Are you smart enough to be a programmer?

[H. M. Nasim]

I often talk to non-programmers who think I must have to be extraordinarily clever to be a software developer, and that they could never do it. In my experience, people often underestimate their own ability. I thought I'd write down some heuristics to help you determine if you have the brains it takes to be a programmer.


If you can understand that monocultures lead to inferior products, you might be smart enough to be a programmer.

If you realize that if, upon receiving dozens of angry support tickets about how a product abused user trust, you responded by explaining how users are wrong to feel that way—if you realize that this would make you bad at your job, you might be smart enough to be a programmer.

If you can comprehend that by encoding what information is and is not relevant, all algorithms encode bias, you might be smart enough to be a programmer.

If you can accept humans are irrational, that you are included in this set, and that empirical data may reveal biases you are not consciously aware of, you might be smart enough to be a programmer.




http://www.virtuouscode.com/2015/11/23/are-you-smart-enough-to-be-a-programmer/