Why you should not learn to program?

This may seem as a weird first post on website dedicated to software developement. After all, I am software developer myself and this seems like my job to have as much people as possible learning inner workings of programs. However, I believe it is important to address issues, that come from learning programming and why it is not for everybody.

In this article I will go over things that may help you avoid pain of doing something you are not really into.

I should not go further without saying, that even if you do not want to become a software developer, it helps in everyday life to have some degree of computer literacy, with which my website can help as well.

Without prolonging let’s get to reasons as to why you shouldn’t learn coding.

1. You are not into computers.

This one is quite obvious, if you are not into computers, thats it, don’t proceed further (unless you want to see if there are some parts about computers, that you would start liking, if you were to understand them better).

2. You will do it only for the money.

If there is no other reason for you to learn programming than to make money. Don’t bother, you will get burned out quickly and will be wondering why you wasted so much of your precious time on something that you don’t enjoy. It requires considerable amount of time to get good in it, a lot of sitting down and a lot of mental effort. Even though software development pays well, it does not mean that it is the only well paying thing in the world. It is much better to find something you enjoy much more, even if it brings a bit less money. Peace of mind is more important than money.

3. It is hard.

There is no hiding it. Software development to reach a level at which you can comfortably build products, requires a lot of work and considerable level of skill. Some people will never reach this level, some will reach it after putting long hours into honing their skills and some will be at good level withing few months. It all boils down to your talent, work ethic and being able to find good resources to accelerate your growth as a software developer. As with every skill in life, at some tasks you will be good and in some not, that is fine.

4. You lack patience.

This one applies for anything you want to learn, but when it comes to programming, it is double of patience needed. You will experience a lot of bugs in your code, a lot of errors. Oftentimes you will have to go line by line, to see where you made a mistake, you will spend endless hours on forums searching for answers, why something doesn’t work (even though it is obvious, once you will see the solution). If you are not patient, and do not want to spend long hours sitting in place, making code and then looking why it is broken, just close your laptop, spend some time outside and forget that you once wanted to learn coding :).

Conclusions

As you can see there are some reasons as to why you should not start learning programming. They may seem obvious. Yet, many people see coding though pink glasses, seeing only software developers effortlessly building apps, websites and products, earning good money, overlooking sheer amount of work and discipline needed to acquire those skills. It often takes years.

I hope you enjoyed reading and that I didn’t discourage you too much. In next article I will go over reasons why you should learn to code, to counterbalance negativity of this post.