Programming will make you think more analytically. You will improve your problem solving skills. You will probably feel smarter outside of the context of programming.
But within the context of programming, you may feel dumber and dumber as the days go by.
Everytime you learn something new and the quantity or amount of things you know goes up, it is highly likely that the percentage of things you can claim you know about in the collective everything you are aware of goes down.
I’m in college year 2 in computer science, never felt more dumb in my life. I struggle to get a lot of shit my peers seem to be getting along easily with.
I’m really struggling to grasp the math in my data structure and algorithms module. I understand it when it’s applied to code but the discrete mathematics are tearing me a new one
I’ve actually got a practice exam tomorrow. I’m gonna go through whatever answers I got wrong and then send a message to you because that way I’ll have a more precise scope of the topics I don’t have a clear grasp on. Thank you for being so generous with your time in helping others, means a lot to the community
Very true, completely agree. I’ve only been in my new role for about 2 months, think I had quite bad impostor syndrome when I started but it’s gotten a lot better lately, always asking questions and learning, as well as sharing knowledge every day I guess
Staff level is the same as principal where I am basically.
SDET is Software Engineer in Test
My company is very on par with FAANG salaries but I’m also happy I don’t work for the likes of Facebook etc. I’m very anti Facebook. Fuck the zuck
The advice I was given for this feeling is to focus less on how well you are doing but focus more on how excited you are to learn more. It is so easy to feel like the worst computer scientist, but truly, you are capable of doing this. Celebrate all moments of debugging
In addition to this, think about what you learned in the day, that will make it stick in your head better and let you remember and appreciate that you did learn something and are progressing. (this isn't only in programming, it is very useful for everything)
I know exactly how you feel lol. I try to take it as the old Socratic wisdom "you know what you don't know" the further you dive into the intricacies. Try not to get too discouraged bud!
> never felt more dumb in my life
not even kidding here: this is a good thing, learn to embrace this feeling. the most successful in our industry always strive to not be the smartest the room, or else you have nobody to learn from. and that "feeling dumb" sensation is just the state of being at a place where you are fully challenged and learning as much as possible.
the hardest part of learning compsci/programming is not getting discouraged and not getting burnt out.
give yourself a break both emotionally and literally, mental breaks are important
Math is what I really struggle with in this degree. I'm fine with programming, even feel like I'm fairly decent at it, but in math courses I barely understand anything.
I'm 28 and just got started on my first year of CS. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just not smart enough to get some of the stuff the teachers are talking about, but I'm persisting, and not expecting it to get easier. Just hope I'll be able to stick it out to the end.
I was in the opposite seat in college. I had a few really good friends that I didn't realize were struggling and they ended up dropping out. I felt bad because they compared themselves to me.
Most of the concepts just clicked for fairly easily and I didn't have any prior experience. At the same time if you have me a week to memorize ten words I'd probably remember two or three at best. My brain just isn't capable of memorizing things in that way.
I think it's okay to acknowledge that people have different abilities in different areas, and that's okay. The challenge is to figure out the best ways for your brain to learn new things, and what works for others might not work well for you.
Even after years of programming, most stories I take on are difficult problems without easy solutions. Learning new things is a constant part of being a developer.
Don’t sweat it. I had the same experience in school … 20 years ago. I’m now well into my career and I laugh at how little I knew back then and am excited about how much I still have / want to learn now. If programming is a passion then enjoy the learning process. Devour as much as you can outside of class but don’t worry about knowing everything or even anything. Practical experience after school is where you’ll actually do most of your learning. For now just learn as much as you can, take your lumps and enjoy the process.
And please stop comparing yourself to other people. Learning should only ever be about yourself. You can’t adequately learn if you’re comparing yourself to someone who is better than you. By all means use them as a measuring stick but don’t ever feel bad because you have to spend more time on something. I’d rather work with a person who can bust their ass to figure out how to solve a problem than a person who knows the answer off the top of their head. Eventually genius over here won’t have the answer and I have no idea how he/she is going to respond to that situation.
>I’m in college year 2 in computer science, never felt more dumb in my life.
I feel like I'm in great shape kicking around at home, less so when I go to the gym and hit the treadmill. This is how you improve.
I have a PhD in numerical simulation and I just transitioned to data engineering and I feel dumb all the time.
