Programming?

How many of you have thought about programming for a living? Of being a part of your favorite company on the development side of the gaming industry? Of creating something that could possibly stand the test of time?

Well I have.  At least I think I have.

For those that do not know me well enough I work for the school district.  In my position I have had the opportunity to work alongside one of our talented computer science teachers.  This teacher always told me that I have a knack for computer languages and ultimately a logical brain that could solve problems through computer languages.  You know what I do when people tell me I am good at something?

I roll my eyes, allow my self doubt to kick in, and go about my business as if I was not any good at anything.

Yeah my personal sense of self worth is so good that I am the poster child for self affirmation.  

This time I decided to take my time to try and understand at least how these amazing machines I use to blog, record video, and more commonly play games on.  I did a quick web search in order to understand some of the common languages out there and came across this language called java.

Java is not one of the most powerful languages, at least that is the consensus from reddit users in the /r/programming forums, but it is a language that is almost neutral enough for me to at least learn a little bit about how to create a program.  I poked around /r/programming for a bit and came across the recommendation to use a website called hackerrank.com which operates as a tutorial center, a hiring platform, and a game.  The tutorials work in many different languages and help you to understand some of the limitations and processes of writing code.   The game form comes from these coding challenges that award points based on how you solve the logic problems that are presented to you.  I think in theory as you solve these logic problems through coding, you come to a point where you have the highest rank of all the other users.  This appears to be the point where recruiters will look at your abilities and offer you a job based on how well you are doing.

I am proud to announce that my current rank is at the bottom of the site, I can't even code the program Hello World yet but I am going to take the next thirty days to try and understand the coding language, the coders mentality, and mostly understand how this little machine that I am using is able to operate the way that it does.  Who knows maybe I'll be able to reach the point where I can write my own program to create something amazing in the future, or I'll just learn to appreciate the people that have developed these languages so that I can enjoy the many games that I do end up enjoying.