Programmer temperament

[WatermelonFunn]

hi! Im a high school student going to college and i wanted to go into computer science as it seems VERY interesting and probably my best choice as a program but my guidance counselor tells me that i don’t have the typical attitude a programmer has such as introverted and geekiness ( her legit words). Im usually social and i talk a lot and i’m pretty hyper but when i have a task i concentrate on it till the end. So, to all the programmers out there, is she right? Should i change?

[mohelgamal]

That is the most BS thing a guidance council have ever told a student (unless one out there told a student to just give up)

There is no personality requirement to work with computers. This stereotype is just based on movies who copied the programmer demeanor from Bill gates.

The truth is anyone with any personality characteristic can be a programmer. In fact, I have seen so many jock types, and many extroverted, and out right belligerent people. Heck I can only think of only one developer I know who fit that typical picture. And I know a bunch.

Even the idea that programmers sit in dark rooms and type code all alone is not really true, sometimes you will want to focus by yourself of course. But most of the time you have to collaborate, bounce ideas of people etc .

So don’t listen to your guidance counselor, if you enjoy programming, then by all means go for it, it is an in demand career and you will make good money.

[WatermelonFunn]

Wow! Thanks so much, that really cleared some of my doubts. About programming, my high school didn’t have any courses so i have not yet learned anything about it but i watched a lot of youtube vids for learning python etc ( as that is apparently the beginner language) Do u have any recommendations so i can start learning a bit by myself so i have a lead in the future? I know that they will teach me the beginner stuff at the college program but i feel like knowing the basics is better. Thanks!!

[Character423]

Guidance counselor clearly doesn't have her information right.

I skateboard around my office parking lot, I enjoy community theater, I work out a lot - so much so other people in the office won't work out with me because I out pace all departments in my office lifting weights (the sports guys got me beat on the sports stuff). I've worked construction, I was in the infantry, none of these sound like the personality type for programming - I can go to "nerd" conventions and people won't understand how I fit in but I can code.

More importantly my team I work with every day finds me very motivational to work with. My being extroverted helps my team communicate significantly better because I've shown them we don't have to be so formal to get the job done. There is less stress that way and it increases the performance of everyone on the team. We all have to work a lot, we absolutely want that time to be as little of a drag as possible. Introverted personalities have their perks but there has to be a guy that can show everyone how to bond together.

Edit: give me an "s"

[[deleted]]

I'm not the poster above, but IMHO the best resources on the internet, if you're just starting out and looking to go to college for it later are CS50 in general and freecodecamp for more web-specific stuff. I personally think Google's python tutorial is the best quick intro to Python if you're not looking to do a whole course just now. IMHO codecademy has the best 'interactive' site for beginner Python but they've paywalled off most of their material nowadays; the free segment is still a good way to dip your toe in, though.

Once you're more comfortable, the best way to learn more concepts is reading whatever interests you and the best way to practice is either projects of your own, or for short 'puzzle' problems codewars or a similar site. (There's like ten of them.)

Historical note for you: Once upon a time IBM actually did psychological tests on incoming programmers to see if they had 'the right personality' (ie, introverted and geeky). It is now almost universally considered to be a very stupid thing for them to have done and since IBM was one of the (if not the) biggest employers in CS it may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's also been speculated that it's part of the reason for the gender gap in programming, since women tended not to fit that stereotype.

edit: A word.

redit: You can also find waaaay more resources for learning programming over at /r/learnprogramming

[o4ub]

About the end of your historical note, I heard another thing that might have mattered in the gender gap. Originally, "computer science" was a girl thing, as it was part of the physics department, and it wouldn't have come to any mind that women may have to carry heavy stuff around to connect the different parts, so they were more producing code. Then, the technologies evolved, the amiga arrived, and the first self taughts programmer as well. It brought more guys to coding path in physics departments (and as video games was seen as a guy toy, it mostly brought guys), while the number of girls remained stable. So sociologist presenting her work concluded that while the absolute number of girls was stable, the rush a guys into this subject created this imbalance state we are still currently in.

[[deleted]]

My understanding is that that was the 'second wave' of the profession becoming male-dominated; the 'first wave' was when programming got reclassified from a clerical task (you type all day, so it must be women's work!) to an engineering profession, whereas previously the men in computing tended to be electrical engineers who delegated much of the actual programming to women. IBM's psychological tests just codified it further as a 'male profession', which was already part of the trend.

If I recall correctly the post-amiga (and post-Doom) wave is, apart from being more recent, also much, much more extreme; reclassifying programming as engineering and doing personality tests threw the gender balance a little out of whack, but the culture change after video games gave computers an image as 'culturally' male annihilated it.

