So, you want to be a programmer?

Check out JetBrains IDEs: jb.gg/Try_JetBrains_IDEs
If you're student or working on open-source projects you can use it for free.
So, you wanna be a programmer? You see the cools things being built. You see the money that’s being made. You want that. But in what fashion? You wanna build games? You wanna build web apps? You wanna go indie? Maybe work at a big company? And how do you get there from where you are now? Well, we’re gonna talk about that, from career paths, to money, to the job market, the skills, how to learn them, and the future of software development. Your future in software development.
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[@MrPoselsky]

To those who are seeking to create a new project and don't know what to do, pick anything! A majority of stuff you learn on one project will carry over to the next. Making gui applications do carry from desktop to mobile, embedded does carry over to games and other low level apis. Don't worry and just start!

[@_ash64]

you are on point!

[@ikeepsecrets]

Very informative! Thanks for literally spilling most of the important stuff in 20 minutes ^^

[@Zanthis09]

Man I love your videos so much. Holy crap. Great work as always Forrest.

[@cody_codes_youtube]

This is a good video to have out there. Also, really enjoy your take on it all! Especially the part on the importance of enjoying it.

[@Cassandra81552]

Thanks a lot ForestKnight, your videos always helped me unravel the coding world. Keep it up!

[@Moonlighter_TV]

I took my courses and ended up being a dev for one of my state government departments. I get paid less than devs in private but my health insurance, guaranteed vacation/sick/personal time, retirement options and... most importantly... JOB SECURITY are all top notch. I work remotely 50% of the time, and am giving my family a better life than I ever expected coming from a pretty low income family growing up.

[@beast3570]

me who feels I can learn and conquer every corner of this modern software realm. realizing programming is not a hobby or job or something you just do for the sake of doing it programming is much more than that. is a way you express yourself way to embrace and unleash your creativity and knowledge for others to use this field made me know my purpose and helped me a lot to surpass tough times in my life. makes me realize everything within my reach and I am ready to dedicate my life to fulfilling this purpose. i hope you all guys found your ultimate motivation to achieve your desires.

[@exelmans8855]

Sure.

[@RealLava]

programming is a hobby

[@mr.shredder5430]

we can do this dont give up

[@otavioalexandre7575]

amazing video bro, thanks! I'm Designer that wants know the basics of programming to communicate better with my team of devs and of course, building some cool things

[@mrpizarro2356]

im going to study graphic design,wanted to learn web dev to merge the two worlds,and with ai and all these stuff u give me motivation thank u

[@moony_lol]

A great video! And a great motivation!

[@Learnerofthings]

This is so spot on. When I got into computer hardware in the mid 90s I spent time learning and breaking things. Now, I am tutorial-driven and it is awful. I am going to start using man pages and learning C again. I am done with tutorials. Thanks, Forest!

[@eightsprites]

I went the same path. Now back coding C again, using man pages. Trying to use as few dependencies as possible. Stupid? Yes? But fun? Also yes!

[@FadezGG]

Already half way through my computer science degree and I hate to admit it, but I'm one of the people whop doesn't do much coding outside of school(I work full time along with taking classes so I dont have much time), but that changes right now. I'm gonna start trying to do at least some bit of a coding a week. Even if its just one small part of a bigger project at least its something.

[@vivarantx]

if you don't put 100% of yourself AI will take over you at this pace

[@Niels_F_Morrow]

