Recently I’ve been thinking a lot why people ever decide to start coding. Specially now that we all have this stagnant situation going on where everything is moving towards that digital version of its former self.
I’ve been noticing this “I will become a coder” movement, specially in mobile app development and web development. A lot of young — fresh developers are flooding into the scene all posting about their passion and excitement for coding. But what really sparked my interest lately was that after some time, you can’t find most of these new passionate, exited coders anywhere simply because they didn’t make it.
I’ve been asking myself this question “why do people pick up coding” and mostly when I ask them I get these shallow repetitive answers that it’s fun and exciting. But in the long run they all face the sad reality which is that everything seems fun and exciting at the beginning and it is all about commitment and endurance at the end.
Most of them are drown towards the coding world simply because they see these success stories online and they read about the FANG companies and their salaries — simply put they are chasing wealth which in their perspective is easily achieved if you become a coder. But then they realize it’s the same as any other field that nothing is easy and will be handed to anyone just because they made one decision.
You can compare it to professional sports — you can start playing football but the chances you will get scouted and join a high tier club is pretty thin. Or if you prefer to compare it to investing or more specific stock market then you know that the big majority of people that are in the game are actually losing for the small percent of people to gain.
What a lot of these different fields have in common is that you don’t need just one skill set to succeed. Specifically when it comes to coding, if you don’t have the ability to “sell” you probably won’t make it really far. By the ability to “sell” I mean to sell yourself. You need to treat yourself as a brand with certain competences and perks which you need to present in a manner that your value will be truly appreciated. But here is where it gets tricky, most new coders will fail on this front and simply give up because on their first few tries their FANG dream didn’t come true.
This is why I believe that so many of those answers are so shallow and dishonest. I think that as soon as people realize it’s not all fun and games success will come with it.
I have many answers to why I have decided to start coding. One of them is I wanted to make a few of my personal projects to happen on my own. But that is also under the premise that I already knew I could make it as a coder skill wise and didn’t just pick it up because of the herd mentality to magically make it happen and everything will be easy.
