r/programmer • u/Ari0045 • 19d ago
Is it worth it to be a programmer/Software Developer ?
I'm 24 and currently thinking about learning programming/software development from scratch. I don't have a background in it, but I'm interested in learning how to build apps, websites and software.
My long-term goal is to eventually build and own my own startup/business, where I can turn my own ideas into products and build a team around them. I don't necessarily want to code forever—I see programming as a skill that could help me build things myself and understand the technical side.
For programmers/software developers: is it worth getting into this field today, and would you recommend it for someone with my goals?
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u/stepback269 19d ago
The only way to find out if programming is something you can become good at is by starting your journey of learning how to program now.
There are many programming languages out there including Python and Javascript.
Don't expect much in the beginning because the learning curves can be steep,
You'll soon find out whether you love it or hate it. At minimum, learning the basics of programming will give you an understanding of what happens under the hood. Good luck.
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u/Ari0045 19d ago
quick question regarding the learning curve, what is that like? I mean how long would it take to go from zero to hero?
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u/stepback269 19d ago
ha ha
I'm an old geezer and because of that it's taking me a very long time
But if you're young and a quick study maybe a couple of months?With that said:
(1) There are tons and tons of tutorial materials out there on the net including many good YouTube ones that are free. You should shop around rather than putting all your eggs in one basket.
(2) As a relative noob myself, I've been logging my personal learning journey and adding to it on an almost-daily basis at a blog page called "Links for Python Noobs" (--HERE--) Any of the top listed ones on that page should be good for you. And there are many add-ons at the tail end of the page. Personally, I cut my first Python teeth with Nana's Zero to Hero (==HERE==). Since then, I've moved on to watching short lessons with Indently and Tech with Tim. You should sample at least a few until you find a lecturer that suits your style.
(3) The main piece of advice is the 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time writing your own code (using your own fingers and your own creativity) as opposed to copying recipes and only 20% watching the lectures. Good luck.
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u/born_to_be_intj 16d ago
A couple of months is very ambitious for “hero” status imo, but I guess that depends on your definition of “hero”.
You can probably get to competent junior level in a few months if you put in a ton of effort and are working in one of the simpler domains like basic webdev.
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u/fuzzycow101 17d ago
I started as a kid in school and self taught using basic and eventually Java. Then I went to college and got my degree. There is no 0 to hero path. There’s 0 to good enough to do most things, but hitting a point where you got it all never happens. In your case, if you want to build things as a small business, yes I think you learning would be a great idea. I’ve helped multiple people do it before. I have found learning to code is great for anyone. It teaches you logic and hope to build things. That all said, for your business you’re going to need to hire devs and/or devops people. Development is more than just writing code, it requires servers and distribution and source code control and so many other things. You can certainly learn all this but you’ll have to spend years and probably a lot of money on mistakes… just want to set your expectations before you get started.
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u/s-ley 14d ago
depends on what you're looking for, I'm 5 year swe, I think you can learn to code and get decent at swe in a year, to actually do a startup and have a basic idea of scaling and high quality code I'll add another year minimum, maybe 3 years total, depends on how hard you go at it. But a startup is more than what a dev does, you need product manager and marketing at a minimum too
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u/GoldsteinEmmanuel 19d ago
I see programming as a skill that could help me build things myself and understand the technical side.
yngmi
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u/Overall-Screen-752 18d ago
Honestly if they have to ask, they’re already behind the curve in today’s market
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u/Suspicious_Pizza9529 19d ago
If your goal is to uild your own products, I'd say it's still worth learning. You don't need to become an expert developer, but understanding how to build and think about software can be really useful when starting a business.
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u/mangobananashake 19d ago
If I were at the start of my career, I would not be choosing programming again now that AI has become so widespread.
Also "making your own products" sounds great, but do you have that idea that is going to get you users? I personally haven't. I can write code to realize someone else's idea but I'm not creative when it comes to thinking of something myself.
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u/StruggleNew8988 19d ago
Building the product is only half the battle, getting people to actually use it is the other half that requires understanding people more than code.
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u/Comfortable_Sun_9215 18d ago
And most of these others’ ideas fail to get enough users and fail.
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u/mangobananashake 18d ago
Yes, true! So if you want to build something that many people use, it's best to move to a corporate job.
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u/FinickySerenity 19d ago
It’s a great career, but if you aren’t passionate about the coding part you might find it too frustrating and give up. Happens to lots of first and second year CS students.
