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I agree completely, you sound exactly like the kind of person I am! I just finished my computer engineering bachelors degree a month ago, I am 26 years old.
From all the people I know at school, only a small handful of them has ever done any kind of coding or any thing outside of the school curriculum (more than just reading a tutorial one night). That is, for me at least, a frightening thought. You want to work has a developer but you do not spend any time outside work to learn? Some of us are curious and try things out. I believe those that do are (mostly) the people that can be good developers. A situation that was particularly curious to me was when we had our first Programming 101 (Java) class the semester before Christmas, and then when the second class from around mid-February. In between that time, a huge amount of the class did not look at any Java, or do anything, or even try it out. So unsurprisingly, barely anyone remembered anything. There was just a complete lack of interest, and I can't figure out why they would choose this career path if they did not enjoy it and I do not understand how those people managed to pass classes, or how they are supposed to do good work later. I have had a growing interest in computers since I was a child, and I think I have been coding since I was around 12-13 years old. During my time at university I have attempted to get people more interested in coding by suggesting they figure out some problem they want to solve, and then spend some time making something. I think I managed to get only a few of them to try anything, while the rest were questioning why they would want to do anything like that... I know quite a few of them have gotten jobs directly out of school, but I have no idea how. Edit: I do understand that not everyone has time to nerd out all the time, especially when you get older and have a family.
I also like to relax and recharge, so I try to keep busy doing other things like exercising. Sometimes I just get so sick of work, school and everything that I can't seem to write any code at home for personal projects. It is nice to be able to burn of that unspent energy mountain biking for example. And sometimes that just seems to shake loose a solution to a problem I have been having or give me inspiration to create something new. |