Thread: Me as a programmer?

Well I'm pretty dumb, except on the odd occasion when I have a flash of genius (sometimes known as 'luck').

Don't belive a word of it, some of the stuff I have done recently is tough and its only gonna get harder. But I shall persevere, all good things come to those that wait and one day I'll have a programming job!

>I would love to be a programmer, but I don't
>know if I'm smart enough.

Everyone who loves to program can be a programmer.

>Everything I read that is written by professional
>programmers says that in order to be one, you
>must be super-smart.

As being a professional programmer I say: you don't need to be super-smart to be a programmer.

>Aren't there any dumb programmers out there?

Well, I don't think there are dumb programmers. Programming is quite a though task, but in my opinion one doesn't need to be super-smart.

Programmers who say you need to be very smart aren't very smart themselves and want to protect their position by making everyone afraid that programming is awful difficult.

>I really like programming, and I would love to be very good at it.

Take a good education, read books, do a lot of projects etc. In other words, just learn as much as you can and you'll be a good one. Note that a programmer needs to learn continuusly.

>I'm not cut out for it, I may as well just spend
>my tuition money on something that I would enjoy
>(going to school with a bunch of binge-drinking
>frat boys isn't something I'm excited about).

Sorry, I don't know what "binge-drinking frat boys" are. But do you really think that programmers are very different from other people? Most programmers are just normal people who also like going to a pub to drink all night, going to music festivals etc.

>So, do you have to be really intelligent to be a programmer
>(games), or do these people just like complimenting themselves?

They're just complimenting themselves.

Binge-drinking is when you basically drink until you physically have to stop.

A frat boy is a guy in a fraternity.

Most professsional programmers I work with are not super smart. To be successful, I have found that you need two basic qualities:

1. Be able to research
2. Be able to break down a problem/solution into its basic parts.

wasn't there a wise man who once said "genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration"?

I agree with VBProgrammer.

I study a lot and I'm always trying to learn something new, but I don't think I'm anywhere close to "super-smart" (which I'm taking to mean genius-level intelligence).

And I've been a professional programmer for 2 years now. Without ever finishing my Associates Degree.

I looked at companies in my area that I wanted to work for, talked to employees to find out what kinds of programs they had in development or needed and set out to write a sample (my digital resume', if you will). I presented the beta to a couple of managers and the rest is history.

I've been really blessed and I'm not saying everyone can go at it the way I did. I'm just saying that I was not super-smart, I was just super-determined.

Of course, I'd love to be a professional game developer (I mainly develop apps to manage data-warehousing, payroll systems, etc.), but I still love what I do and my boss allows me to work on games at work (since I've proven to him that I can learn things doing it that can help us optimize and improve our existing apps/systems).