LearnWhat Learning to Program has Done For Me

   
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Spencer Fry
writes on September 6, 2013

Learning to program was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my adult life. I started to learn a little over a year and a half ago, in early 2012. I’d started and stopped a dozen times before I learned that learning to program requires an idea. Getting my feet wet as a programmer has opened so many doors for me. For example, it landed me my technical co-founder for Uncover. And although I consider myself a non-career programmer and an entrepreneur instead, I could always brush up on my skills and take a programming job if I needed to. We all know that programmers are in great demand.

More than anything else, learning to program has made me new friends. Since I learned, I’ve come to know new people through programming Meetups in NYC and through people reaching out to me from the articles I’ve written on Treehouse’s Blog and through my own website. Those emails have led to coffee meetings, Skype calls and long email threads. It always brightens my day to chat with a programmer.

I’ve also gained a lot more respect from my peers. Knowing how to build something gives you a lot of clout around the Product table. While my success in a non-technical role gave me a lot of leverage, being able to build what I’m talking about was the missing piece of the puzzle that I was looking for to reinforce my standing.

I love the hunger and curiosity of programmers. Their energy always motivates me to work a little harder and make smarter decisions. For programmers it’s not just getting the work done that counts; it’s also a matter of taking into consideration all of the job’s constraints and coming up with the best solution. There are few other professions in which people have a chance to develop radically new fundamental skills that sharpen their focus and teach this sort of realistic decision-making. If I had not learned to program, it would have been harder for me to apply the pragmatism inspired by limited options to my own work.

I believe that programmers look at the world differently. They question everything. Nothing is taken for granted. This can also lead to squabbles on Stack Overflow or GitHub about how best to implement something or what programming language is best for what, but we all do benefit from these disagreements. Since they are in the open, anyone can contribute and learn from them. The programming community has taught me to explain my through process in product decisions to more people in open discussion. We build better things when everyone has input.

Taken altogether, I think there are many life and work skills that can be learned from programming that don’t actually involve writing code. Programming is something everything should try. You will walk away looking at the world in a different light, as I have.

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7 Responses to “What Learning to Program has Done For Me”

  1. Thia Licona on September 15, 2013 at 1:53 am said:

    where is my previous comment? I signed up for Disqus and now I can’t find my comment!

  2. Sam Johnson on September 8, 2013 at 2:26 pm said:

    Great post, Ive been working with a star-up for the last year and have just recently been helping another one. I have always had a great passion for coding and now been learning bits on Treehouse the last few weeks and have learnt a tremendous amount! I hope in the next few years to look back and write something like this!

  3. Spencer, I always enjoy reading the posts that you contribute. I agree with you and believe that a huge part of what makes developers thought process what it is today is because of the openness of the community. I think this is due in large part because of the open source movement within the dev world and because so many developers today have such a positive belief for what the internet can be.

    • Thank you very much. That means a lot! I will continue to write them. 🙂

      I totally agree with you on that. The open source movement definitely helps. People involved with that community are always pushing programming into a better place.

  4. Awesome post. Right on the spot. 🙂

    Btw, “Programming is something everything should try” – everyone?

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