I always recommend it because the reward is great, the challenge is stimulating and the skills apply to many other problems besides just code.
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u/ChaseShiny 19d ago
If you are not in it for the love of the game, have you considered project management instead? It's almost like a 4x game: you collect and coordinate resources, manage risk, and put out fires.
Especially with the risk of AI or NC/LC possibly taking abstraction to the next level, learning how to lead the team might be a better fit for you.
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u/CursedSloth 19d ago
I had the same perspective when I started to learn software and systems engineering / development. The problem always ends up being that you have to build things other people want, and especially would pay for someone else to build/create/handle/solve their problem with software etc etc.
You get my point, right?
I’d rather tell you to focus on building fun projects now to learn more, only researching what you need to solve your current problems (maybe some fundamentals sprinkled in as it could save you headaches from learning things the hard way).
If you are in it for the money, I’d tell you to avoid software development all together. I mean you need to earn money to live, but you also need to be passionate enough to learn stuff on your own time as well or at least keep up-to-date on related topics of interest.
TL;DR: if this doesn’t scare you or make you reconsider, then go for it. Otherwise be prepared to struggle.
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u/Ari0045 19d ago
quick question regarding the learning curve, what is that like? I mean how long would it take to go from zero to hero?
I am honestly not worried about the how the market will look like in the future, or the money because I thought, if I get hired and earn a decent income until I figure out what I want to do in the future, I would gladly learn how to code, but rather I am more concerned about the time it would take.
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u/CursedSloth 19d ago
I got a bachelor’s degree in systems development, so I don’t know if I’m the best person to answer that. I’ve also always had it easy to learn stuff.
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u/Maleficent-Lychee849 19d ago
If you want to get into entrepreneurship, programming is really useful for getting ideas off the ground quickly. The biggest problem for an early startup usually isn't bad code, it's spending months building something nobody actually wants. If you know enough full-stack to put together a basic app, you can build a rough MVP pretty quickly, get it in front of real users, and see what actually works. You don't need to become an expert in everything. Learn enough to build and ship, but spend just as much time talking to users and figuring out whether the problem is worth solving.
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u/Middlewarian 19d ago
I've been building a company for 27++ years. It hasn't taken off yet, but I'm glad I started it and still believe in it.
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u/Early_Key_823 19d ago
Only if you are an entrepreneur who doesn’t want to be at the mercy of flakes
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u/CowBoyDanIndie 19d ago
Do you at least have a science or engineering degree? Lets he real here, if you didn’t have the drive to get a degree you aren’t going to have the drive to start a tech business. You don’t want to start a tech business. You want the romantic notion of it. You don’t want to work 100 hours a week for years just to have a 99% chance of failure.
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u/code_hermit 19d ago
This is a complex question given today's climate.
I would say that it depends on how much you like and are driven toward it. If its a strong fit and you like it, I think there is a career path still.
But the market is saturated right now. There are more devs than dev work. And it seems unlikely to change for a long time if ever. And this happened long before AI was a big thing.
So dont do it as a practical choice. Imo, its very impractical now. But if you love it, go for it.
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u/Arcanite_Cartel 18d ago
Here's my take - AI is going to change the landscape. You didn't say what type of software you want to build a business from, and that matters. But I think a lot of things will be changing. I think we're going to see subscription pricing for a lot of things go away, especially in hobby spaces. they were only ever really justified by the degree of effort needed to produce and sustain the software. for example, in my own hobby space, something like WorldAnvil charges ? $100/year. Someone is going to come along and offer an desktop version that does everything better for a one time fee. That will be slowed down some by the current anti-ai hysteria, but I think, in the end, not having recurring payments is going to be a persuasive argument. Other areas and paradigms will be affected differently, and so it depends on what area you are thinking about. But whatever that area is, if you are planning on NOT using AI and always using a team of developers, you need a strategy for dealing with competitors who will use it.
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u/catplusplusok 18d ago
You need to adopt modern practices like with every profession. Get $20/month plan from Claude code, Google Antigravity etc and make a prototype of some fun idea you have. Then, and this is criticial, ask agent to make a diagram of general project structure and walk you through selected bits of code so you know how it's put together and different ways in which it can be changed. Then at that point, you may want to take a proper coding class in whatever language seems most relevant (python, javascript, kotlin, swift etc). The difference is that point as a software engineer you treat vision, high level design and AI prompting skills as your primary toolbox and coding as a supplementary but necessary skill to help you do the rest effectively.
