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by youngButEager 3603 days ago
Money. Money as motivator.

Was building hardware devices for musical pursuits (guitar effects) and my 1st degree was in EE. You can graduate with an EE degree, having taken a course or two or three in basic programming but it falls out of use and the depth was never really there anyway, more of a "here's programming" intro.

When I tried to change jobs as a 'hardware guy' I had limited options, unlike my software engineer friends who had a gazillion options it seemed. Makes sense, hardware is built once, but a piece of hardware can have an infinite number of programs written for it; thus one hardware engineer and an infinite number of software engineers for one piece of hardware.

They (my software engineer chums) also made A LOT MORE MONEY than me.

Went back to school, focused solely on software. Best decision I ever made.

Money as a motivator to learn to code is questionable but I got lucky as I learned to love it after becoming engrossed in it.

EDIT: Point being -- if you have a big enough "Why" you simply will learn to code. If you can't make money or have an enjoyable hobby doing coding, your motivation will be to do something else more enjoyable. Everyone saying "I couldn't figure it out so I quit" -- BALONEY. You can figure anything out, really.