Forrest you do an excellent job at describing the nature, the reality of what programming, getting a job in this field is all about. In regards to AI, the future, code wise. It is my belief, unless something significantly changes with how LLMs function beyond the world of probabilities. You are close! As a professor stated to their class recently, unless they solve the hallucination problem, unless these LLMs actually UNDERSTAND the context of the question being asked of them, understand the extreme importance in why their response should fit the entire ecosystem of the question being asked of them --- to disallow the current narrative; that is PROBABLY what the user wanted! ie, garbage in, garbage out! Next question, please... Programmers who understand what to look for, how to correct the real world mistakes these LLMs do make and possess, nearly, excellent writing ability --- the ability to ask these LLMs direct and specific questions like one has been trying to do with google search for the past 25 years, for example. This person will will always have a job. I view AI as another tool in the coder's toolbox! Not a replacement for people who love to write code. As google's tensor has taught me, trained me to do in the last two decades --- the more direct I am, the more specific I am with a question posed to its search engine ---- the more relevant, the better response, the more likely I will find what I want! I try to avoid ambiguity. My approach transferred to these LLMs seems to work. I owe my parents allot of credit for teaching me to be direct, specific in the first place.

[@Sami-zi9ot]

5:00 only 5 min to grow back his beard.

[@natemaher1389]

Bro, school is not as bad as you are describing. You work on problems in school too. I always recommend students make their own side projects too, especially at the beginning of the semester when things are slower

[@samsturdi]

Why do you need to go off and build things yourself if you’re in school? Literally no other degree works like this.

[@sukairaidazu]

Man, I am so tired of these "tech influencers" regurgitating the same 'advice' other 'tech influencers' have already given a million times while at the same time trying the best they can to sell their sponsors, courses, notion templates and more. All they care about is milking all the new people coming into the world of programming, this is so lame.

[@TheFrustratedProgrammer_]

if what you're programming on is free, then it can be learned for free

[@sukairaidazu]

@@TheFrustratedProgrammer_ The problem is that there is a lot of people that are new to programming and don't know better, so they end up falling for these scams.

[@user-pw5nr7vs2p]

@TheFrustratedProgrammer_ I mean he had a point , so I can’t really argue abt it

[@LubricatedMelon]

Fireship is the only tech channel i enjoy

[@jessr1698]

For the Job Fair thing, that actually wouldn't work for the college I went to. You had to sign in with your student ID in order to get into the Job Fair.

[@randyriegel8553]

I was probably 12-13 years old when I got a Commadore 64 to play games on. But then I got interested in programming it (basic and asm). It was my hobby. And as a software engineer today it is still more like a hobby to me than work because I love it. So get paid great money for my hobby 😀

[@wogvorph]

Making more money doing something that I enjoy?! That's great to hear! Time to start 'not being productive and watching KZbin shorts' company, can't wait for the $$$!

[@CascadiaNow69]

Hey! Quit making fun of me

[@AdrianTregoning]

I got my degree in mechanical engineering in 2005. I obviously worked for well over a decade. Tried my own business at a stage, twice. 2020 came by, moving on... I'm 42 and probably just a few short months away from applying for my first job. The road is not easy. You will want to quit. Hell I wanted to quit last week, again. But I didn't. Keep on keeping on, eventually you get there, one small step at a time. As for money, it's a short term motivator. You can be earning $300k a year and still be unhappy. I wouldn't ever choose a career path based on money. Go for what's interesting. Ultimately the perfect job doesn't exist anyway. All the best, and start today, for whoever is reading this. Consistency is key.

[@ricardofreixo9394]

Love Heartbound music

[@me0101001000]

I'm a scientist and engineer. My fields of interest are chemical engineering, materials science, electrochemistry, and molecular physics. My training is strictly experimental, but I think I have to learn more about theory and simulation. I think I ought to learn to code and build AI/ML/DL models so I can make better simulations to inform my experimental work, which I believe will then allow me to make better models. Manus manum lavat.

[@manuelgonzales6483]

I love your content ❤️😍🎉

[@AsphaltAddicts-wt9ku5di9z]

jet brains gotta be the best, willing to pay over free IDEs

[@bryce3851]

I honestly am grateful stumbling accross this channel i keep getting hiccups everytime trying to go through every library and python trying understand what suits best i like to automate things but keep having trouble for writing script and keep wonderinf ehat type of websites to work with web scraping i keep having stops but not understanding the building part how could i apply this

[@luciosergiocatilina1]

Hello! Where did that really nice visual representation of the bubble algorithm come from? It was around minute 4.

