Trying again!

So following my feedback from the teacher, I have decided to try again 😀From my feedback, I need to describe all five points with more detail and focus, as after I look back on what I wrote, I had one sentence for one point, but lots for just another single point.

The homework:

Write your essay highlighting the following basic questions in it:
Who are programmers,
The profession of a programmer,
What do programmers do
What should have been learned (done) earlier in order to go, study and become a good programmer.
Your thoughts on programmers and programming.

I want to be a programmer

describe your thoughts on this topic. And who are these programmers... What obstacles will arise, what will be easy, what will be difficult. What will be the pros/cons

I want to be a programmer, the field that interests me the most is cybersecurity. I want to help create software that can protect others online. However, technology develops everyday, and people quickly find gaps in security. As a programmer aiming to protect against these threats, I would need to be available 24/7, with a reliable team to help solve these issues effectively, and of course, quickly!

This could be hard, as I would become a target for these threats, they would aim to disrupt the company I am with, and slow down anyone who is working to stop the threat they have made.

However, with reliable teammates, we could always make sure we are protected ourselves, watching out for new threats, gaps in our code, and help warn other programmers of these threats. We could help others become aware of how to prevent and defend against these threats, and what they can include in their code to defend against attacks, for example, encrypting code.

Finding solutions to threats in a short amount of time will be difficult, but with the community of other like-minded programmers, solutions can be made quicker!
It will be easy to spread awareness of a new threat with such a worldwide community, like on GitHub.

Who are programmers?

Programmers are often people who like to create solutions to problems, they can think of ways of breaking down the issue to solve it in different ways. There are many different types of programmers, from web developers and machine learning engineers to AI specialists.

The profession of a programmer

In the UK, programmers are often associated with having a high salary. However, recently, because so many students decided, "well I want that too!", there are fewer vacancies for programmers. However, despite how competitive the job industry can be for programmers, many programmers sometimes just use their skills for themselves. I used to know a friend from university that would randomly create a program just to track the progress of their character building in games.
With the rapid development of AI coding there is now a question mark over the future of programming as a profession.

What do programmers do

Programmers have a wide range of tasks, and I'm sure some may specialise in something more than another. I know that there are various programming languages, like C++, JavaScript, Python, and HTML. Programmers use these languages (sometimes a mixture) to create various projects. These could be a website, some sort of software, or a database !

Programming is ‘not do it once, get a perfect result’ type of career. It usually involves a lot of trial and error, sometimes completely revising how to approach a problem, and then testing the program a lot to make sure it actually does what it should, and how it should. This could involve a programmer using debugging tools, which help the programmer pinpoint errors in their code.

Programmers can use a variety of tools to create code. This could be code written in a text editor (like Notepad++), directly into an interpreter (like Python Interpreter), or an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). An IDE is software that is specially designed to support multiple programming languages, rather than just one - an example of an IDE is Visual Studio Code.

What should have been learned (done) earlier in order to go, study and become a good programmer.

When I was younger and thinking of a career path, I did want to get into programming. But unfortunately, in the UK to get a career in programming, you often need a really strong academic qualification to back it up, like a university degree. Then, to get that degree, you would need a high grade in the pre-university qualifications.

In the UK, the pre-university qualifications are called A-levels. Typically, a secondary student (about 17 or 18 years old) takes 3 A-level exams, and if you are aiming to be a programmer, you would aim to have Mathematics, Computer Science, and maybe Physics. I mention Physics as it's one of the subjects that will really show off your maths skills.

Unfortunately for me, I have never been the best at maths. So I didn't take maths or physics as part of my pre-university exams. I did, however, do Computer Science. I wasn't the best but I really enjoyed it.
But universities that offer Computing degrees can be really competitive, and I just didn't meet the requirements.

If I could do it all again, I would probably have tried to do Maths and Physics as part of my A-levels in order to go and study to become a programmer. But I don't think I would have passed the exams.

So, what can someone aiming to become a programmer do in order to go, study and become a good programmer in the UK?
When choosing your A-level exams, make sure you take maths, computer science, and physics. If you need support for your maths, try to do online exam practice papers provided by the exam centre, and watch loads of YouTube videos about concepts of maths that you struggle with.

Alongside your A-levels, it is best to start building a portfolio, which would include things like personal programming projects, and doing open-source projects. Open-source projects are available for anyone to use the code.
You could use GitHub, a website that hosts a community of programmers that can share, collaborate or display code that they have made. It’s a well known and reputable site amongst programmers.

In order to develop your technical skills, you could join or create a Hackathon team. Hackathons are competitions that give programmers a time-limit to develop a program and then present the project for judging at the end.

Alternatively you could simply learn new skills on online sites like Coursera, who provide free or paid courses to gain certificates, or study subjects. A lot of international universities provide courses for computing. Another well known online site for learning to code is Codecademy, which is also a free site that offers many lessons for building your programming skills.

There is also the well-known learning resource of YouTube, which has many youtubers creating content for teaching others to code. I've heard of CS Dojo and Khan Academy as good YouTube channels to learn from.

Your thoughts on programmers and programming.

Just like the professor says, I feel like anyone can become a programmer. My maths is quite weak, but I think that you don't need maths skills to program.

I know a lot of people in the UK think that programmers must be really good at maths to get started. On top of that, many academic courses for programming often have the requirement for you to have a certain high grade in your secondary school maths in order to take part in it.

Programming is a way to communicate with a computer in order to create something, ranging from a game to just a program that will do mathematical calculations for you.

I realise this may not get marked as it is my second attempt, but for my own personal satisfaction I wanted to present a better and more complete answer for this assignment. I have reused some sentences from my previous post on this lesson. As I already invited 2 friends to participate in my previous post, I will not invite anyone on this one.

Thank you for checking this post out!

Trying it again: SEC-S20W1: Programming is easy!