Do I want to be a programmer?

Post Reply New Topic

I've been hearing people say for years now that computer programming is a great job for people with aspergers. Do we have any programmers here? What kinds of things should I know/consider before paying for college classes?

Are you good at maths?
Can you handle working with absolutes?
Can you handle working with abstracts?
Can you handle working with binaries?
Can you handle frustration?
Do you know how to snatch the error code from the frame buffer without triggering a non-maskable interrupt?

I've never been good at math, but I have literally no idea about the rest of it.

Why do you want to be a programmer if you are a writer?

Because while I'd love to make my living as a writer, I may as well say I'm going to win the lottery. Publishing companies are accepting fewer and fewer new authors every year, and the ones they do accept more often than not have to support themselves with a full time job anyway. I don't plan to give up on that, but I need a more reliable source of income until/if that happens.

Fellow writer here, yes bloody nightmare jumping through those literary agents hoops and then not even getting a response. Nice website, I'm 9443 .

Yes, I need money to live on too, I'm a shop assistant. I haven't done every sh***y job out there, only the badly paid ones. There's a Neil Gaiman youtube vid where he talks about taking the path in life that takes you towards your mountain (your dream) and changing paths when the path moves you away from your mountain. Would spending a lot of time and money to be a programmer take you nearer or further away from your mountain?

The way I see it, it'd neither move me closer or farther away. Just like doing fraud prevention at the Walmart Home Office isn't moving me closer or farther away, it's just a way to pay the bills while I write in my spare time.

I hate to say this, but everything I've heard suggests that if you're weak at math, you won't be very good at programming. It seems to have more in common with the part of our brain that processes equations, not the part that processes sentence. They're just called "computer languages" as an allegory.

Wish I had something concrete to offer. Autistic and weak at math (I'm both autistic and dyscalculic) SUCKS.

I can do basic math just fine. From the research I've done, that's all you need. And even then, they say when you're working for a company that most of those problems are done for you, and you just need to paste them in.

How much you need maths depends an awful lot on what kind of things you'll be coding; I would say that it's the application of logic and the ability to structure things which are more critical. What I suggest is to get stuck into trying it before shelling out any money. All of the tools that you need for starting out can be downloaded at zero cost, and there are plenty of online sources for tutorials and background reading (being able to use such sources is a key coding skill in itself). Don't get hung up on which language to start out with at this stage; you can get an idea of whether you grasp the fundamental principles with almost any language, but I'd go with an interpreted language (e.g. Ruby/Python) rather than a compiled one (e.g. C/C++) to begin with as they're easier to set up and they give you quicker feedback about how you're doing.

This, however, is essential, and no computer science lecturer or coding guru will be able to teach you it!

Your best bet would be to just start off.
The frustration part is true.

I'm trying out some lesson on Codecademy and they seem to be going all right, but I'm having trouble figuring out this problem. I've looked at the solution and then gone back and retyped what it showed me, but it keeps saying something is wrong with it. Can someone help?