Today, software engineer is the most sought-after career for college graduates (most-applied-for job title for recent graduates) and the most highly paid one, as well. Indeed, “software engineers make over $92,300 within the first few years of their careers … You can expect this role to be among the most sought-after job titles for years to come, especially since the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] predicts that employment in this job is projected to grow 24 percent from 2016 to 2026.”^{1 (CNBC.com)}

Although in most cases such statistics focus on software engineering (that is, the popular programming jobs that require a programmer to write code to build software), programming, as a profession and as a hobby and as a mechanism for transmogrification, exists in so many industries and encompasses such a wide variety of programming and nonprogramming activities and careers that nearly every discussion about programming careers fails to convey the breathtaking awe and at once the terrifying and reassuring God-like presence of coding in our world and our life.

The rest of this article continues after the series’ table of contents below.

In this article and the related ones in this series, I aim to do justice to the near-divinity of programming (that is, code), which has heightened our lives and extol our powers and promise to immortalize our existence. For centuries, such power and existentialism has been the sole domain of gods and humans over other humans. But today, even today, not just tomorrow and not just the weeks and years and decades ahead, software has triumphed over our humans in a way that other humans never could have.

Thus, if we want to build our own future and influence our own existence, we have no choice but to learn to code and partake in the development of software, to create our masterpieces and sovereigns—the processes that will dominate everything about us. Now is the time—the best time—to learn to code and become an impactful programmer and help define your own enduring success and future.

Why Now Is the Best Time Ever to Become a Programmer

This moment may be the best time in human history to become a programmer because:

• Anyone, no matter their intellect or financial status or place of residence, can train to become an employable programmer or become a startup founder.

• Just a few years ago, you needed at least a computer science bachelor’s degree (minimum four years of college) to get a proper programming education. But today, you can become a specialized software engineer or programmer with just a few months of training. Further, in just those few months, you can become a proficient software engineer (frontend, mobile, backend, etc.), one even more qualified and knowledgeable and skilled than a CS-degree graduate.

• For any programming career, there exists high-quality, affordable, online and offline programming educational opportunities, and the quality of these courses available online today (many of which are free) are as excellent as the same courses available at exclusive and prestigious universities. Consider that a youngster from a remote part of Gambia with internet access on his mobile phone can take the same courses a fortunate American at an Ivy League university takes.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (specifically because the former is still in its early days) and big data are as practical and as opportunistic as they will ever be, for the time will come when even human programmers will be outmoded, most overcome for their fallibility and inferiority to AI and data.

• This very moment, more than any other time in human history, software—in combination with software-controlled-hardware and software integrated with biological systems—will impact every aspect of humanity: every job we perform and will ever perform, every industry we have created and will create, everything we do and every place we visit, and soon, everything we know and will contemplate.

• You can create extraordinary possibilities and godlike creations that even Jesus himself never postulated, specifically because of the advancement we have made in software engineering and computing and that is realizable today. For example, you can create software to read minds and predict the future, and more.

• As a programmer, you can earn a larger starting salary today than many doctors and lawyers earn.

• You can work from anywhere in the world for any company in the world.

• Soon, or, hopefully later, many of things we do, will be automated. Backend engineering can be 90% automated, leaving no room for tens of thousands of developers. A startup today is developing solutions to automate mobile development.

• You can build companies, as large or as rich or as extraordinary as you can imagine them.

• You can build software-driven platforms and revolutionary policies to help the poor realize prosperity, as we are doing at AI Humanity.

No wonder many people want to learn to code and, even though most don’t become employable and successful programmers, still tens of thousands routinely survive the exhausting and arduous programming education to become successful programmers.

You, too, should consider becoming a programmer. But ensure you read all the articles in this series to help you better understand how to succeed, what programming career to choose, and much more.

What Can You Do With Your Programming Skills and Why Programming Is One of the Best Career Paths?

Whereas the preceding list details some of the incontrovertible reasons why now is the best time to become a programmer, the list below details some of the extraordinary things you can do with your programming skills.

Unique among all professions, a well-trained programmer can quickly land a high-paying job and can create, with diligent effort, digital experiences that rival anything even Einstein was able to cogitate.

Depending on your area of specialization (frontend engineer, cybersecurity engineer, backend engineer, mobile engineer, etc.) you can do much with your programming skills:

• You can enable the blind to see, the paraplegic to walk, the mute to talk, the self to heal: real miracles, brought on by the divinity of software. If such miracles are not divine, then what else is? In case you are wondering, I am a Christian, yet I am as confused and as ignorant and as shaken in my faith by our existence and all the mysteries, calamities, and technological miracles, before us, as anyone else is who may have even Job-like faith and still questions it.

• You can help to elucidate some of the most elusive mysteries of the universe—all of which have baffled philosophers, cosmologists, physicists, mathematicians, and mere mortals. At Bov Academy, we will be writing such software by 2019, in our Algorithmology career path.

• You can write code to perform surgery and diagnose illnesses better than any doctor ever could.

• You can create user interfaces and websites and other experiences that hundreds of millions of users will depend on every day.

• You can create your own startup, such as a new Facebook, or any kind of Internet entrepreneurial venture. Much is left to accomplish and invent in the Internet business world and in digital and online industries of every kind.

• You can create artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and services and products. Once you learn get a proper and rigorous programming education with all the important fundamentals, (not a “crash course” programming education), you would be just a few weeks or months away from learning and using AI in your projects.

• You can create a cybersecurity firm or work as a hacker to defend your country’s critical data and services from rogue hackers, or protect your firm’s intellectual property and more.

• You can manage the server processes and system software that store the massive data and run the applications users don’t see, but that matter more than most people realized. Think of the possibilities that can be done with all the data we collect and share today.

• You can create mobile apps—both the user interfaces and the backend logic.

• You can build software to solve some of the biggest challenges that face humanity, including the devastating refugee problems around the globe or global or provincial poverty. (Incidentally, at Bov Academy, we hire some of our best students to work for AI Humanity, an organization that aims to eradicate global poverty and bring prosperity to the world’s unprosperous.)

• You can create algorithms and write code for databases and authentication services and the like, process and tasks that differ much from building user interfaces.

• You can teach programming to a new generation of ambitious youngsters or to an older generation of technologically challenged grown-ups or to the unprosperous in developed and developing countries who are yearning for meaningful technological opportunities.

• You can build autonomous machines, build massive applications for businesses and medical equipment or commercial machines.

• And you can create programs of imaginable wonder that extend all that we know, by creating new worlds, new realities, new experiences. For instance, you can create worlds of virtual reality (VR) and produce augmented reality (AR), as well as program autonomous machines for land, sea, and air. You can any of these wondrous things and others we have yet to ponder.
  As you see from the list above, a programming career has more far-reaching opportunities and consequences than more than any other career does perhaps any other field. If you want to have the biggest impact on humanity, you should consider becoming a programmer.

What Are the Different Programming Jobs, What Does Each Job Entail, Where Can You Train for Each, and What Is the Average Starting Salary for Each?

This section is so comprehensive and exhaustive that I had to publish it as a separate article. See the table of contents above for the link to this article.

Recommended Reading List to Expand and Refine Your Knowledge on the Topics Discussed

The books in the list below will enrich your life and help you on your path to success. Some of them will give you a jolt of inspiration. All of them will enlighten you on subjects you may not know or that you know little of.

Notes

1. The most sought-after job for college grads pays $92,300—here’s the rest of the top 10, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/10/linkedin-the-10-jobs-grads-want-most-and-how-much-they-pay.html