The advice of an old programmer: what language you know doesn't matter.

This is the end of the book "Learn Python the Hard Way, 2nd Edition".

After reading this book, you decided to continue to do programming. Maybe it can become a career for you, maybe it can become a hobby of yours. But you need some guidance to make sure you're not going the wrong way, or to help you get the most out of this new hobby.

I've been programming for a long time. Long you can not imagine, long all let me distressed. As I write this book, I know about 20 programming languages, and I can learn a new language one day or longer in a week-depending on how strange the language is. But it finally became my distress that they could no longer attract my interest. I am not saying that these languages are not interesting, or that you will find them boring. I just want to say that I am no longer interested in language in my career journey to the present.

After so many years of learning experience, I found that the language itself is not important, it is important how you use them. In fact, I always know this truth, but I have been attracted by the language, periodically forget this truth. Now I don't forget, you should do the same.

It doesn't matter what language you speak or what language you use. Don't be confused by the various religious propaganda around the programming language, which will only obscure your eyes and make you see that these languages are just a tool to make you do interesting things. That's their real attribute.

As an intellectual activity, programming is the only form of art that allows you to create interactive artwork. You create software that people can manipulate, and you interact with people indirectly. No other art form has such interactivity. A movie is a one-way transmission of information to the audience. Painting is static. But the software program is bidirectional dynamic.

Programming can be regarded as an interesting work in general. It can be a good career, but if you want to earn more money and do it well, you might as well start a fast restaurant. If you use programming as a secret weapon in other industries, you may have better results.

There are a plethora of people who program in technology companies, and no one cares about them. And in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history and mathematics, if you have this skill, you can do something spectacular.

Of course, all of these words are meaningless. If you go through this book and you love programming, you should try your best to improve your life through it. To explore this wonderful intellectual activity, and only for nearly 50 years people have the opportunity to engage in this occupation. If you like it, love it heartily.

The last thing I want to say is that learning to develop software will change you and make you different. Whether it's good or bad, it's different anyway. You will find that because you will develop software, people will be very cold to you, will use the word "nerd" to describe you. You will find that because you are good at dissecting logic, people hate to argue with you. You may even find that simply knowing some computer principles can cause you a lot of trouble and make you look strange to them.

I have only one small piece of advice for these questions: let them die. The world needs more people who know how things work and how they like to explore. When they treat you like this, remember that this is your life, not theirs. Being different is not a sin, and people are just jealous and jealous that you have a skill that they can't have in their dreams.

You can program. They won't. This is so fucking cool.

This article is from the Advice from the old programmer this article translation.

Article Source: Foreign periodicals It review