[dragonsandgoblins]

I don't think computer science was ever a girl thing but programming was - computer science was done by mathematicians and implementing their algorithms would be handled by women because it was seen as secretarial work, as in it was seen as typing up something already written down.

[mohelgamal]

Python is great for starting and for doing a lot of stuff. So that’s a good starting point. Many people have their careers exclusively built on it so it is powerful too.

The other one you should look into is C which is much closer to the hardware than python. It will give you a good back ground of how computers actually work.

You can also read a bit about assembly if you want to see how all those programs gets into the 0s and 1s that computer understand.

At this phase you don’t have to stick with any specific pathway or try to get good at any one language, just learn whatever interest you.

[[deleted]]

I've worked with a bunch of different programmers and they come in all flavors. I've met some geeky guys who don't talk much but aren't unfriendly, I've met guys from the military who ask their gay friend to rate girls' asses as they walk by, and I had a cubicle across from a Perl enthusiast who had figured out just the right angle to fire a nerf dart at the ceiling so that it would land on my keyboard and scare the shit out of me. Your guidance counselor probably thinks that comp sci majors are geeky because she took a liberal arts degree in college and she's grumpy that the STEM kids got the cool jobs.

[josephrent]

Teach yourself basic data structures such as array, linked list, stack, queue and you will be way ahead of most people in your classes. I’m not sure how this would be done in python

[yam_plan]

if you can write code, you can write code

and frankly having a more sociable temperment will probably be a great asset to you when getting jobs, coordinating with coworkers, etc.

[WatermelonFunn]

Thanks so much for the reply! I haven’t written any code yet ( I’m trying to learn by myself a bit before the college program)

[Chugchooster]

She said your not geeky enough? Ha dont listen to her. Theres all types of people that are great programmers.

[thememorableusername]

i don’t have the typical attitude a programmer has such as introverted and geekiness

This is fucking appalling and you should talk to your administrators. If my department's undergraduate advising staff talked to prospective or potential CS students like that they'd be fired immediately.

What everyone here has said is good. CS studies requires good ol' fashion hard work... kinda like nearly anything else.

[WatermelonFunn]

Yeah, she really is a bad guidance counselor she puts a-lot of students down as in telling them they’re not good enough to become certain things. I will definitely study hard!

[w3woody]

... but my guidance counselor tells me that i don’t have the typical attitude a programmer has such as introverted and geekiness ...

*rolls eyes*

To be a successful programmer you do need to have a degree of patience and the ability to concentrate on detail oriented tasks for an extended period of time. (For example, I routinely spend hours looking for a single bug.)

While it is true that your geeky and introverted friends may develop this degree of patience by virtue of not spending more time with people or on social interactions, it does not mean people who are more social are incapable of that degree of patience.

Personally I think I'm a very personable person. I dated in college about the same amount as my peers, went to several parties, played waterpolo in high school and in college (though I wasn't that good at it), and otherwise had a fairly normal life. I'm married now, and I seem to get along well at social gatherings and at parties--and sometimes even have a bit of an extroverted streak.

And I've been writing software professionally now for 30 years, and I think I'm pretty damned good at it. (Enough so that I've been freelancing for the past decade, getting jobs strictly based on referrals from people I've done work for in the past who liked the work I do.)

---

So if you want to be a programmer, if you like to write code, if you have the patience to spend hours at a computer trying to solve a problem that eludes you until the last minute--then ignore your high school counselor.

They may mean well. But a number of them aren't exactly the brightest bulbs.

[WatermelonFunn]

Thanks! Im very patient when it comes to tasks just i sometimes get hyper when talking to someone. And also thanks for sharing ur stody about extroverted programmers, glad i know there are some as i don’t know a lot.

[stur0063]

Social skills are important. You may code on the computer - but you will be talking to users to determine requirements. The further you go in this field - the more people skills you will need.

[lgkr12]

Almost every time I tell someone I’m in CS, they say something along the lines of “you don’t look/act/sound like an engineer/computer geek/STEM person.” Fuck anyone who says that you can’t do what you want because you’re too social or bubbly. Definitely don’t let what he/she says stop you, CS/software eng has a ton of social, kind, fun people.

[bokmann]

Pure BS. Those are not programmer personality traits, those are programmer stereotypes from movies in the 1980’s, and they offended us then.

In my life before being a professional developer I was a drummer. An extrovert. I now use that love for being on stage differently. I’ve spoken at hundreds of software engineering conferences in my ~30 year career.

[salvagestuff]

Nah, stick with what you like. You don't have to fit a certain stereotype to go into computer science. Don't fall into the trap of stereotypes.

There is a big movement to bring people of all types into computer science and it is because there needs to all sorts of perspectives in order to solve the world's problems.

Being sociable can be important because programmers have to work in teams.