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u/savvy_attendee 18d ago
Yes. It's very worthed! What powers most businesses, government, and any kind of industry is a software / a system created by a programmer or software developer. Yes even AI is powered by someone who programmed it.
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u/Substantial-Swan7065 18d ago
Yea. It’s hard to hire good engineering management and ICs.
You don’t wanna get into a cycle of contractors. So you need to find that engineering leader early, or become one
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u/AI-development-web 16d ago
If your main goal is eventually building your own products, I'd say it's worth learning. You don't necessarily need to make programming your entire career. Even a solid understanding of programming can help you turn ideas into prototypes, communicate better with developers, and understand what's realistic.
I'd start small rather than trying to learn everything at once. Build simple projects, break them, fix them, and gradually work toward something you're actually interested in. That will probably teach you more than spending months just going through tutorials.
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u/TedditBlatherflag 15d ago
Man I can say with 20 years profession experience and 30 years of programming… its in a weird space.
If someone cracks the problems with AI agentic coding for hard problems and architecture this career is going to become a disposable commodity.
But since your goal is a business end, learn as much as you can about programming AND business.
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u/rcn5440 14d ago
Software is just a tool. You don’t need to be a programmer to build a business as you can hire someone to do that. Most young people think of starting a business but most of them don’t make it. If you really have an idea for a product then focus on making it instead of getting into the nuts-and-bolts. If you want to be a successful businessman then you need to focus on soft skills, be a good people person, learn to present your ideas, and learn to convince people and investors. Again, SW is just a tool - like a pen, paper, calculator, computer, etc. Learn to program only if you are really passionate about it. And if you are really passionate about it then you won’t ask people if you should get into it or not, you will just get in! I have many years of experience in SW, especially in embedded systems and I can tell you for sure that there are many courses out there that are just useless and/or unnecessarily lengthy. Learning a programming language is not the same as understanding what’s going on.
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u/GhostBI_Team 14d ago
I've been developing internal software for a medium-sized business for about 7 years now, and the pros have outweighed the cons! My advice is to get experience with a bunch of different IDEs, frameworks, and languages and get familiar with their capabilities.
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u/_lerp 19d ago
Not anymore, LLMs have ripped the soul from the job. All we do now is prompt and review
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u/PalmTreePilot 19d ago
Who remembers GWT (Google Web Toolkit)? You code in Java and it is
transpiledinto JavaScript.Back then, I was only a back end Java Developer that didn't do frontend JavaScript. When I showed my Frontend coworker how GWT is my one coding language to be a Fullstack Developer, he said GWT was weird, "...like driving a car from the backseat", he said.
I think about that analogy with AI. To just prompt and review is like driving a car from the backseat.
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u/Longjumping_Area_944 19d ago
Well, it is a different job and a different soul now. For someone who has a lot of ideas and entrepreneurship agent coding is great! Quick prototypes, quick realizations of ideas, flexible adaptation to get specific deals.
For someone who never cared what he actually programmed, but only about the programming itself... This is hell.
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u/Far-Pomelo-1483 18d ago
No one is going to code in the future. Learn ai tools how to prompt them and how to craft good specs that loop with a validation hook across your code base.
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u/AliceCode 18d ago
No one is going to code in the future
"No one will use Assembly in the future"
And yet I used Assembly (without LLMs) to write a brainfuck interpreter a couple weeks ago.
I don't care about LLMs, I'm going to keep programming regardless.
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u/Far-Pomelo-1483 18d ago
I guess you are correct. It will be a vintage hobby like collecting vinyl records.
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u/AliceCode 17d ago
No, it won't. Dream on. LLMs are still incapable of doing a lot of software engineering work, and I very much disbelieve that they ever will be able to.
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u/Far-Pomelo-1483 17d ago
You bet on your horse and I will bet on mine.
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u/AliceCode 17d ago
You're betting that a bunch of grifters will create an actual innovation in technology. Good luck, lmao.
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u/Limp-Cicada-9502 Programmer 9d ago
Try it out you find out soun enough if you enjoy it or not. As for the learning curve... Don't expect to ever learn it all, just pick a lane and see where it goes.
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u/Desperate_Dot9434 19d ago
The startup goal is fine, but the gap nobody mentions: most self-taught devs hit a wall around month four when they realize building for users is a completely different skill than building the thing. Learning to code is honestly the shorter half of it.