I was just skimming a book about Python and I found a rather interesting quote:
“Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You’re much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.
People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines.”
Looking at salaries for developers as well as reading the experiences of coders in technology companies this really seems to ring true. I’m the other kind, I’ve picked up a bit of code in order to do my day job which is really focused on collecting and analysing user experience data. And actually I do get respect and I have been able to do a lot of new things that nobody was doing before I got started.
Quite inspiring words, really. I feel a renewed urge to develop my programming skills within the current role that I have to try to push things even further and will stop daydreaming about what it would be like to be a “real” programmer.