How Their Adventure with Programming Began
I have asked 3 devs, Adam, Agnieszka and Radek, who work with me at Bright Inventions about the beginning of their programming career, first challenges and what they like most about their job. Discover their stories and take a look inside our Bright Team.
Adam, Full Stack Developer, [WhatWebCanDoToday]
How did your adventure with programming begin?
It was long time ago when I had a dial-up Internet connection and I had to pay for every minute of being online. I was opening multiple different websites in my browser windows and then offline I was reading everything I had downloaded. But there were moments when I read all the stuff and just out of pure boredom I was checking how all those things worked. That is how my adventure with HTML began. Later on I also created my own website in PHP.
But to be honest, after the secondary school I thought that IT was not for me. I wanted to study geography because sitting all day in front of the computer did not sound especially exciting to me. Yet I applied for studying Computer Science, I got in and here I am. My first professional programming job was creating pages in PHP and it was during the third year of my studies.
What is the most difficult and challenging when you start your first programming job?
It seems to me that when we start we do not have any experience in working in a team and with a code shared with other people. And probably it is the most difficult and challenging part. The projects you get at work are completely different than the university ones in which you frequently work alone messing with your own code. So at first we have to learn how to read someone's else code and how not to harm it. Even if the code seems to be bad, you do not know all the background and reasons why something was done in such a way.
What do you like most about programming?
Solving problems - that is what I value most. If I can solve a real problem and someone can benefit from that, I feel satisfied. And you might be surprised - but I like "cleaning". By cleaning I mean leaving code less complicated than it has been before. Facilitating the code, refactoring, creating new rules - all these let you get rid of some redundant stuff. When I can make things less complicated and less complex, I can say that I am happy.
Do you believe that professionalism in programming means learning all your life?
It depends. Generally, if we want to develop and be up-to-date with all tech news, the process of learning is something fundamental. It is also something what I try to do, and at the same time it is something that keeps me motivated and pleased with my job. But I can imagine also a person specialising in some niche legacy technology and makes that his/her market value and competitive edge since no one else wants to do it. And I know such stories.
What do you value most about working at Bright Inventions?
I think that Bright is a place where we deal with a wide spectrum of tasks and at the same time everyone feels an integral part of a team - you know that without you the project may not be successful. We have a holistic view on projects in general. Our task is to make things good not only from our own narrow perspective, but also from the client's one. We respect each other's job and we know that cooperation is the key. Apart from that I really like the lack of formal structure and non-corporate style of working. And one more thing - we can express our opinion about everything. There are no taboo topics. And I find it cool.
Agnieszka, Full Stack Developer
How did your adventure with programming begin?
I started programming at the university. Before studies I was not coding much, but I had always known that I would study IT. My parents are IT specialists and I was always good at Maths, Physics or Science, so it was quite an easy decision to make. Of course, while studying IT I could learn some theoretical stuff, but there was not so much practice. I am not sure what it looks like now. But one thing is sure - you have to go to work and just begin coding to get some practical and useful skills.
What is most difficult and challenging when you start your first programming job?
I suppose the beginning looks quite the same as in every kind of FIRST job regardless of the fact if it is connected with programming or not. You are not sure what you are going to do, you do not know people you will be working with, you do not the company culture. At first it may always cause some worries.
What do you like most about programming?
I like the fact that when you are into programming, you do not have to invest loads of money to be up-to-date and to test many things. When you are a bioengineer or a physician, you need to have special equipment and budget to buy substances, materials etc. to experiment. In programming it does not look like that. You just need to have a computer (and probably Internet connection :) ) and it is enough. Recently I was sewing a pillow for my daughter and I realised that I put pins in a wrong place. I pulled them out to make it better, but then I noticed that I did not have to do it as it may have worked anyway, so I stuck them once again. In programming it is different - you are doing something, testing it, but if you want to change something you do not have to start everything form scratch, you can just click "Revert" and move on, try something new. You do not have to waste a lot of time to try out many different ways of solving a problem. It is just great.
