So, You Want to Be a Coder?: The Ultimate Guide to a Career in Programming, Video Game Creation, Robotics, and More! (Be What You Want) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane (J.M.) Bedell spent her childhood daydreaming in hayfields, talking to cows, and finding her heroes between the pages of books. She is a full-time writer of historical fiction and nonfiction for children. She received her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University in Minnesota. She lives with her husband and two Siberian huskies in Portland, Oregon. Visit her at JMBedell.com.

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So, You Want to Be a Coder?

Entering a Coding Career

Question: How do you define hardware?

ANSWER: IT’S THE PART OF A COMPUTER THAT YOU CAN KICK!

Congratulations! You made an excellent choice. You picked up and opened a book that I hope will introduce you to a career that is exciting and challenging. And well paid too!

When you think about writing code, you probably dream about designing an action-packed video game riddled with warriors, heroes, monsters, or trolls; building a robot that can walk the dog and take out the trash; or developing the machines that will put a human colony on Mars. Any one of these dreams is within your grasp if you decide that becoming a programmer is the right career for you.

Today, a large part of our world is built on code. From the first computers that could add and subtract numbers, to the code that directed the Philae lander to set down on a comet that was flying at eleven thousand miles per hour through space, the people who write computer code are the driving force behind new innovations around the world.

In our internet age, every company from food producers to sportswear manufacturers is a technical company. Businesses need websites to promote their products. Banks need new ways to protect their customers’ business transactions. Governments need help organizing all the information that comes to them each day. And everyone wants their identities protected, their packages delivered fast, and their movies streaming without a glitch.

There are toy race cars that use artificial intelligence to compete without drivers! With no tracks and no one at the controls, these cars sense what your car is doing, think for themselves, and race against you. Anki cofounder and CEO Boris Sofman said about the Drive cars, “They sense the environment five hundred times per second. They have fifty megahertz computers inside of them. They understand where they are and they communicate.”1

What career links all of these needs? You guessed it! Coding. And because the demand for coders is growing fast, there aren’t enough talented, trained people to fill the need. That’s where you fit in. If this is the right career for you, the jobs are out there, waiting to be filled.

Five Traits You Need to Succeed as a Coder

Entering the world of coding begins with an understanding of what it takes to be a coder or computer programmer. As a coder, you should love to solve problems, revel in discovering new ways of doing things, and question everything. You must be a good listener and know how to manage your time. Here are a few important traits that every programmer needs.

If you look at a line of code and are scared because you don’t understand it, have courage! You aren’t alone. Like learning any new language, you start with the basics and build on that knowledge until you can speak and write it fluently. Courage will help you put your fears aside and embrace the trial-and-error process essential to learning any new skill.

You are a creative being. If your creative side leans toward solving problems and looking at things in unique and different ways, programming might be right for you. When writing code, there are many different ways to solve a problem and get the job done. If you love to tackle problems and find solutions, you can use your talent to produce efficient, graceful, and easy-to-maintain programs.



In 1949, Popular Mechanics predicted, “Where a calculator like ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only one 1 1/2 tons.”2 What they couldn’t predict was the invention of the transistor and the integrated circuit, which both drastically shrunk the size of a computer.

Make no mistake. You must be able to think logically to work as a coder. Computers follow basic rules of logic in order to do their job, so good coders are logical thinkers. They approach each problem with one thought in mind: there is a solution; I just have to find it. To do that, they break a problem down into smaller pieces, and by following a set of programming rules, they build and rebuild their program until the problem is solved.

10xers is the name given to coding superstars. They know how to write excellent code fast! These superstars can write up to ten times the amount of code as their average coworkers.

Most programmers are engineers at heart. You need to be passionate about building things, taking things apart, questioning processes, and solving problems. Coders’ passion for discovery can leave others bewildered. But it is passion that keeps them working late into the night and on weekends while others play golf or stroll along the beach. Without passion, the process of learning and writing code could become overwhelming.

Patience is what is needed to overcome the difficulty of learning a computer language. If you aren’t patient, your desire to learn will quickly fade. Like learning to play a musical instrument or write a good story, patience is necessary for success. Even when passion fades and frustration sets in, patience will carry you through.

Computer, the Word

In 1613, the word computer entered the English lexicon. It was borrowed from the French word compute, which in turn was borrowed from the Latin word computare, which means “to count, sum up; to reckon.”

Originally, the word computer was used to describe a person who worked with numbers. Then, sometime in the late 1800s, machines began to do the number-crunching work faster and more accurately than any person. The word quickly moved from describing a person to describing a machine.





Charles Babbage (1791–1871), Father of Computing

Charles Babbage was born in England on December 26, 1791. When Charles was around eight years old, he became deathly ill with a fever. To aid in his recovery, his parents sent him to study in southern England, but his continuing poor health forced him to return home to be privately tutored.

Under the guidance of his tutors, Babbage studied many subjects, including continental mathematics and algebra. In 1811, he entered Trinity College. While at Trinity, he cofounded the Analytical Society, which promoted continental mathematics and worked to steer the college away from teaching Newtonian mathematics, which was the popular theory at the time.

In 1816, he was elected into the Royal Society of London, a society for those who contributed to the improvement of knowledge in mathematics, engineering science, and medical science. In 1820, he helped found the Royal Astronomical Society.

Babbage’s Difference Engine, invented in 1821, was the first machine that could perform simple mathematical tasks with speed and accuracy. With the help of government funding, he built the machine, and when it was finished, it became the first successful automatic calculator. Unfortunately, his funding ended in 1832, and a decade later, the government ended the project.

After the Difference Engine, Babbage devoted his time and...