So... You wanna be a programmer.

Well, boot camp is over and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I'm glad to be home, on the other I'll miss Don and class in general. What did I learn? Well, there isn't really enough time for me to sit here and expound on that subject so I'll just say that I learned more than I bargained for. After this training I see that being a programmer is more than just sitting down and hacking out lines of code. Programming is about offering a service. And anytime you offer any kind of service you have to do the following: working with people (communication is probably more important than being a senior programmer), planning (no more of this: "Okay, I've got my problem so let's see what code I can throw out there to figure it out."), and much more.

What does it take to be a good programmer and not just a programmer? Well, in school I was completely naive in this area. Given an assignment I would spend hours just staring at a blank screen hoping that the code would miracuolously type itself. Now, I think that to be a good programmer you just have to have the proper resourses (and not to mention being able to work with people). Google has become a good friend of mine recently. If I face a problem I'm not sure of how to approach then off to the WWW I go. Some students think this could border on cheating, but don't be mistaken. I'm not suggesting copying code fromt he web (cheating), I'm saying find a place you trust to give valid information about your particular subject and use it. In the real world you aren't going to know every key word or syntax, you'll have reference materials on hand for when you need them. The internet should be one of those resources.

Well, that about does it for now. I close with this:
-Forrest won the best blog award (computer Whiz to him).
-Team Ninja won last weeks programming project by the skin of our teeth, Freebirds did an awesome job on their project, we just got lucky.
-Thursday is the official first day at The Company, looking forward to that, but glad we got a break because I have got to get things organized at home before getting busy.

Until Next Time.
Les