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Hey, what's up? John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
I thought I'd do a little bit of a different video today and I would talk about what it
was that I wish I knew when I started my career as a software developer. So what are the things
that I wish that I knew when I started out as a software developer that would have helped
me? I started out sort of on a rocky path to software
development. When I was really young I had gotten into playing multi-user dungeons, these
MUDS. It's a precursor to like EverQuest and World of Warcraft and I wanted to create my
own MUD. What I did was I found the source code that you could download and I found someone
that would let me host the MUD on their Linux server and I started hacking around in this
C code that I knew nothing about. Those were really my first real programming experience.
Before then I had worked on an Apple 2E, I've been introduced to that in school and did
some basic programming, but I was learning some hardcore C code there. I had no idea.
I had no book. I was just learning C from just looking at the source code, to be honest
with you, there was no Google to search for things at that time. I kind of figured it
out. At that time, I believe that it would be so
difficult to write my own application. I believed that there was so much to learn. I believed
that it was impossible for me to write an application on my own. I didn't even realize
that I could probably buy some books on C. I wish when I started out that what I would
have figured out was that it wasn't going to be—that basically it was going to take
a while but then I would get it. This is another thing I think that that I would say would
this is. From there, after I developed with the MUD
I went to school. I got my—I went to college to get my CS degree and the Java class I took,
the first Java class almost made me quit programming because I just hated it. It was just all like
writing loop iterators and writing sorting algorithms, kind of the basic stuff, but it
wasn't fun. It wasn't creating the games. I wanted to be a game programmer. I wanted
to do that. Thinking about those and those experiences
and how it almost caused me to not become a programmer, it sort of discouraged me from
the beginning. I didn’t realize what it was going to take. I didn't realize what was
going to happen and that it would suddenly click for me. I guess that's probably the
biggest thing that I would say is that I wish when I was a software developer that someone
had told me, that someone had said, "Hey John, you know, here's the thing. All you've got
to do is you've just got to keep learning. You've just got to keep on reading. You've
just got to keep on writing. You can start writing an application right away. You don't
have to just do practice drills. You can start by creating some small application and you
can create it on your own. If you do, eventually it's just going to click." Because I remember
there was a point when I was learning C++, when I was really learning it, and I was going
through the book and I was just going through the exercises I just was not getting it. It
just didn't make sense to me. Object oriented programming didn't make sense to me and I
was really frustrated. Actually, I gave up a few times, to be honest with you, I didn't
totally give up, but I would waste time, I would procrastinate and I wasn’t as motivated
and wasn’t as driven because I felt like I was never going to get it, and even if I
did get it I wasn't going to be able to build an application on my own.
But eventually, what ended up happening was that one day, it seemed like one day, but
probably it was more of a progression, it just seemed to click for me. I got it. Object-oriented
programming made sense, C++ made sense and I was able to do it. I wish that I would have
known. I wish someone would have told me that, "Hey, if you just stick with it long enough,
if you just keep on going at it every day that you're eventually going to get there
and you're going to be able to build an application. You're going to be able to do this stuff."
Because I think I spent a good amount of the early part of my career without the confidence,
feeling like there's always this super high level and I was way down here and I didn't
realize that it wasn't that big of a gap. The things that I thought were impossible,
like creating your own complete application, it wasn't that hard. It wasn’t that it was
easy, but it was way more achievable than I expected.
Because I had that limiting mindset I never tried to—I could have become an entrepreneur
earlier. I could have started building my own software and selling that software and
I could have been building applications. I could have advanced my career much faster,
but I didn't realize that. The other thing I would say also is that one
of the mistakes that I was making early on was I was trying to learn a bit about everything.
I was reading fanatically, but I was reading all these different books. I'd go to the bookstore,
at Barnes & Noble and I would look at the computer section, computer programming section
and I would just pick books, stuff that interested me and learn that stuff instead of focusing
on one thing. To sum it up I would say this, what do I wish
I would have known when I started my software development career? One, that it would take
time and that if I just stuck to it it would eventually click. There would be that moment
of clicking where you'd go from feeling you just don't get it, and you don't understand
it to it just becoming very, very clear. Two, stop being scatter shot. I wish I would have
known that I I would have focused on one technology, one thing, and just worked hard at that one
thing instead of being all over the place and just reading a bunch of books instead
of actually writing applications, I would have got advanced much, much faster. The third
thing I would say is that if I would have known, I wish I would have known that I could
actually start creating applications, that I didn't need to—it didn't need to take
me 5 years before I could actually—I could do that from day 1. I could create simple
applications and I'd be able to build my own software and I could actually become an entrepreneur
earlier. Those would be the big 3 that I would say. I mean there's a lot of lessons I could
give you that I wish I would have known when I started out, but those are the big 3 I could
think of right now. If you like this video, I got a request of
you which is to go ahead and click that Subscribe button if you haven't already. I would love
to have you as a subscriber. I would love to hear your comments on what were the things
that you started out with or that you would have wished you had known when you started
out as a software developer. Leave a comment below. By the way, if you like this T-shirt,
go ahead and click me and you can get your own T-shirt, even up to 3XL if you need a
3XL. All right, I'll talk to you next time. Take care.