Any Professional Programmers in here?

[w00t]

What is it like to be a professional programmer? What kind of people do you work with? What's the job like? What kind of schooling did you have to go through?
And is it anything like "Office Space"?
Still dreaming of the day I become a pro.....

[do_guh_new]

nobody responded cause they're all busy working their asses off hehe

[sde]

for my day job, i program about 30% of the time, .. the other 70% is doing mostly tech support.

i spend a lot of my free time doing freelance jobs making dynamic sites with php/mysql

[redhead]

The reason I didn't reply, is because I don't see myself as a professional programmer.

I do programming tasks, but I spend far more time installing/testing/troubleshooting/documenting.
You know, what tech support is all about.

As for the people I work with, theres quite a broad bunch there, from the office suits, to the guy with his torn jeans, and T-shirt. As for "Office space" I dont know what to say there.. I work where ever I can, at home, in the office, anywhere where you can get an internet connection.

[technobard]

Well, since we're all chiming in...

I don't consider myself a professional programmer either. Although I do write programs occasionally. Some of the coding I do is for work. Some is just for me. I write things to save time or to fill a need. Most of the time I'm an Oracle DBA. At least that's been in my job description for most of the last decade.

I'm one of the types of people that professional programmers work with on a regular basis. As far as schooling goes, I can tell you that people end up as programmers with all kinds of educational backgrounds. You have your computer science types and you also have your astronomy(or whatever) majors turned computer guy/gal. You have people with BS degrees and people with MS degrees. You have people with no degrees at all. A lot depends on the organization and what Human Resources has been told the educational requirements are. Personally, I think a degree of some sort gives you a better foundation in the long run and offers more flexibility when finding employment. If you enter the field without a degree, work for someone who'll pay for it.

Just my two cents.

[sdeming]

Can't believe I missed this thread before.

I've been programming professionally since 1991. For the past 5 years I've been primarily doing contract work writing large telecommunications billing systems. The type of systems where we handle several million transactions per day. My part in the scheme of things at this point is a lead software designer, I get to solve the problems and write a good portion of the framework code and let others do the implementation code.

For schooling, I've had none though I did ace the AP Computer Programming course when I was in high school a dozen years ago. I've indirectly trained trained (aka I worked with them for extended periods of time) by some extremely good coders and I've most certainly taken a few blows on my own ego before realizing that I just can't possibly know everything! The one person I've learned the most from is a gormet chef by training, but took up programming because it interested him.

Oh, yes and my prefered language is C++. Nothing like the STL has ever existed. C++ takes generic programming to a new level.

[abc123]

Im not a professionaly programmer because... I don't have a job...

I've been taking a computer course for 1.5 years now and it is very very boring, and like scott I also have sometimes realised that I don't know everything... but only sometimes . The main person i have learnt from is myself, reading tutorials and books.

My favourite language at the moment is none, but I am doing c++ and java right now, java for 1.5 years, c++ for 2 weeks.

And Scott, I would think that JAVA is more generic then C++... and maybe I have no clue (more than possible) but isn't the STL like the API for java?

[w00t]

I'm now taking a nice computer class, and my instructor is a bona-fide genius!
The guy invented the following:
- Electronic gas pumps
- Computer panels/ credit card compatibility for gas pumps
- Card based door locks/security systems
- Wrote the program used by UPS to track packages by self in 1 month

He also maintains our high school's servers and network.
This guy gets 40,000 a month programming during the summer and chooses to teach 9 months a year for more like 3,000 a month.
Did I mention that he designed, diagrammed, and built his $300,000 house by hand

I could learn a lot from this guy...

[kenshi]

Sounds like he has an idea what he's doing.