The developer job can seem hard to pin down when you work far from the world of IT.
Here is a quick look at 5 of the most common myths and misconceptions.
I'M A PROGRAMMER,
NOT A REPAIRMAN!
Let's be clear: a developer is not an IT maintenance technician!
That's right! Knowing how to program does not mean we are at our colleagues' beck and call as soon as their computer or some other electronic gadget starts playing up!
So there is no point calling on us to fix the printer, the PC, the air conditioning or even the microwave (yes, really, it happens).
And while we're at it, we are not virus hunters either...
GEEK
IS CHIC
Developers are often called "geeks", but do you know what the word really means?
Originally, it refers to someone with a deep knowledge of computing, new technologies, video games or science fiction. Pretty cool, right?
So yes, being a geek is actually stylish!
Of course, as in any field, when you push your passion to the extreme, you can quickly slip over to the dark side and, in this case, risk becoming a real nerd completely cut off from the outside world.
ANTISOCIAL?
THINK AGAIN!
I love coding, I love video games and, at the risk of surprising you, I love people too!
No, I did not spend my teenage years shut away in the basement of the family home, headphones on, playing online games 24/7.
Quite the opposite: at 15 I was a seasoned skater! I spent my time doing 360s and ollies, and believe me, I gave it everything! A good exoskeleton would have come in handy back then: from my ankles to my eyebrows, I broke just about everything! Only last year I gave myself another nasty sprain...
Later on, I started a punk rock band and we played several gigs at the Blue Banana pub in Lyon (those in the know will appreciate it).
A far cry from the cliché of the antisocial no-lifer, isn't it?
CODING IS NOT
HACKING
At what point do people decide that being a developer automatically makes you a hacker?
It's true that for many people code remains an enigmatic, mysterious language, but that's no reason to see every programmer as a dangerous computer pirate...
And a special shout-out to Wargames, a 1983 film, for the enduring cliché of the computer genius who comes within a whisker of starting a world war.
I SAID ALGORITHM,
NOT ARITHMETIC!
No, a developer is not necessarily a maths whizz who works while gazing at a photo of Alan Turing on the desk.
For years, crowds of passionate young people were led to believe that they would only succeed in programming if they had a head for maths: wrong!
Admittedly, if you are good at it, it will help, but you can learn to code with logic, common sense and plenty of passion!
As you will have gathered, a programmer is a human being like any other, even if they don't always seem to speak the same language as you.
End of transmission.
