So you want to be a programmer? You want to write web and desktop applications. You want to develop software for the iPhone and the Android market You want to be a solutions provider to companies and individuals alike. Let me share tips that will help in your quest to be one of us – the geeky do-gooders! Like any other profession, IT requires determination, patience and willingness to persevere. The begining could be very challenging and intimidating because you might find it hard to figure out some ugly looking write-ups called “codes”. You would wonder why a line – JButton buttonObject = new JButton(“Click Me”) – should create a button with “Click Me” written on it in Java. You might even be thinking about wireless internet connections as some voodoo from the west. Being a PROGRAMMER or a SOFTWARE DEVELOPER is not rocket science. It’s not as hard as many make it seem. Those codes that scare you seem to me as the easiest part of our profession. Once you understand the structure, the rules and the syntax, basically the ‘logic’ of why codes are written in programming language, the rest is easy. Also, note that the more you code, the more you try out examples in the book you are reading, the eaiser it will be for you to master the coding techniques of the language. I remember my NIIT (an Indian school in Nigeria) days. I would always volunteer to do the coding, ever willing to help a mate identify errors in his/her code. By the end of the first semester, my coding skills was actually faultless. Once you master coding, the rest depends on how well you can think. Don’t wait for your instructor to tell you what to do. Go ahead and give yourself a pet project. It could be as simple a project as creating a database of students in your college with information on their names, grades and activities. Build it in bits. As your knowledge grows, let the software you are building grow in functionality as well. Who knows, it just might turn out to be a gold mine for you. In my case, the pet project I did at NIIT, Hospital Management System, kick started my career and put me on the IT radar in Nigeria. I travelled different states, met high-profile people, addressed a cross section of medical practitioners, all at the age of 22! Since then, it’s been one challenging project or the other.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 04:22:25 +0000
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