Alan Robbins is a self-taught programmer who dabbled with programming in college. After not doing to well in the post-secondary system with respect to programming, he changed his major and graduated with a degree in Business Economics and a minor in Psychology and Philosophy.
After graduating, he decided that he had a knack for programming (even if the “system” told him otherwise) so he ended up getting an entry level job as a programmer. Since then, he's started up a couple of businesses and is now running a very successful software development company with 40 employees and “lives the dream” by working from home.
The Desire to Learn
I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it. Those with the desire to BE a programmer will make it happen. With all of the tools and resources available today, anyone with the desire can learn how to program. It isn't an easy process and the journey will be paved with failures, but that's completely normal. In this podcast episode Alan shares the story of the first program(s) he wrote as an entry level programmer. He talked about how the program would “bring the computer system to its knees” because of how poorly coded the program was, but like I said, this is par for the course.
No programmer is going to be perfect out of the gate, and it's the learning process that is so important. It's critical to find a mentor and learn as much as you can from someone who has BEEN through the coding trial by fire already. So if you are someone who wants to learn how to code and finds it so interesting, but believe that they are “just not smart enough to be a programmer”… think again.
Links mentioned in this episode
I invite you to reach out to Alan and ask him any questions that you may have about his journey to becoming a successful self-taught programmer. Alan is an extremely nice guy and I'm sure he'd love to talk to you. So send him a message, even if it's just to say “Hello, I heard you on the podcast!”.