How do I know if I have the aptitude to do programming as a career? | Hacker News Reader

How do I know if I have the aptitude to do programming as a career?

2 pointsHenryDDragon3 comments

Hello All,

I am currently contemplating a career change. Well actually, it's not much of a career change since I've just been doing admin stuff after college. My education was in liberal art.

My question is how do I know if I have the aptitude to do programming as a career? Like where people actually will pay me money for writing code!?

I'm also thinking about going back to school to get a MSCS; but more importantly, I'm worried if I can even make the cut to be a programmer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks HN!

View on HN

You should be programming in your spare time.

You should be well-aware that much of the knowledge that is necessary to start programming/learn to program is not locked up in labs on college campuses, but is actually freely accessible throughout the web...

If you really want to start, then start, there's nothing stopping you. You generally will be better at things you like to do (since you'll get more practice) -- and I think that will be the best indicator of whether you'll be good at it -- there's usually something very long if you love something (like programming) but are bad at it after months of doing it.

Really, what colleges are there to teach you (or force you to ingest, if you want to think about it that way), is the algorithmic, high-level side that can be applied no matter what language/framework/etc

Like other people have said, try programming in your spare time. There are a lot of great sites lube codecademy and udacity that have great introductions into software development. I don't regret going to school for Computer Science,I learned a lot of theory and algorithms that would have taken a lot more time on my own, but I learned a lot about good software practices from researching on my own. The mythical man month and code complete are excellent software best practice books as well

sudo apt-get install aptitude :-)

OT: I programmed as a hobby since I was 10. If you have never done that, it's a bit indicative of lack of interest in the subject if I may say. However, if you did, then you've all it takes. Interest and curiosity get you anywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com