Do you believe that professionalism in programming means learning all your life?
Yes. of course, not only the fact you are learning all the time proves that you are professional, but it is an integral part of professionalism. By learning you get to know many technologies, which makes choosing appropriate tech stack to your project much easier. Learning is crucial, but we should also reasonably use and refer to all the things we have learnt.
What do you value most about working at Bright Inventions?
Personally, I like most our calm and peaceful environment. There is nothing like some strange pressure. Even when there is a situation when we make a mistake and something goes wrong, we keep calm. There is no noxious atmosphere. No one is shouting at you or nagging you. We all know that there are tasks to do and we always try to do them as well as we can.
Radek, Mobile Developer
How did your adventure with programming begin?
Probably it was in a secondary school. I was in a class with advanced Maths, Physics and IT. Most people there chose this profile because of Maths and Physics, but in my case IT was the reason. We had an IT teacher who taught us C++. It was some sorting stuff similar to Maths then and I must confess that it was quite simple, but also interesting. I remember that we solved many riddles. But ... wait a second, in fact I touched some programming earlier when I was in a junior high school, but it did not seem to be particularly exciting at that moment. Maybe because our IT teacher was talking about Pascal and other archaic things. In this way I had to wait a few years to fall in love with programming at my secondary school. Then it was much more practical - I was learning at school and after that I was repeating different tasks at home. Then I started IT studies at Gdańsk University of Technology. But to be honest I did not start my first professional programming job during studies. My real adventure began a few years later..... but that is a different story.
What is most difficult and challenging when you start your first programming job?
From my own experience I can say that the most difficult and challenging part is to get familiar with all the tools which make your job easier in the long run, but in the beginning you have to face them all at once. When you start your programming adventure, you learn a programming language whereas when you start your first programming job - you learn a lot of different things at the same time, not only a language. Programming itself might be not such a big challenge as understanding everything around e.g. Git, new IDE, tools for creating layouts such as Sketch or Figma, Proxy tools etc. It might be overwhelming a little bit at first.
What do you like most about programming?
Who said I like programming? And now completely serious - I am not sure - it is not an easy question. There are different things that I like. But I think that the satisfaction from creating something new is the thing I like most. The first type of satisfaction is connected with creating small things, adding some tiny improvements to applications, creating new functionalities. You have to choose some elements in such a way that they will work. And the latter is satisfaction that you feel when you finish a project, satisfaction that someone uses the app you created, satisfaction that it really works. So there is everyday satisfaction and final satisfaction, but the most important is the fact that you create something that has never existed before. Programming is crafting, indeed. And that is extremely satisfying.
Do you believe that professionalism in programming means learning all your life?
I am sure that the answer is YES, but I am just wondering if I can find some arguments against. Hmm... I cannot, so the short answer is once again YES. We are learning all our life. Programming sector is so dynamic that to be up-to-date and deliver better and better solutions, you have to learn all the time. But the process of learning is also an integral part of every project - by doing something or even improving your old code, you learn new things. It is completely different than, for example doctor's job. Doctors do not learn what to do while cutting their patients on the table - I mean - they knew that before. And in programming you do learn while cutting your code into pieces and adding some new components.
What do you value most about working at Bright Inventions?
There are several positive aspects of working at Bright Inventions, but I think the one of the greatest value is a kind of reasonable responsibility that everyone holds. Our job is something more than creating a code. We are responsible for the whole process of creating a product - we contact clients, we plan our job, we make decisions. We keep in touch with our clients all the time. We ask them what they need and what they do not like. There is a full transparency between them and us. We are not kept in a house of glass. We are aware of the things each of us is responsible for. And this awareness is great. It motivates you to be better and better. And we all know that better job means a better quality.
THANK YOU GUYS FOR YOUR TIME. It was pleasure to talk with you.
To be continued.
PS. If you want to see more of our BRIGHT TEAM, visit our Instagram profile and be with us on daily basis. :)
