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On the other hand, as an Engish Lit major who taught himself programming from zero, and worked as a programmer for over a decade, all my experience writing soft
by karaterobot 2y ago
On the other hand, as an Engish Lit major who taught himself programming from zero, and worked as a programmer for over a decade, all my experience writing software was practical, and I don't think that's the right way to go either. I wish I'd had any level of theoretical education that might have exposed me to fundamental concepts you (with yer fancy book-learnin') probably take for granted. If someone just learns on the job, or just learns as they go, they don't learn stuff until they need to. They learn it in a hurry, and on a deadline. That's not the best way to get a firm handle on tricky subjects, and maybe as a consequence, I always felt a couple steps behind my peers.
- digging 2y agoAs someone in a similar position, may I take a tangent? I'm curious what you transitioned into out of programming. The stress of feeling "always behind" is taking its toll on me, and I wonder about another career change often.
- karaterobot 2y agoI joined the software industry at a small consultancy that needed me to do a lot of different things, including both programming and design. So I got experience doing both of those. When I left the consultancy world in 2016, I had to decide whether to sell myself to employers as either a programmer or a designer—normal companies want you to pick a single lane—so I just focused on my design experience, and started doing that as a day job. I went from a fancy title to a much less fancy title for my first job as a designer, but more or less worked back up from there. I think for most programmers, their fork in the road would be to stay as an individual contributor or become a manager, but I don't want to be a manager, and was lucky to have a different path to fall back on.