15 Reasons You’ll Love Programming

Programming exploded in popularity these last few years. A lot of that hype is from the prospect of landing a high paying job. But there are so many other benefits of programming. It can empower you to change the world and even rewire your brain.

Balance between theory & practice

Knowledge is power… so they say. But is it? You can be extremely knowledgeable about many different subjects and still be a complete failure. Just take a look at most college graduates these days. Knowledge is only useful if you can put it into practice. There needs to be a “rubber meets the road” moment.

We collectively waste thousands of hours memorizing information that has no practical application. As a history buff, I can be honest about the fact that most of what I learned doesn’t actually help me. Some history is great, for sure. I think viewing the world through the eyes of other people at different times makes you more well-rounded. But after a while, there’s a diminishing return on investment. I may as well have spent my time memorizing jeopardy questions.

But that’s why programming is different. Everything is abstract. But at the same time, it is practical. You can use these abstract theories to create a machine learning algorithm that changes the world tomorrow. Or, build a website that millions of people find useful.

Programming is the perfect balance between abstract theory and practical application. There’s never been and never will be anything quite like it.

The true beauty of programming is that you can have a “rubber meets the road” moment at your home computer. Does the website work? Yes? Deploy it so people can use it!

Most careers & activities require a lot more to get started. You have to spend a long time in medical school before they let you perform an operation on someone. There is no “self-taught doctor.” And if your doctor told you he learned everything he knows by Googling stuff, you’d probably leave the hospital.

You are constantly humbled

One of the most important things in programming is to pack up your ego and put it away in a box. There’s no place for it here.

You can be the senior developer at a FANG company. There are still going to be times you have to Google something ridiculously simple. Sure, some developers get big egos. But it will not be long before they are humbled by a typo in their code or forgetting the syntax of their primary programming language. I think this is what makes programming so amazing.

Programming is inherently anti-hierarchy.

A JR developer can correct someone with a decade of experience. Now, compare that with other fields. Would you ever see a street cop correct the mayor? Probably not. But in programming, that’s commonplace. It’s a constant reminder that no one is better than someone else. We’re all developers trying to improve. That’s it.

You’ll be employable in the future

Many programmers enter the field for the money. And sure, it’s nice. But there’s a level of safety that comes with the ability to program. The odds of your job being automated is almost 0. Sure, it’s theoretically possible. But there are other jobs that are in much more danger of being automated.

Programming is going to be around for a long time. And knowing that your skill set won’t become irrelevant in the next decade is very comforting.

Technology is going to change faster in the 21st century than ever before. And we must change with it or get left behind.

You can give back to the world

We live in an age of inequality. Some people have everything and others have nothing. And many people, understandably, dislike that. If you’re one of those people, you can create software & digital services that serve everyone. Not just the rich & powerful. Take the free and open source software movement for example. These are individuals who struggle to learn programming. And selflessly create free software everyone can use.

Imagine spending thousands of hours to learn a skill. Then using thousands of hours of your productive energy to work on a project you won’t ever be paid for doing.

FOSS developers are the true heroes of the 21st century. And you can be one of them.

My favorite example is Audacity. An amazing community created a piece of software that’s free for anyone to use, change, and improve upon. Now, imagine a world where these great people didn’t exist. We’d all be paying for an adobe creative cloud subscription (over $50 a month) to use adobe audition which doesn’t hold a candle to Audacity.

You’ll become detail oriented

When you focus on minute details of text characters all day, your brain starts to change. You will become more observant of small changes. It’s not something most of us think about going into programming. But it is an inevitability.

I like to think of it as a skill. Let’s call it, “the ability to focus on minuscule details.” Before I started programming, I’d say I was below average in this department. But after over a year of staring at VS Code, I easily notice things like never before. Just browsing the web has become an altogether different experience.

It’s difficult to explain. And likely impossible to prove. But when you go through the transformation, you’ll see what I mean.

Develop analytical skills

Analytical thinking can change your life. The ability to observe objective reality. Formulate an opinion about it. Decide how and why to change it. And then, putting a plan into action. It’s a difficult process.

