Even though there may be a surplus of lawyers in general out there, that specific lawyer can charge that much because (this sounds obvious) people are willing to pay that much. If he specializes in a certain area with the potential for a big upside for a client - doesn't have to be monetary - think immigration law (however, usually these clients can't necessarily pay that rate), people are willing to pay for peace of mind and hopefully just once for the job done right.
I think those sorts of things (I include Codeacademy in there as well) are good to just expose people to programming and a way of thinking. I'm not so sure those "learn to program" programs will produce many professional software engineers, but I think they're great introductions.
completely agree. Also, learning to read documentation is such an invaluable skill. Just doing tutorials removes the need to figure out how to find things yourself. Until you try to build something that requires you to go beyond what you've learned in those tutorials, you won't learn how to read the docs.
I agree to some degree. I think ambition is absolutely necessary, but I think passion is something that can be developed over time. I've had some false starts in trying to learn how to program and each time I did have some thoughts that maybe I'm not "passionate" about programming. But I found that my passion, appreciate, love, etc for programming grew when I stuck with it, got better and realized what all I could do with it. Maybe this was the case for me because programming just didn't click for me in the beginning. I'd argue that we don't just have predisposed passions, but rather passions develop as we go beyond the surface level of our interests.
That's a valid point. Did you start programming at an early age? I only ask because I'm coming from the perspective of picking up programming a little later in life (well, after graduating college). I think as we get older and we get preoccupied with career, friends, etc - it's a little harder to stick with new skills or hobbies just for fun.
Thanks, sanxiyn! It's an incredible feeling to be able to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and look back at how far you've come. Does that feeling wear off? What keeps you going?
Thanks, Jordan. I think traditional schooling conditions us to believe we can just read a book and learn something. It seems to be all about content knowledge instead of process knowledge. One of the most valuable lessons I've learned as a developer is learning how to learn.
When I was first learning how to code, I was afraid to ask questions in the developer community, for fear that I would be ridiculed as stupid. For some reason I felt like I was bothering or interrupting if I asked a developer a question. Maybe it was some of the people I was around, but a lot of developers are very opinionated and strongly believe that certain things should be a certain way. I think because developers have to defend their way of thinking all the time. They can become guarded and if their ideas are supported, they can develop a sense of pride to a point where they consider others around them incapable. I think some of the grumpiness stems from that. Some developers think they're better than others and everyone else wastes their time.
I think I had Nick as a server at the Olive Garden, once. I'm pretty sure he's a better engineer than a waiter. I did get a free Sprite off of him though.