When will I be a good programmer?

[willakawill]

You have to learn something important. You will never be 'ready' for the job. That is a silly notion that does not apply to life.

"When I am ready to learn the piano I will start taking lessons"

Makes no sense. Say yes and worry about it later. You will be fine

[AdrianH]

Thanks for the replies.
But just to clear out some things i said: I know i should never stop or else I'll go back, but what i meant was when do i feel comfortable enough to work in an industry and actually develop a software? I know I'm not ready now, but when i graduate will i be ready? Maybe I'm worrying too much...if I won't be ready what about my friends? I really feel I'm better than most of them cause i have less problems with programming assignments all the time, but it still worries me that i don't know the languages enough. When i look at job requirements from time to time, all i see is expected to know this language...i never see expected to know the development cycle or whatever. And my teachers won't teach me languages (they do, but as part of the course topic), so i have to learn them on my own. But how much do i learn, till i drop dead? Till i know the basics? I don't wanna get hired and find out I'm not ready for the job. I know i can always learn later, but that's doesn't put me in a secured position, nor helps increase my self confidence.
What do you guys thing?

Comfortable? Probably never. :) I still get a little nervous entering a new project, but it passes when I get in to it.

About not knowing about the development life cycle: Yeah, some don't, mostly because they either have someone on board already that knows about it, or they don't know about it. If you don't know about it, you will when they throw you in to the middle of a project. :) The theory is what you fall back on when you don't have practical experience. I personally think that the theory is more important than practical, but I guess I assume if you have the theory, you know how to generally apply it if you are given a set of circumstances (this is how I work). In a course, they usually have you implementing the theory on some project, which gives you some practical, but unfortunately not always enough.

About languages: you should have been taught the basics of some language. But languages are not usually the primary thing taught probably because they are all pretty much all the same. The concepts of programming are far more important because, the concepts are transferable to almost any language. Some things like pointer may not exist in a language, but the concept it taught so that you can use it in a language that does.

I had actually taken several courses in my University career, some of which being: Compilers, AI, Object Oriented Programming and Design, Hardware, and Operating Systems.

These five courses exposed me to C/C++, Eiffel, MIPS, Prolog, LISP and possibly more. But what it taught me was that all of these languages are pretty much the same. Don't get me wrong they have some differences, but they all have variables, they all have loop structures, they have conditionals, they all have functions. Prolog is probably the wonkiest one that I saw, and MIPS is just raw assembly, but these still do the same thing, just with a different grammar.

Try not to worry about not knowing all the languages, focus on what makes languages the same, and what makes some different. It will make you very versatile in your understanding of them.

So don't worry about languages so much.

Adrian

P.S. Libraries are a different matter though. I know many languages, but I don't know all that many libraries. This is because there are so many of them. And what is hot today goes cold tomorrow. When I programme, I usually stick to standard libraries to reduce maintenance headaches and learning requirements. If a project needs you to learn a library, pick up a good book that describes how the library is broken down. This allows you to learn just what is needed, without having to learn the entire zillions of functions in it.

[Sebouh]

Well, that was a relief. Guess I'm just gonna have to face it like everybody else.

[willakawill]

Well, that was a relief. Guess I'm just gonna have to face it like everybody else.

Just like your first date :)

[r035198x]

Just like your first date :)

I might have to do without that.

[tolkienarda]

hmm
i don't think that being a good programer has much do do with what you learn in school. programing is a way of thinking. logical step by step instructions to complete a cetrain task. you are just giving directions to a computer and once you learn the basics it is more of learning how to "spell" these insturctions in a new language. but being a good programer dosen't have anything to do with how many languages you know.

and as for the being like the first date i wish dating came to me as ealily as typing.