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You took the AP CS, and knew you could get an A+, why do you think you suck at programming? Being able to program is a wonderful skill - the computers are so a

You took the AP CS, and knew you could get an A+, why do you think you suck at programming? Being able to program is a wonderful skill - the computers are so accurate, so efficient and never complains once you get all the bugs out. It's great. The languages are getting easier and more powerful. I think the world will soon just have 2 groups of people - people who program or make things, and people who don't. In short, programming is a great career to start. You don't have to be an amazing programmer to appreciate it's beauty and value. Yes, it may be stressful, hey, even jobs at Starbucks or the Amazon warehouse get stressful - if you work at (any job) loser companies, you also lose your job easily when the bossmen screw up. If I am to choose an easily, portable skill to harness, programming is better than box-packing or coffee-pouring.

qzc4 12y ago
OK. You're probably right. But AP CS was not difficult for anyone. If you did the work, you got an A+. And then the exam was worthless as an indicator of how good you are. Even my friend who tried to copy and paste off Yahoo Answers got a 5 (the highest you can get). You can look at the course description[0]—it's easier than Programming 101 (of course not even close to the MIT version). It's all in java and you don't have to know what a pointer is. > The languages are getting easier and more powerful. Definitely agree with you on that one. I am learning swift right now and it has come really far from objective-C. > I think the world will soon just have 2 groups of people - people who program or make things, and people who don't. Now that is an interesting perspective. > If I am to choose an easily, portable skill to harness, programming is better than box-packing or coffee-pouring. That's a really unfair comparison. Those are jobs you get for minimum wage. You can't major in box-packing in college, but you can major in software engineering. As I said before, maybe you're right. My fear is that really, my skills are not unique or specialized. They are just “Oh, I know some C, and some Objective-C, and some Python, and some JavaScript, and some Java, and some shell scripting, and barely any C++”. I feel like nothing stands out from that. With the exception of Objective-C (I'm including the native frameworks here), those are all languages that every programmer should know (C) or would be able to pick up fairly quickly (Java). [0]: http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-computer-science-course-description.pdf http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-c...

qzc4 12y ago

OK. You're probably right. But AP CS was not difficult for anyone. If you did the work, you got an A+. And then the exam was worthless as an indicator of how good you are. Even my friend who tried to copy and paste off Yahoo Answers got a 5 (the highest you can get). You can look at the course description[0]—it's easier than Programming 101 (of course not even close to the MIT version). It's all in java and you don't have to know what a pointer is. > The languages are getting easier and more powerful. Definitely agree with you on that one. I am learning swift right now and it has come really far from objective-C. > I think the world will soon just have 2 groups of people - people who program or make things, and people who don't. Now that is an interesting perspective. > If I am to choose an easily, portable skill to harness, programming is better than box-packing or coffee-pouring. That's a really unfair comparison. Those are jobs you get for minimum wage. You can't major in box-packing in college, but you can major in software engineering. As I said before, maybe you're right. My fear is that really, my skills are not unique or specialized. They are just “Oh, I know some C, and some Objective-C, and some Python, and some JavaScript, and some Java, and some shell scripting, and barely any C++”. I feel like nothing stands out from that. With the exception of Objective-C (I'm including the native frameworks here), those are all languages that every programmer should know (C) or would be able to pick up fairly quickly (Java). [0]: http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-computer-science-course-description.pdf http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-c...