Learning Programming – How to Become a Professional Software Developer

There is no better time than today to become a programmer. The demand on the job market is rising continously. And it has never been easier. There are countless books about all kinds of programming languages and interactive online courses. But mastering a programming language is not enough to become a professional software developer. You need to learn many other skills, too. I taught myself these skills. And you can do it, too. Based on my experience, I give an overview about everything you need to learn in order to get you started on the path of becoming a professional developer.

What does a Programmer Do?

Let’s start with the job description: What does a programmer do? He (or she) solves problems with a computer.

Figure 1. A computer solves problems given an input and a program to produce an output.

A computer is a machine that takes an input, processes it according to a sequence of commands, which is called a program, and then produces an output. So the task of a programmer is to understand a problem, find a way to solve it and make the computer solve it for him. The last part of it is done by writing a program, and this program is formulated in a programming language.

Figure 2. A programmer creates a program that will produce the desired output with the given input.

This means you have to learn skills from three different fields to become a software developer:

Understand how a computer works.
Learn to understand problems and rethink them in a way that also a computer could solve them.
Train a computer to solve them, e.g. write a program in a programming language.

As you can see, only the last skill set is actually using a programming language! So to become a programmer, you should not start head first with a programming language. Instead, learn about your computer first.

How to do it will be the topic of the next article in this series.

What does a Programmer Do?

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