Why programming is the perfect hobby
Those who say that the future of programming is a bit crafty: programming is quite a present, and to ignore this fact is to deprive oneself of a mass of opportunities for professional and personal growth. And we are able to explain why.
Why is all this necessary
"Most employers still do not even realize how valuable employees have at least basic knowledge of programming. Nevertheless, this is one of the most important skills for those whose work is at least somehow related to technology (that is, for all). Editors photographers, designers, analysts, PR people can start studying the code now - although it was better to do it yesterday. The reason is simple: it’s profitable for companies to hire a person who understands what his work is coming from. The same infographic designer who knows how to not just visualize information, but analyzing and structuring the material and, ideally, writing the necessary code to it, is much more valued than a designer without such skills, "analyzes Galima Akhmadullina.
Galima has her own recruitment and consulting agency Galima HR, whose website she designed herself. Two years ago, when recruiting was not a full-fledged job for her, but a hobby, there was enough personal Facebook page functionality to handle all requests. Then I had to switch to tumblr, and when more complex tasks and large amounts of data appeared, I had to master Wordpress and refine Podio plug-ins for specific business tasks and workflows. “Now my whole, one might say, mini-business can exist only because at some point I spent the time to make a convenient tool for myself - and if I hadn’t set it up, no one would have done it for me. For such tasks, you don’t need to dig deeply the front-end and back-end and even write the code yourself - now there is a lot of open code [that is, any user can copy to it - Editor's note], and you only need to know where to insert it, to customize the ready interface. "
Programming helps develop logic, think structurally and facilitate communication.
The development of Galima’s hobby is an ideal illustration of why basic programming skills are necessary for everyone who has a computer and Internet access. At a certain stage of career development (business, if you will), it becomes necessary to present yourself or your product. And we were all lucky that now it can be done with minimal time and money by buying a domain name for fifty dollars and spending a weekend at a laptop. It can be argued that an excellent journalist, designer, copywriter or lawyer will always have a job, but to become such a monoprofessional, an ordinary specialist needs, roughly speaking, to live ten thousand working hours - and the ability to understand the code will at least allow you to do it comfortably. Even programming helps to develop logic, to think structurally and - if you are already forced to communicate with developers - to facilitate communication with them (people around are also pleased if you are understanding). “The most important thing is that programming makes it possible to completely independently implement ideas, create a product from scratch. This is creativity. And this is the coolest one,” says web programmer Ekaterina Anishkina.
Where to start and what to use
The coolest thing is that the development of coding is now available more than ever. There are always books; For example, students of Parsons, where they have their own programming club, are asked first to read Douglas Rushkoff, who puts everything in the “Program or Be Programmed” places. Worthy literature is a topic for a separate publication, but the most sensible thing is to follow books on Amazon and choose bingo! - bestsellers are newer. “When selecting materials for reading, you need to check the year of publication and publication. In IT everything changes very rapidly. If a book or article is more than four years old, I try to find more recent analogues,” back-end developer Natalia Romanenko advises.
Of course, it requires an independent review on FAQ-sites like Stack Overflow. "If you are a novice programmer and you have some kind of question, the likelihood that it arose with someone before you is 99 percent. At first, you have to google and read a lot, mostly in English. The answer can be found anywhere: on forum, in the blog of some programmer, in the official documentation. Before asking a question, look for an answer, and only if you haven’t found anything at all, create a new topic on the forum, "Natalia continues." As for Russian-speaking resources, I managed to solve all my problems within forum.sources.ru and habrahabr.ru. third - the perfect mix of the collective blog and news site that wishes to publish their own articles or transfer to computer and computer related topics.
Beginner site builders need to know the abbreviation WYSIWYG (“What you see what you get”). The WYSIWYG editor is an application that allows you to view the result right in the process or even work on the page completely in graphical mode. "There are many WYSIWYG interfaces where (the author of this text sits exactly like this). On the Ghost platform, for example , you can not only build yourself a beautiful and convenient site, but also to practice in the simplest syntax of Markdown (if you want, then in HTML).
The format of offline courses is attractive because there is always an opportunity to turn to a mentor.
For direct study and practice of the code there are excellent online schools like TreeHouse, App Academy and Codecademy, where you can learn HTML and CSS, Javascript, Ruby, Python and other programming languages. TreeHouse works on a freemium model: you need to pay for cool video courses (from $ 25 per month), but there is also free content. Education in Codecademy is generally more like a game (albeit, rather slow), and some are delaying, like a TV series. The format of offline courses is attractive because there is always the opportunity to turn to a mentor - you have to slip on something more than once. In Moscow there are few places where it is really pleasant to study, but they appear. In Moscow Coding School, with all due respect to Baumanka and its specialists, you feel in 2014 (and a little bit in 2015). Similar projects with a lively atmosphere and programs capable of captivating will still arise - simply because there is a demand for them.
Let us draw the line: the threshold for entering programming is extremely low now, and the prospects opening up with it are vast and can significantly improve the quality of life. Faculties of computer science are being opened, and the Ministry of Education is increasing budget places in IT specialties. Imagine: everyone who today spends two evenings a week in Sublime and managed to collect dozens of sites or applications on their own, in two years they will come to where you are more or less successful, but you don’t have similar and demanded skills (about the generation in whose childhood such books, and say nothing). Ignoring the possibilities of self-development in any case is short-sighted, in the case of programming this is especially obvious; with similar success, you can voluntarily stop using your hand or foot - but why?
3D illustrations: Dmitry Pustovoitov