[@Jeremyak]

I'm not sure I necessarily want to be a programmer, but I do want to be able to program and understand these technologies better for my own curiosity. If there ends up being money in that somehow, that's cool too.

[@skycastlechronicles]

priceless the dude shooting himself with the nerf machine!

[@TheRealThaenatos]

My only issue is trying to find a job that fits with the weird schedule of my main job. I work 24hours on 48hours off and need a job to fill those "off days". Im sure Im not doing the appkication process right as it has likely changed in the years since I last applied in tech. But Its been an uphill battle the last year for sure.

[@apexpredator464]

hey ForrestKnight i have been following you for a long time learned a lot of things but I actually wanna ask you, I want to be an operating system developer any tips ?

[@danielkhalaji523]

You are like jesus of software engineers. With mustache... by the way thanks alot i think this experiences is the best thing at this career because its like the treasure and its so important ❤❤❤

[@krethickchakravarthy6533]

Can you make a video on how to crack coding interviews?

[@kshetritej_]

Is keeping just a mustache related with being good in programming?

[@joethemoe123]

As a lazy clever developer, I just wanna say "You good Sir, is a Genius."

[@lillyinthefield2787]

can you drop the links fro the eq your using rightb now mic etc etc??

[@OneC8]

Even this hurts, it’s true

[@Jayboygaming]

I would kill for a job offer at $80k, some people might view that as lower compensation but as a student only just starting out I would absolutely be over the moon at an offer like that

[@codeintherough]

In this field you either have all the money or none of it. 😂

[@Techroadster31]

hey hi, I am a finance background professional and looking to switch into IT, is devops a good career for me to switch? is it mandatory to have software developer skills knowledge to get into devops?

[@user-ge2vc3rl1n]

I think if I was completely new to programming I wouldn't know what CI or anything is and "just building" something would be kind of impossible. How could I tell my grandma to "just build a website" from scratch there are definitely some steps missing. But I get the gist. I just don't know if beginners would.

[@austin7591]

Thank goodness you mentioned the whole reddit skew towards doom and gloom. Thought I was going crazy after checking a job site and then checking reddit. Complete different reality.

[@evotifiga]

What is the status of your side project?

[@annebos4634]

You're a handsome looking guy, would be even more handsome though without moustache (or combined with beard it's okay) and with a jumper in a color that looks better on you. Just my opinion and some unrequested styling advise ;-)

[@dewwde]

very nice video

[@ErazerPT]

Problem solving. That's the crux. Programming is just a small subdomain of problem solving. And as a trainer, it's mostly where things go bad. Most people DON'T think the "right way". Fastest way to get some insight on people is to give them a small problem that doesn't require any special knowledge but requires them to think about it. "Potential developers" will show a certain type of thought process as they go from A to B. People with little to no potential will be either all over the place or plain stuck.

[@user-uk9er5vw4c]

happily/sadly I've already been a programmer for 20 years. If you don't love coding, don't do it it will be hard

[@4115steve]

Chat bots and youtube tutorials are best for piecing the puzzle together. it's like learning to read before you learn to write. It's a terrible idea to learn how to program by typing aimlessly in the terminal expecting results. Tutorial hell is following a video, screen switching, and copying while you have no idea of the fundementals. I'd compare it people repeating a forign language as they hear it and expecting to know the meaning if they repeat it more without the words ever being translated.

[@user-of3nt6pq1e]

Forestknight, I am too much afraid from the Upcoming Ai and literally always thinking that they can replace us....... Overthinking too much about that.....because I am starting my cs degree after 2 months and I am too much afraid about the AI 😢😢 .....reply about it sir 😫

[@abdulhannan8129]

Hello sir. Sir I am not good at maths so can I learn and practice dsa and actually become good at it??

[@damianspeyerer5895]

5:02 was a time jump

[@cheesedoodlez931]

Make a podcast

[@mrrobot-mn6re]

You know a programmer has become Elite when they shave and only remain with a moustache

[@mridhulml3269]

I think you looked waaay better without the mustache..idk about the long hair tho

[@purnewberry3361]

Im the second person, but its more i enjoy seeing things i made work.

