Learning to Think Like a Programmer.

Posted by Felicia Smith on February 17, 2020

The thing about being brave enough to suck at something new is that you have to attempt to completely remove your ego.

This is a difficult task for me, I am always on one side or the other. It’s either, “Oh, I can do that, no problem!” or ,”there is no way that I could ever do that!”

I am a stay-at-home mom of three kids that I homeschool and travel the US with, I am a wife to my husband of 6 years, and now I am also taking this class to become a software engineer. It has forced me to learn things about myself that I wouldn’t have realized otherwise.

I am impatient and can get frustrated about little things quickly. I also have a lot of trouble with imposter syndrome. I know that I really enjoy learning to be a programmer but I also worry that I am not up to par or not capable of fully understanding what is going on. However, at the same time I have learned a lot about my determination, resilience, and eagerness to understand and grow as a programmer. There is nothing like the adrenaline rush of debugging for hours and finding an extra ‘/’ that is throwing everything off, so you fix it…. save it…. test it……… and OMG it works!! Pure joy and elation!

I am 2 1/2 months into this program and I have noticed how my thought process has started to shift. Instead of thinking about the problem itself I think about where did the problem originate, and run through steps, like I would with coding. Ultimately, I believe that is a good change and will assist me with my general problem solving skills throughout life.

I believe learning to think like a programmer has changed me as an inidividual and has increased my ability to easily navigate through day to day issues.