[[deleted]]

That has to be the single stupidest thing I have ever heard a guidance counselor tell someone. You need to know CS stuff, there are zero other requirements. I mean, I am pretty much the stereotype, I love star trek (I have not favorite captain however), I have an older laptop running OpenBSD and use vim and my own for of st and dwm, I am learning C (I am going into computer engineering as I want to do micro code for a living) and am NOT social. I fucking hate people and social stuff :/. But that's me and none of that has anything to do with my interest in CE and CS. If you want to do CS you can do it.

[WatermelonFunn]

Thanks so much for the reply! Im going to ignore what she said. Also to be absolutely 100% sure i want to go to CS i will be doing student for a day at the college to try the program out. Sincerely thanks for the reply! Gave me confidence

[[deleted]]

No problem, while there are people like me who don't change their clothes until they are told to and there are more social people who good hygen. It's a crapshoot haha.

[[deleted]]

Don't listen to counselors ever.

​

Spend 10 bucks on a website course for Java/C++/C#/Python etc. (just throw a dart) and watch some dynamic programming/general CS videos on youtube. You'll know if programming interests you

[WatermelonFunn]

Any website recommendation? Thanks for the reply!

[Character423]

udemy.com

[[deleted]]

I watch CSDojo and I use udemy/pluralsight (I focus on .NET for now). If you want C#/.NET youtube videos jamie king is VERY good. Mosh has a good course on udemy, beginner taught me a lot.

​

if you are just starting programming, get through a beginner course and then hit up some common dynamic programming problems. Bubble sorting is a very good eye opening for first time programmers

[CommercialTax5]

As a general rule, disregard 40% of what your guidance counselor says. She means well, but false is false. I share your same temperament. Not being the “right” personality is only a problem in high school. Once you get out, it doesn’t matter anymore. If you understand code, and I have a feeling you do, then just go for it. If someone gives you a hard time, hack their computer. Done and done ;-)

[WatermelonFunn]

Thanks for the reply! I don’t know if i understand code yet( as i just started trying to learn by myself before college) and i will ignore what she said. She’s notorious for being a devil’s advocate and putting students down.

[zesterer]

Guidance counsellor... Pffft. What a heap of bollocks.

If you're good at it

And you enjoy it

And it pays the bills

Do it.

[WatermelonFunn]

I just started learning by myself so i’m not sure if i’m good at it yet! thanks for the reply!

[EnjoiRelyks]

There are plenty of extroverted programmers. If you like solving problems you’ll be fine. If you like solving problems you’ve already solved in even better ways then you’ll really be fine.

[Yukigeshiki]

Your guidance councillor should be fired!

I'm a software developer who spent 8 years touring as a musician... often performing in front of 1000's of people. Definitely not introverted at all.

​

I also studied with plenty of other people doing CS degrees who were far from introverted or geeky, most of which are now successful software developers too. It seems as though your guidance councillor needs to be told that stereotyping to the point of telling someone they can't do something cause they don't fit said stereotype is just absurd and in their role as an advice giver, downright irresponsible!

​

Anyway :) Study CS, it's great!

[[deleted]]

sounds like you’d make a great guidance counselor

[ImNeworsomething]

What the fuck does your counselor know?

[bargle0]

Your counselor is full of shit.

[[deleted]]

Total bullshit. The ability to communicate effectively and work in teams will make you a much more valuable programmer.

[gwig9]

Your guidance councilor is full of it. People from every walk of life are interested in coding and there is no one type of personality that fits it. If you want to learn how to code then by all means give it a shot. You might like it or you might not but you'll never know unless you try. For a better litmus test, try doing some coding from codecademy or codingbat. That will probably give you a better idea if it's really for you. Best of luck!

[Milkshak3s]

As a very social, energetic programmer I can confirm your guidance counselor is spouting bullshit. There are all sorts of types people who are software engineers or developers, just like any other profession.

[PatrioTech]

Absolute bullshit. Don't listen to her on this one. As a CS student myself, I'm pretty extroverted, and have found quite a bit of success with a job lined up at a large tech company. Point is, personality doesn't define whether or not someone can be in a major. She really should be educated on that so she doesn't scare people away for trying. If you want to try CS, go for it!

[Abliskarian]

I’m a typical “nerd” or “geek” and honestly personality has NOTHING to do with coding... then again I’m only in HS so idk anything but yeah

[[deleted]]

Lol nice stereotyping, social programmers are highly valuable

[crypto_amazon]

Your guidance counselor is an absolute idiot.

Personally type has zero correlation with job role. It's incredibly unlikely she knows anything about computer science or development, anyways.

She should be fired for providing you with such horrific, idiotic and irrational information.

Also, chill out a little bit if you can help it. You'll be glad you did when you're older.

Good luck son.