[@gherbetto]

Not the stache again 😅

[@tommytommy2]

Why would "enjoying it" be more important for coding than any other job? There is nothing that I actually love doing that would be a realistic career path for me. If I learn coding I could make good money while having freedom to do the things I actually love doing. Maybe with time I will learn to like coding and that would be great, but I am genuinely curious as to why you have to enjoy it? I don't think dentists enjoy digging in mouths all day.

[@pandeyperfect8292]

Nice

[@codeintherough]

If there are no jobs you have to create your own, you might even have to do some in kind transactions

[@user-mq5tl8wl1e]

do you guys say that's grovey dude

[@StTrina]

My name is KIIIIIIIID ROCK!

[@Tehploe]

James... shhhhh...! ... Shhhh.

[@monad_tcp]

I am a programmer and I want not to be a programmer, how do I do know ?

[@ImproveMyself12]

same

[@sixteenpennynails]

What? No. I said I want to be a pro gamer.

[@AaronBonBarron]

Great video! Shame it's full of React code 😅

[@briliant-fr5iv]

ThePrimeTime2.0? 🧐

[@jonathanmurray2986]

85k/year?! Oh no! /s

[@homieinthesky8919]

Bro looks like a hipster Primeagen

[@meme_Overflow]

change the title to "so,you think you can be a programmer?"

[@Karma-fo8or]

Yeah I wanted to. Then I went to uni.

[@neuro914]

Same lmaoo

[@LocGreen]

Like!

[@pcdevil99]

You are my Jesus. Amen 🙏

[@LarryLaFlemme-yhwh4]

No no bro 😅

[@mohamedazlaoui4217]

i don;t enjoy anyting i just hate coding less

[@bandougaming]

I, ve been talk you i don't want to be a pfogrammeer

[@rikardo816]

Nice video. If someone is looking for people who can help with their project, I'm available. I would love to work with people who speaking in English.

[@vivarantx]

too late to be a developer. By the time you get your degree AGI AI will take over

[@anispinner]

alternative thumbnail title: don't watch if you're an old programmer

[@thien837]

Don’t comment again

[@NazifAnab]

Noooooo. Why shave the beard?????

[@anonymeister123]

It was getting in the way of his coding. Not aerodynamic enough

[@gringotico1759]

Cause it's his beard and he wanted to shave it. Wtf

[@Spez_dood]

Sideburns and goatee are bloatware. He simply optimized his (inter)face

[@JackieRobinson24]

The stache is the way brother

[@NazifAnab]

@@gringotico1759 no shit sherlock

[@4115steve]

learn C, javascript , then rust, in that order. It covers embedded systems, cyber security, game development, and Web Development.

[@raveltammeleht6278]

I personally never use version control, seems like a tons of waste of time. If I made a mistake, I try to first find it and if its to deep in the solution, I start over. There is no point in switching between versions. If I want it fixed then I need to figure out a solution, not pretend that I am working.

[@raveltammeleht6278]

But dont get me wrong, I do have major versions, such as o.5 or 1.2b etc. But I keep them as simply backups. Then the word version justifys itself.

[@zaid4708]

holy shit this guy

[@raveltammeleht6278]

@@zaid4708 yeah I know... But I always hear the same sentence "there are so many versions, we need to unit test" and seems like people get stuck.