Programming forces you to do this. Otherwise, it’s near impossible. You need to think a lot. I always break things down into smaller tasks. Just take a simple application for example. Let’s say you want to create a landing page for your email list. It may sound simple. But let’s break down how this will work.

The user will find your site. They’ll enter their email (hopefully) and then press the submit button. Just at that, you’re already looking at creating all the HTML elements. The CSS styling. Any JavaScript for animations & effects. You’ll also have to register a domain and host your site online. You’ll need a way to send the user’s email somewhere. Which means you’ll probably need to write some PHP. You’ll also need to store these emails somewhere, which means you’ll need to use a database like MongoDB or MySQL. Then, there’s the process of actually sending the emails (including an automated hello message when they sign up). You’d probably need Amazon’s SES. And there’s probably even more to it. The point I’m trying to make is that it will be difficult.

Every project you work on will inevitably have bugs and issues you need to fix.

It’s going to be tough. There will be times it takes a week to figure out why your code isn’t doing what you want it to. But it’s in that struggle that you grow. Not just as a developer, but as an analytical thinker. And every little problem you solve sharpens your skills. And with time, your skills will be sharp enough to cut those bugs out faster next time. Because there will be a next time. And there will be for as long as you’re programming.

There is no faking it

I come from a marketing background. And something about the industry always frustrated me. It’s almost impossible to determine who knows their stuff and who doesn’t. In fact, there were a lot of people who never actually did anything that call themselves “marketers.” There is none of that going on in programming.

All it takes is a few questions to tell if someone actually programs. There are so many things programmers know from countless hours spent at the computer. You can’t fake that effort.

And when someone has paid their dues, you can tell quite a bit about that person. They have a lot of gumption. They persist even when things seem impossible. They struggle in the same ways you do. As someone who comes from a field with a lot of impostors, I really appreciate not having to wonder about every person I interact with.

Work wherever you want

Remote work has become crazy popular lately. There are quite a few jobs that can be done from anywhere. But one of them will always be programming. Sure, there are some rigid employers out there. Some people just prefer having an office-space to interact with coworkers. But the majority love remote work.

You need 2 things to program. A computer and an internet connection. And if you meet those requirements, you can live anywhere in the world. There aren’t many industries where you can pick exactly where you live. And oftentimes, a good job meant living in an overcrowded, expensive city.

But as a programmer, you choose where you live.

Want to move to Alaska and start ice fishing?? No problem! Feel like moving to Latin America to spend your free time on the beach? Great! The choice is all up to you. And that has to be one of the best things about programming.

Pick any industry

One of Marx’s biggest criticisms of capitalism was that it forces you to become hyper-specialized. Basically, doing one repetitive task all day. Forever. And that gets boring. Fast. There’s hardly room for a polymath in the modern age. But as a programmer, you can have the best of both worlds.

You’re building software, apps and websites for businesses. And it doesn’t matter what those businesses do. It can be anything (within the law, hopefully). Having industry-specific knowledge makes you even more valuable. You don’t need someone to explain the lingo or give you an overview of how things work.

This is especially promising for people who already have jobs and want to become programmers. They have a big advantage over computer science graduates with no experience in other industries.

A McDonald’s employee who taught themselves to code in 6 months would be in a much better position than a college graduate with no industry expertise.

Teach yourself

The educational industrial complex has failed us all. Useful skills cannot be mass produced. And they’re not useful anymore when everyone knows them. A bit of history. Our educational system was originally designed in Prussia to produce obedient soldiers and factory workers. The system isn’t just flawed. It was entirely designed to control & subjugate you.

Objectively speaking, it isn’t actually failing, this is what it’s supposed to produce. Not philosophers. Not entrepreneurs. But obedient factory workers. And the number of disaffected college graduates increases every year.

Now, compare this system to how programming has organically evolved. Some of the best in the industry are infamous college dropouts. And there are countless free online resources to learn programming. And that’s the beauty of programming.

You can become a world-class developer alone in your bedroom for free.

The only obstacle is your own willingness to learn. This is also why programming may be one of the most egalitarian industries on Earth.