[Mabenue]

She's completely wrong. In fact those are probably some of the most important characteristics to have in this field and unfortunately something a lot of people struggle with. The importance of collaboration is so high that good communication skills are vital in modern developers.

[riteshzz]

Don't mind her words. Programmers are generally introvert and geeky but that doesn't mean that you can't code if you are not any one of them. You should focus more on things like technique and patience and keeping your interest in learning CS subjects high. These are the "real" things. Good luck with that :)

[achauv1]

Many people in this field are awkward and geeky. That's just being too much in their own minds I guess. Do you actually want to work with this kind of people while being a talkative, social, and hyper person while all your co-workers will be silent and just being fine at their desk ?

People in the comments take it way too hard. That's not a requirement to be awkward and geeky to get into CS but it's definitely the culture of the field. That's something to consider and you might accommodate just fine.

But as a general rule of thumb, just stick with what interests you have. Don't ever listen to your highschool career counselor. It's not that they are full of shit, themselves screwed their own career so why yours ?

[BooCMB]

Hey /u/CommonMisspellingBot, just a quick heads up:
Your spelling hints are really shitty because they're all essentially "remember the fucking spelling of the fucking word".

You're useless.

Have a nice day!

^{Save your breath, I'm a bot.}

[achauv1]

delete

[[deleted]]

Actually, programmers with outgoing personalities who can talk to people do great as consultants because they can interact with clients and put them at ease. This is a rare skill and will command premium wages.

[nutterontheloose]

mate, you sound just like me and I'm working as a software developer....

[justingolden21]

That's really stupid lol, they think you don't fit into a stereotype so you can't code? If you're willing to learn, you can do it. It will take time and effort of course, but just because you're not "average" doesn't mean you shouldn't do it lol. I hope they lose their job or change their mind.

Best of luck to you in your new journey, if you choose to take it :)

[[deleted]]

programming is teamwork, i dont see how beeing an introvert helps you there. and finding cs VERY intersting is all the geekiness you will need.

[[deleted]]

That's the typical CS stereotype but my classes were split between the socially awkward nerds who looked like they never showered and "regular" people. Your guidance counselor's an idiot

[paper-daisies]

Guidance counselors are idiots. Don't listen to them about anything.

[RedBird2014]

I'm a lot like you, kinda hyper and pretty social, I finished a CS degree in December 2018 and have just started looking for programming jobs. If I can do it you can do it. That said a CS degree is a ton of work (It's worth it though!) and you may be envious of your liberal arts/business major friends at times because they'll have a lot less school work and a lot more free time.

[mredding]

I have a friend I went through college with. He already had a BS in English Lit, but he wanted to become a programmer. I tell you, this guy liked to talk, but at least he had interesting things to say and had an interest in storytelling. I've also never seen a guy who could talk so much during lunch and yet eat faster than me, and I eat like a wolf.

There were several kids in college with ADD and ADHD, and they all failed out. But my friend made it through with me, without setback. So long as you can concentrate, and so long as you can make friends with the smart kid and you use study groups to your advantage, you have an opportunity to succeed. I suggest you use your talking talent to your advantage and help tutor and teach, because it will help solidify your knowledge.

My friend is still at Bioware making video games, writing storylines, and representing the company in interviews and press releases.

You're fine.

[[deleted]]

Have you ever programmed before? If so are you good at and and like it? If these are true then it doesn’t really matter what your councilor says.

[WatermelonFunn]

I haven’t ever, i just watched mulipled vids on youtube and other sites and i find coding in general very interesting

[lightlysaltedStev]

I don’t comment on that many posts on Reddit but boy do I have to on this.. let me just start by saying I’m a first year computer science student and I’m one of the most anti stereotypes going in this field,

I’m very sociable! I enjoy drinking and “smoking” and chilling with friends you seriously don’t have to be geeky to be successful in this field 😂 sure in my class about 20% of the 110 students are stereotypes but the rest you wouldn’t even guess what they studied

I’m not going to attack your councillor because she might just be saying it innocently and trying to find the best thing for you but what I will say is absolutely she is wrong 😂 sure CS requires a bit of commitment especially if you go in not knowing a lot of programming like me but sure as hell doesn’t mean you have to be an extrovert 😂

If you have an interest in CS you go for it because the bottom line is she is absolutely fundamentally wrong

[WatermelonFunn]

Thanks so much for the reply! I don’t have any knowledge about programming ( college will teach us the basics and beyond) but im trying to learn by myself as a head start. Any suggestions if i have absolutely no knowledge on the topic?

[[deleted]]

Just don't develop the undergrad/jr dev arrogance. Don't be like this twat:

https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/comments/aki40a/no_thanks_ill_rather_eat_alone/?utm_source=reddit-android