In order to be a successful programmer there are many skills you must posses. The most important skill is logic. Because of all the detail and explicit instructions required to program software a person must be able to think logically. In high school my strongest class was math. Math is my favorite subject because it deals with breaking things down and simplifying them. This is what programming is all about. Another quality I have that relates to programming is patients. About 80 percent of a programmers work time is spent debugging. Debugging is the process of finding all the errors in the code and fix them. This requires tons of patients because many of these errors are hard to seek out. Also I love to solve problems. In high school my computer science teacher would

give us brain teasers and I would sit up all night until I figured it out. A computer programmer must be able to receive a problem and find the most efficient way to solve it.

When starting out in programming you will be assigned to a team of programmers work with. All major applications are programmed by a team of programmers. Otherwise a program like Microsoft Word would take about 3 years to write and another 10 debugging. Working well in groups is definitely a skill needed in the programming world. Once you have worked in this group you could be promoted to lead programmer. This means you are in charge of the group. After that there are supervisory positions that can be offered. Another option for programmers is to move into specialized areas such as internet technology and multimedia. More and more in the industry programmers are working on contracts. This makes the industry vary competitive. In order to be successful a programmer need to be up to date on all on the current technology and trends.

The three qualities I looked at in choosing a career are salary, interesting work, and being able to see that my work has created something. People say that money isn't everything but it certainly does

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