Not everyone is suitable for programming and can take programming as a profession

Recently, a short film named "What schools do not teach" has aroused public attention. The central idea of short films is "everyone can program", and there are several well-known rich people to promote this point. (By the way, these rich people earn money by employing others' programming instead of programming on their own .)

My younger brother came a few days ago and he was a dreamer who wanted to make a fortune. He said to me, "I want to program like you ". Undoubtedly, he saw the short film.

All of this is unreliable. Not everyone is suitable for programming (except for getting started). More importantly, not everyone can take programming as a profession.

The short film starts with famous rich people such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, promoting "programming started when I was a child" and then showing their earliest enlightening works, such as mini games. Then, Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox, appeared, saying "programming is similar to playing an instrument and doing sports ", then, the NBA All-Star Chris Bosh, who studied programming during college, will introduce his programming difficulties and troubles, but he did not point out the difficulties.

What they said is not false. A curious child learns programming just like learning other things that are irrelevant (such as musical instruments, sports, juggling, and sewing ). However, the subsequent content is misleading.

Makinde Adeagbo, an early Facebook engineer, said that many programming is very simple. In a sense, this is right. But I can also say that when playing basketball, a lot of movements are also very simple, such as crossing the stadium or pitching. Crossing the stadium is the basic element of playing basketball, but it does not mean that playing basketball is good if you do not cross the stadium. In fact, you may be able to easily cross the stadium every time, but it is hard to play basketball.

Then my favorite clip came: "add, subtract, this is programming" said Bill Gates there ". These are the only prerequisites for learning programming.

This is only half right. You can program without having to have too much mathematical knowledge. But the problem is that as you learn more about programming, you will find that mathematics is essential. I would like to say that to be a successful programmer, you must have a good algebra Foundation. If you want to reach a higher level, you still need to learn more. Not to mention this premise, I think he conveyed an incorrect message, which is to describe the lowest threshold as a successful method. The more accurate statement is: "You only need to know the addition and subtraction. But you 'd better learn a little more about mathematics, because in addition to entry books such as "7 days to learn Java", you need to use mathematics when you read more programming books ."

At the end of the short video, we will introduce the programmer's life. Luxurious office, free food, beautiful scenery, of course, a lot of money.

I was admitted to a company in the short video: Facebook. But on behalf of other programmers, I said that these looks quite uncomfortable.

These conditions do exist, but for programmers, they are special cases and not normal. Most offices are equipped with coffee machines and refrigerators to store your own food. It is usually filled with other people's food for a week. Programmers are sitting in gray compartments in the building, but they also need to comply with strict rules and regulations.

What I want to do is to be admitted to Facebook. They told me it was very easy. They have admitted hundreds of people and programming is simple. This is not the case. Facebook interviews are not just "add and subtract", and the questions they give you are never interesting games. One of the interview questions needs to understand calculus, the other needs to explain the time and space complexity of highly recursive functions, and an abstract tool that needs to be used by programmers, such as regular languages and automatic operations.

My younger brother wants to do this. He thinks that he can make much more money than to be a worker in FedEx and lead a small luxury life. The short film is also publicized in this way. But I don't think he can see the reality clearly.

I am sitting here this weekend to write code to a code library that I don't know at all. I think it is dangerous for me to finish the job on time. I did not write interesting games or other specific things. In fact, if a layman asked me what I was writing, I could not make it clear. I may say, "I'm writing something that can read the code and export information based on the Code. Other people can use this information in their tools ". I think this is not what my brother or anyone else expected to do.

Can I go to work at a.m. And go home at a.m? No. Programming does not work on time. It always takes more time to complete the task. And never-ending, because tasks keep flowing. There are always new features to be added and new bugs to be removed. You always have a reason to stay for another hour or two. Personally, I feel that time is not enough. I have to work overtime until AM to balance my work and personal life. This is not just my status, but it is true for many programmers.

I don't want to beat new people who have just begun learning programming. It is indeed a matter of enhanced capabilities. But for me, programming is not something that can be done on one or two weekends or 52 weekends, but rather hard work, I learned it only after giving up many other things in my life. It's hard for me to tell my brother or anyone else that learning a little bit of programming results (not fame or wealth) can change the way they think, and I don't think this simple thing is a good boost for most people.

In short, not everyone is suitable for programming. It is not an interesting task described in this short film or the movie "Social Network. It is not a social activity that is refreshing. You need to spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer screen, staring at those colorful text documents, thinking, thinking, typing, angry, and wondering why you choose this kind of sitting and not moving life.