When Can You Call Yourself A Programmer?

My eyes were glued to my computer screen, trying to make sense of percentage distributions in Inheritance Law when I decided that I should perform the seemingly more difficult task of writing a program that would distribute portions of inheritance to family members. I popped upon Repl.it and threw something together that more or less worked. Why did I feel the need to make a calculator? There are numerous calculators out there. The world certainly does not need another one.

Well, I think it was partially to prove to myself that I can still work my way around some basic JavaScript, but it also shows that a part of my brain is wired to think procedurally. This is definitely a trait that I was not born with because I am still nowhere near adept at mathematics. This is a skill I had to cultivate through grueling trial and error. However, I am still a hobbyist in terms of my skill level. I can make cute little static websites, but nothing that will blow your socks off.

So am I a programmer? V. Anton Spraul, author of Think Like A Programmer, that the challenge of programming is not learning the language, but learning to creatively solve problems using that language. In a sense, it’s not how much you know, but how well you can use what you know to create solutions. But do these solution have to be novel or revolutionary?

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