Are you a professional programmer?

**budr** · 15th April 2009, 16:20

I've been playing and working with linux since about slackware 2 in '95 or 96. In a roundabout way that landed me my current job. My title is systems analyst, but what I do is mostly sysadmin stuff.

I bear approximately the same relation to the term "programmer" that Gomer Pyle does to the term "mechanic." I taught myself perl by copying and pasting stuff out of the llama book and the camel book. I've written a sack full of perl scripts for this and that over the years. My code would probably make a real programmer puke, but it gets the job done. I've dabbled with C, C++, and Qt, not enough to do anything really useful, but I'm still learning.

**SteveH** · 4th May 2009, 22:51

I'd have to say yes, even now. I started in the mid 70's earning my living with micro's and machine code and progressed from switches to punched tape to floppies and finally ending up with all singing all dancing IDE's. I've designed and programed for most commercial micro's and systems from dos to windows, even PLC's ! (never did get much time on unix/linux though - sorry chaps)
What I can say is that a professional programmer is a state of mind - not a meal ticket. Some of us code junkies can get so hooked that we put loads of extra hours in just for the fun of it.
As for now I'm sort of semi retired (I got the last heave ho in '98), so I built up my own business in another field (karting) that earns me loads of cash. First thing I did when the money came in was build a large extension on my house as a hobby room - I'm sat in front of 3 monitors, several computers and printers and a network going out to my business premises that got more bits on it than NASA.
I'll keep on programing until the grey matter gives up, and so long as my coffin has a keyboard and a network port I'll die happy.

**Dante** · 23rd July 2009, 05:31

I started to learn programming as a kid(Now I think I really was)I think I was 12.I dreamed to be the youngest game developer in the world when my family boutht our first computer.I started with visual basic but as I felt a harry in my mind(and stiil do)I couldn't stand that really simple tutorial.It was just 20 short lessons.So I forget about it for a some months and just entertaining myself by learning windows itself.I worked with movimaker and broke windows.I couldn't setup a windows so every time soemone must come and set it up.He said "don't go to C and install nothing in it"But I went in and ruined it.After that I saw dark basic.I learnt it a little but when I realized that its really amatuer I started to be fruastred.Then some where there was a 2d soccer simulation contest.We had a C++ class and we just learnt to cout things.But I bought a book.Because like most of my contry's book,it was bullshit,I forget it for months again.Then I found herbert schildt's C++ the complete reference.All of you know what a perfect book it is.(I apologize herb,It was a PDF).I finished it four months ago.oops.Before that maybe 1 year ago I learnt PHP and Python too.Then I looked for sth to let me build GUIs in C++ easier than using WinAPI.I found Qt.But I have a bullshit internet so I impressed a computer attendant of somehwere that had ADSL connection and he downloaded Qt4.5.0 and gave it to me.It was three months ago.since that time I'm trying to master Qt.Now I got some simple C++ university projects as a side job.now I'm 17 and going to the last year of university.It was a pleasure journey.Thanks for remembering me.And I must tell that Qt is not much known in my country and I'm sure I can't find it in my country's shops.Now Our universities teach MFC.
And no I'm not a professional programmer.

**RH-00** · 9th November 2009, 20:35

No, I'm not a professional. I don't even refer to myself as professional, I prefer to use the word "competent." Professional just seems so...stuffy.

**squidge** · 9th November 2009, 21:05

I'm a full time software engineer, but I wouldn't call myself professional. Experienced, yes.

**Tanuki-no Torigava** · 12th December 2009, 02:55

I can refer myself as professional system (not really GUI) programmer. I started in 1988 on a crappy Mac clone from Bulgaria called Pravetz with Basic and latter with Asm. It was the only way to write stupid sprite-based graphics. Then I graduate a couple of universities. One of them was Tashkent State Technical University, Faculty of Applied Math. So I started there and got a chance to gamble with perforated paper.
In 1992 when I pulled some jobs for US NGO I started to use Linux first. Yeah, it was Slackware 2.0 or 3.0. And here came the C language from UNIX flavor. And a lot of UUCP based utilities. In those old times we did that on our laps. Not so much nice utilities. Then I moved away from programming and start to work as telco engineer, project manager, architect, executive, government official and in the very same moment I felt that I've been loosing myself. After considering a fact that the world has a lot of bad managers but just a few good engineers I quit my last positions to get back into programing and software development.

Last 5 years I spent on Linux distributions, GPS tracking systems and software PBX systems.

**ChrisW67** · 29th December 2009, 08:15

Full time occupation: Check
People pay me for code I write: Check
Working with other people's code: Check
Competent: I like to think so, but still learning
Guru: No, not enough recent practice in any one thing
Wysota's level of Qt knowledge: No
Slightly wrong in the head: it helps!

Programming started with BASIC and Z-80 assembler circa 1983. Four year engineering degree in Digital Systems and Computer Engineering (Pascal, FORTRAN, other bits and pieces) . Three years coding/QA for real-time acoustics programming software in Coral 66. Ingres, Sybase, Oracle DBA for 7 years, and UNIX admin throughout. Coding for simulations in astronomy post-grad studies. A miscellany of small coding exercises to scratch many an itch. Now doing a port from VB3 and VB6 to Qt of some of the finest spaghetti code

**SkylineBob** · 7th January 2010, 19:15

Originally Posted by Kumosan

According to your definition I am a professional programmer. Though I like wysota's definition better. Currently I have to work with code, which was also written by a 'professional programmer' (your definition), who should rather has gotten all his fingers broken than given access to a keyboard.

It would seem the complier can't parse "professional programmer". Use #define. lol.

**franco.amato** · 14th January 2010, 21:41

I think the difficult is not write code in C++, Qt, assembler, pascal, C or visual basic.
The difficult is study the problem with a pen and a paper, study the "algorithm".
Then this can translated in one of the existing programming languages.

**waynew** · 19th March 2010, 20:38

Yes, paid for Oracle programming - sql, pl/sql, forms and reports starting in 1995.
Prior work in machine language, assembler, Fortran and Basic. Also Java, and now C++/Qt - currently working on a gui database program.

**JovianGhost** · 20th March 2010, 18:20

Hobbyist coder here. Been coding as a hobby since I was a young'un. Everything I know, aside from my first exposure to programming, is self-taught.

My first real exposure to computers was when I was 10 years old. My parents, bless them, realized back in the day (late 80s/early 90s) that computers were going to be very big in the coming years so they enrolled me in a programming course. It was me and 3 other youngsters in a former janitor's closet learning BASIC on Apple IIe. After that course finished I was hungry for more, so when we got our first computer shortly after I began to code right away in QBasic.

Of course, being as young as I was, and considering the state of the Internet back in the early 90s, my exposure to "real" programming was very limited. Then one day my dad brought home a book on C, which I had never heard of. I stared reading it, understanding it, and over the next few years I exposed myself to computers and programming as much as possible. Everything I know today was self-taught, based on reading books, talking to others and reading online.

Fast-forward to today-- I was working on a project recently in C#. I got to a certain point and realized that .Net in general is ridiculously slow, and for the graphic-intensive stuff I'm doing, is insufficient.
I switched to C++, and after debating on which framework to use, settled on wxWidgets. But after awhile I started becoming increasingly frustrated with it, seeing as how it's quite difficult and cumbersome to do basic things like custom events, and the poor documentation, I switched to Qt. I fell in love with it almost right away.

**gregoryd** · 31st August 2010, 07:56

Even though I studied in the field and did some heavy coding during college years I went to take on a different job and have been distant from professional coding. Still do it casually to learn something new or to help out a friend in need.