer.
Number one, I think you need the ability to think logically
so you need to be able to look at a problem.
It's very common for a programmer
to get presented a problem.
You need to have a structured, logical way of thinking,
if you think, okay, I've got this problem,
how do I go about learning that?
And to go through it step-by-step
thinking logically and thinking critically.
I think they're good skills but they're skills that
are learnable and also, the more you work in programming,
you tend to acquire some of those skills.
Not to say there aren't different levels.
Some people are actually more logically
and structured in their thinking by default
but you can get there if you believe you have,
that we don't possess those skills at the moment
so very important to have those skills.
Another important one is persistence
so you need to realise that you are going to hit roadblocks.
That's the reality of being a programmer.
There's gonna be times where you're feeling frustrated,
you know, you're overwhelmed, you don't know where to start,
you can't get something to work,
that's just the nature of programming.
It hits everyone, beginners, intermediate, experts, gurus,
whatever, everyone hits that level from time to time.
That's just the reality of being a programmer
and the great thing is that if you realise that
and realise that that's a temporary situation
and work through that, you'll come out
the other side a better programmer.
So that's gonna be the reality.
It's not always gonna be a bed of roses.
You're not always gonna be able to skip through a field
and programming's easy and it's just, you know,
you're just raking in the dollars and there's no stress,
You will get that stress.
So if you accept that and realise
that's part and parcel of becoming a programmer
and being a programmer, then you're halfway there already.
Next you have to have the ability, this sounds a bit funny,
but you need to be able to use a search engine.
Very important as a programmer and I've got videos
on all these topics actually so check out my channel,
other videos on this channel for more information
but I've seen lots of people, particularly beginners,
asking questions that if they just typed that question as is
directly into Google or any other search engine,
they'd probably get the answer they needed
so you need to be self-sufficient
and be able to use a search engine.
Now, that doesn't go with asking simple questions
like, which programming language is best?
That's a subjective thing anyway
so it's a little bit hard to answer.
More specific things, like if you get an error
while programming, copy and paste the error into
a search engine, usually Google,
and you'll get the answer to that.
It's highly likely that you'll get,
you'll basically get most of the, you know,
the gist is what I'm saying to be able
to solve that particular problem.
So very critical for you to have
the ability to use a search engine
and next you need, really one of the most important things,
is to realise that you're not going to get to a certain area
where you never have to study again.
No one programmer knows everything.
No programmers usually memorise codes.
What the get good at is some of the areas that I've talked
about in this video but also being good at documentation,
another video that I've talked about before
so in other words, let's assume you've got
the basic tools as a programmer,
someone comes to you and says, right,
I need you to write a stock trading application.
I want you to use this framework
that we've purchased to do that
so you'll need to go ahead, go away
and learn how to use that framework,
so, documentation, you need to go through the processes,
have a look at the application programming interface,
have a look at how it works and learn to use that
so you won't always get the answers given to you
on a plate, unfortunately and once you get over into
the real world and you start programming,
you'll be expected to solve problems yourself.
There won't be anyone, necessarily,
always to go to to get those answers
so getting good at your search engine,
getting good at learning to read documentation,
to test, think logically, realising that you only
get distracted so persevering,
these are all the skills you need to make you better
and that's, but what I believe is people
who possess these skills, they are the smart people
who will succeed as a programmer
but also in general, will succeed in virtually anything
they play their self, and play themselves to.
Alrighty, so I hope that helped.
If you've got any questions, feel free to leave
a comment and I'll get back to you.
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