You’ll have a better relationship with reality

Humans are not objective animals. We tend to create bubbles that we live in. These bubbles aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Truth be told, the world is complex. And nearly impossible to fully understand. These bubbles filter things for us to make sense of things.

When we get too steeped into one of these bubbles, we start ignoring reality to an extent. We disregard it. This happens slowly over the course of months or sometimes years. But it happens.

Programming forces you to think objectively. Your website does not care what names you call it. If you don’t write the code correctly, it will not work. And that objectivity will stay with you even when you’re not programming.

Personalize your software

Personalization of tools you use every day can easily make you 5–10x more productive. Just learning simple keyboard commands of features you use can make a huge difference over time. And this has to be one of the best secret superpowers of programmers & software developers. You can create your own custom programs, software and scripts.

If you’re anything like me, you have at least 3 or 4 side hustles going on at any given time. And it can be time-consuming to check every single dashboard to see your earnings every day. As a programmer, you can write a web-scraping script to collect all that information for you. Then you can check YouTube, Medium, Amazon Video, Patreon, and podcast revenue all in one place. And that’s a simple example. On the extreme end, you can get to the point where you automate entire tasks.

Join the last unregulated domain

The government is pretty unpopular. Complaining about bureaucracy & taxes is one of humanity’s favorite pastimes. And one of the reasons for all this frustration is because big brother kills small business. Literally regulates the innovation away. Transportation is a great example.

We still travel at the same speed (and nearly the same inefficiency) as people from 2 generations ago.

And this same regulation has killed or damaged countless industries throughout history. But there is one left standing. Software. This is partly due to the difficult nature of regulating software, as well as the inability of government to keep up with technology. Things change too fast for them to keep up. And this results in software & tech being the wild west of our modern age.

This means the only real obstacle to starting the next Facebook or Amazon is your competence & coding skills. If you can come up with the idea, and execute it, you very well could be a real-life billionaire in a few years. There’s something beautiful and inspiring about that.

Now, contrast that with the automotive industry. Do you think you could stand a chance against Ford or Toyota? You’d struggle even if you had a lot of talent, passion, and a killer work ethic. There’s too much red tape. Too many legal loopholes they know about. It’s not going to work.

However, I also feel the need to mention the morality of the situation. Just because something is legal does not mean it should be done.

Being in the last unregulated industry means you, as a pioneer, need to accept extreme ownership and responsibility over the products you create.

You can go broad and deep

Do you ever find yourself down a rabbit hole reading obscure Wikipedia pages? Don’t worry, I do it all the time. It starts when you Google one of those strange questions you find yourself wondering. “How long is the Great Wall of China?” Then you read about the history of China. Then, the Chinese Emperor who started the construction. Then, there’s a paragraph at the bottom of the page mentioning some of the technical limitations. Then, you’re reading about the history of construction and it goes on and on…

Programming is like that too. You will know enough to have gone down these rabbit holes a few times throughout your career. Whether it’s an obscure software company or an underrated JavaScript library.

You don’t need permission from anyone

This is my favourite thing about programming. You don’t need permission from anyone. You just do it. This can be extremely liberating to motivated individuals.

I don’t have to tell you about the inherent evil of human nature. We are highly corruptible. And many people reach their worst point in positions of power. Whether it is the infamous casting couch or outright nepotism, we are susceptible to making unfair decisions.

There are not many ways to correct this shortcoming. But one of the most effective is to remove the human element altogether. And this is where we enter the realm of the permissionless. These are activities you can do without anyone’s consent. this applies to many things including creating a YouTube channel, a podcast, blog, and especially programming.

But I would argue programming is the best example for a few reasons. It has the highest ceiling of potential outcomes. Whether you are writing blogs or creating videos, your potential impact on the world will be limited to what people can watch or read. But with programming, there are so many more variables that you can influence. For example, there have been multi million dollar industries disrupted by software written in just a few dozen lines of code. Think about social media and how disruptive it has been on the world-stage.

Conclusion

Programming is one of the fastest-growing jobs in the 21st century, and will likely continue to grow. And there are so many things to love about it. Whether it’s from a technical or philosophical perspective. You can sharpen your mind or provide your fellow humans with great software for free. The options and impact are endless.