Do you consider yourself a programmer?

Question

Do you consider yourself a programmer?

Answer 1

Although I am not a programmer by career, I definitely consider myself a programmer. I started programming at the age of 8, learning Microsoft BASIC. In high school I learned Pascal and then C, and later I learned C++ and Java, as well as bits and pieces of languages like Perl, PHP, VisualBasic, and other scripting languages. I have toyed with Python and Haskell. I also use mathematical packages like Maple and Matlab.

Most of my programming, I do for my own personal use. I often use programming for simulation in class assignments. I have taken courses in Numerical Analysis (Scientific Computing) and probability and statistics which either required or benefited from programming.

I've also made one tiny contribution to the wine project, an open-source project. I run gentoo linux on my computers and regularly write small scripts or edit pieces of code to make my computer do exactly what I want.

I think that most programmers aren't necessarily programmers by career...they are just everyday people. They might be accountants writing VisualBasic scripts to facilitate calculating an excel worksheet or other people in an office designing an Access database. They might be mathematicians writing a program to facilitate their calculations. They might be web designers or hobbyists writing a small PHP program for an interactive website.

Programmers are all around us!