Now a days I’ve heard that EVERYBODY must know how to program, due the technology is everywhere, due your abilities and skills will be developed in a creative way.

I think all of these arguments are valid and I really agreed them, but I believe that be a programmer is now more than just know how to program. If everybody learn how to program, I don’t think all become into programmers, the evolution of the software is turning the meaning into a more complex and complete definition. The idea to teach the kids about programming is in mi humble opinion, to let them know other way to solve problems using technology, prepare the minds of the new generations with the civic knowledge about how to improve the world, and for obvious reasons they won’t be afraid to get in touch with technology.

In a few words:

“use the technology in your favor and in the others favor”

So, if everybody will know how to program, but no all will become into programmers …

Who the hell will be a programmer?

There are many definitions to describe what a programmer is, and the opinion of every programmer will be different so, I’m going to mention the things I believe are the most common and also I’m going to add mine.

First of all, a programmer is a person who writes software, who use a programming language to develop professional programs that solve problems or improve manual process. I did emphasis in the word professional because I believed this will be the differentiator between who will know how to program and who will be a programmer. When the people change their code from “garage code” into a “professional code”, the programmer inside them, will have born.

For professional, I mean that their code will have the following characteristics:

• It’ll be complete
  • Completely functional (it works)
  • Usable and useful
  • Will accomplish the requirement(s)
  • Will solve the problem in the better way (relative)
• Will follow the best practices of the language in which it was written
• Will be tested (at least unit test)
  • Unit tests
  • Integration tests
• The code will be documented
• The code will be maintainable
• Will be collaborative

It is possible that they, will just write a few lines of code at the begining, but it won’t matter the number of lines, what will really matter, is that those lines will be well written since the beginning, because their formation as a programmer will tell them, that they do not only know how to program, it will tell them that they know the best way of how to program, or the best way of write code to do it professional and collaborative.

There are many opinios of how a programmer should be, this my opinion of the near future of the programmers and how I believe this profesion will turn into.