[@Albertkallal]

Well, a huge chunk of our industry, and that of PC based software meant that many a developer lacked version control. However, I think front and center is seamless, easy, fast and some kind of version control that does not get in your way. So, WHEN it is super easy, super fast, then you find source control will not get in your way, but become your friend. So, while I use github all day long, I use it from Visual Studio, and thus I never even learned the command line stuff for git. Where Source Code Control (SCC) it comes in REALLY huge? Well, say you working on some code, and you have a issue or bug, and ask, gee, what was these few lines of code like before I changed them? Right click->git->compare with un-modified. Now, both sets of code are displayed side by side with the changes. Absolute super handy. And this means you free to try and change code, since you can always go back, or view previous code - and you don't have to leave the IDE to do this. So, this means you are free to make changes, and you don't have to say comment out a block of code that you want to keep in case some changes don't work, or you need to view/look at the previous code that was working. So, it takes a lot of stress off of trying changes and tweaking code. The other issue? Well, if that software already deployed live, and you working on the next great feature, what happens if a production bug needs to be fixed, but you 2 days into some new code? Now, you are in a pickle, since then: A) you have to go to previous saved version, fix the bug, then deploy, but that bug fix is now not in your latest build, and then you now have to copy over those code changes to the current v-next version you are working on. This can be a real pain. B) you comment out, or disable your new big feature you working on, and then fix the bug/issue in your current build. With SCC, you can branch that new feature, and thus are free to continue to work on that feature. But, you can also take master, fix the bug, and commit. And now you free in that branch to pull in that bug fix. Once again, this all comes down to convenance. The other big issue? Why of course when working with more then one developer. So, we are in the process of moving out a bunch of code from 2-4 applications that is common to those applications. So, we building a business object that has VERY important code such as creating a new project, approving a project etc. However, there are about 4 applications that need these features. So, that business object is now under SCC. So, any and all of the developers can make changes, add new features, and for our web portal, desktop software, and even some console software that needs that code base and business object? Well, there is only one copy of that object, and any developer can make updates to that shared library code. So, I can make updates, test, and then commit. Now, when every other developer working? They can just pull those changes, and when they build + deploy changes to say the web portal, or some console application? Those builds have the latest business object with changes. So, I like the freedom of being able to try, test, change code. I can with a simple mouse click then view the previous code. Or I can even just "dump" the code changes I made. In effect, using SCC means I have a built in super duper un-do system. This allows great freedom to try and make changes, and yet I can always view my previous code with ease - not having to go to some backup or previous version. This freedom means now I don't comment out a lot of code blocks, but just delete them, since I can always with great ease view the previous code before changes anyway. Same goes when you working with multiple developers. Exactly who, where is the latest build that currently deployed? It can't be sitting on some developers computer - as that will not work at all when you have multiple developers. So, with SCC, then any and all developers have a repository of the current and latest software builds for our software. So, once again, if you have say 5 different software systems being used, then on any developer computer, then any of the developers can pull that build and work local. So, must one use SCC? No, but it has boatloads of benefits. It all comes down to if you have multiple projects, and multiple developers. If you don't have multiple projects, and you don't have multiple developers, then SCC is not a must have, but even then, it still nice to try code changes, and not having to worry about how easy a un-do to those changes is. However, unless the SCC system is 100% seamless, and 100% integrated into the IDE you are using, then SC starts to get in your way. If you have a simple, easy to use GUI based SCC system, and a dead simple means to pull and push out your builds? Then even the most green of developers will enjoy and use SC, and SC will fast become your friend, and not something that gets in the way of development. So, much of this comes down to the scope and size of the project, and do you have multiple projects sharing some code, and that of more then one developer. In such cases, it becomes very difficult to work without a SCC system.

[@user-wn9ho6mh6t]

First one to comment and like the video for real

[@LokeshWankhede]

First comment!

[@marketsexplored]

First

[@abitghosh2665]

first view

[@abgs]

aint nobody getting into programming in 2024 anymore looool

[@chillydoog]

The SE/SD job market is TRASH

[@herobrineslayer1585]

they gotta make ai advancement from here illegal. programming is cool i dont want ai to just do everything. its a great learning tool and productivity tool but anything more advanced and were doomed. it will take all my motivation away

[@Roadrunner65553]

Left when he made the DEI comment. Buh bye. Why does every techie think he’s smarter than Bill Gates?

[@boogerman69]

what was the keyboard in the thumbnail? it looked super slick

[@StTrina]

My name is KIIIIIIIID ROCK!