I took a break for a while, but I’m certainly ready to get back to posting here. I just needed time to heal and recenter myself after surgery and get back on track with my life and my work. 

I wanted to discuss something that has been on my mind lately about web development and programming in general. The view of development work as some sort of out of reach inaccessible occult knowledge has hovered over the coding technology industry for many years now. While there has been a shift in that perspective in the past several years, the perceived inaccessibility of the tech field somehow remains. 

To be fair, computer systems evolved by getting smaller and increasing in complexity within a relatively short amount of time. The speed at which computers evolved far outpaced the available skill sets of those needed to work with them. However, now that more resources are available, many people have opted to either learn programming on their own or learn in a classroom environment. Either way, the programming path requires a lot of self-motivation and self-learning to build adequate skills; it’s not intuitive and doesn’t come easily to someone without practice and application. 

Some may catch on to programming more quickly than others, but due to its constant evolution, new information needs to be learned and new skills need to be built. The advantage that someone may have for being a programmer for X amount of years could be demolished by the advent of a new technology, programming language, framework, or library that many companies choose to switch to because of perceived efficiency and benefits. 

This is why I want to emphasize the importance of reminding yourself that programming  is a skill; it’s not magic. No matter how much you’ve learned at school or a boot-camp, when you’re faced with a new issue, you may not know exactly how to solve it. What matters is knowing where to go to get that missing information and communicating any possible gaps in knowledge with clients and teammates. Adequate and regular communication is an essential skill as a programmer. 

Some people seem to think that programming should be super easy at all times. There are tasks and issues that you come across that end up being easy to solve. People who have programmed for a considerable amount of time realize that this isn’t always the case. There are people out there who don’t have a full understanding of what it takes to program and see it as a magical ability. For example, non-programmer clients seem to think that vaguely describing a generic issue they’re having is enough for you to solve the issue off the top of your head. They get confused and frustrated when you ask for more details or say you’re unsure of something and need to do more research. Their idea is that since you’ve grasped this seemingly out of reach subject called programming you should know how to fix every technical problem including the ones outside of your field of focus.

You may know some bits and pieces from other fields, but those bits and pieces don’t equate to years of study and skill building that someone specific to web design, marketing, or cybersecurity has put in. Yes there has been some overlap with certain fields, like web development and web design for example, but it’s still okay to dedicate time and energy into one so that you can learn it deeply. I do understand how gaining skills for more than one field can make someone more job marketable though. If someone is a full stack developer or they do both web design and web development, they can seek a wider net of job positions.

At the end of the day, all of these pursuits require dedication and consistency with regard to building programming skills. With a field like technology, the learning never stops. That can be both exciting and intimidating. Why not embrace that dichotomy and do the best you can? There’s no magical level of programming that you reach where you stop and there’s nothing else to learn or do; you keep going, adapting, and transforming. I think that’s what attracts and keeps many people in the field of technology; the ability to be a part of it’s evolution.