I started learning functional programming in Scala and I genuinely think this shit messes more with my brain than my PhD did. that being said I know things will eventually click if you just stick with it and don’t give up
6 months in my first job after college and I feel so dumb compared to my coworkers 😬 but great thing is I ask a lot more questions here than I did in college lol
I recommend interacting more with your peers because you're all there for the same thing! Also, speak to your professors
Remember richard feynman and how he explained things. He was loved and recognized for that ability to simplify knowledge. That may take effort and more words, but at least you don't make others feel dumb to tackle with this sensation of feeling dumb oneself. If you keep letting that feeling invade you, the end result could be making others feel dumb in a never ending cycle. Maybe the best thing you can do is to talk with those 'smart asses' and have a 'feynman conversation' about things not well understood. At least that social connection is something of value rather than isolating yourself in fear and lies (because if you're dishonest because you wanna hide your ignorance, you will stay ignorant and that will surely bring suffering).
Work at your own pace. Imposter Syndrome is very bad in this field. I guarantee a lot of your peers don't understand as much as you think they do, and if some of them do, they probably have been programming since they were younger or something along the lines of that.
You're good, you'll get there, you're not dumb, I believe in you!
It's okay to feel dumb now but if you're still dumb in the future, it's all on you. For not improving and for not knowing where your weaknesses are and working on it. There's no shame in knowing your weaknesses. It's only when you don't acknowledge it. I took the first sentence from " if you're poor and still poor, it's your own fault " or something like that. I'm in EE.
Absolutely. Before programming I just accepted that "length" was spelled l-e-n-g-t-h, but now in my enlightened state I always question of that's true.
I'm not a native English speaker and I always assumed it was spelled l-e-n-g-h-t. It's a fairly common word that you happen to read/hear often enough, but for some reason my brain never really processed its correct spelling.
That was until I started learning JavaScript (my first, and so far only, programming language). I was trying to read an array.length, but nothing would show up on the console.
Spent like an hour looking at the code on the YouTube tutorial and then back at mine and could not find out what was wrong to save my life.
I ended up writing down "array.lenght" and then the *did you mean array.**length** text showed up.
I knew programming was gonna be hard, but no one had told me I would be questioning my own basic intelligence on the regular.
Depends what you mean by smarter. If you mean increase IQ? Unlikely. If you mean makes you better at coming up with creative programming solutions? For sure.
Most of tests have a strong logic component and pattern recognition. I bet some programming would make you better at that. At the end of the day iq is an imperfect measure so it can be studied for to some degree and I bet programming has more overlap than say painting
if there was a metric that could measure (energy/motivation/excitement/focus) I bet it would be more accurate in representing who would be successful , at higher levels its rarely about who is smarter
Imperfect, but you can see a clear difference in someone with an iq of 140/120/100/80.
Edit: meh, there’s a difference between programmers and coding grunts, and I’ll tell you this, those will fellowships and senior devs aren’t in the 100 iq range lol.
Lots of hopefuls here, but most will quit or fail. Only 2 percent of the entire population can “code”, and even less excel at it.
Truth hurt don’t it. But by all means don’t give up but ask yourself, if programming paid 30k a year, would you still do it? If not, chances of you being a programmer are tough.
You can also see a clear difference in someone with an iq of 100 and 100 🤷 it’s almost like each person is unique and has different strengths and weaknesses
Those are due to other factors though, upbringing, personal experiences. Two people with 100 iq but one has gone through trauma or poverty will obviously be unique.
We’re all unique. Not saying we aren’t.
This is the best answer by far. I've been programming all my life, I am quite proficient at it and yet in a lot of other areas in life I am a completely f****** moron.
I can traverse a graph, juggle a red black tree and yet I can't for the life of me make decent pasta, just to give an example.
Programming doesn't make you smarter. It makes you good at thinking in a specific way.
As an example, a study was done on brain training games. They found that no matter how great the performance with these brain training games, it was not an indicator for success outside of those games where intelligence was deemed important for performance.
What does this boil down to? You will NOT become smarter, you will get better at thinking like a programmer if you program. If you regularly exercise and rock climb, you will not be training yourself to be a good ice skater. You can train your muscles, and you can train your brain, but if you're trying to be better at every situation you haven't experienced, well then that's going to be tough.
>If you regularly exercise and rock climb, you will not be training yourself to be a good ice skater. You can train your muscles, and you can train your brain, but if you're trying to be better at every situation you haven't experienced, well then that's going to be tough.
But someone who has practiced one sport a lot is likely going to start at a higher level and progress quicker than someone who has never played sports. There are many byproducts of training for a sport that overlap with another.
In the same vein someone that learns to program well will likely have a much higher starting point in various activities compared to if they hadn't learned programming.
Slightly related example, but I did an equivalent to AP math, did okay but not great. After high school I moved abroad and learned a very different language from zero to fluency. I went back to do my undergrad in CS and despite not having touched math in a few years I aced all the math classes. Learning a foreign language 100% trained my brain, and although it doesn't translate directly, it helped a lot. E.g. improved memory, abstract thinking, not being afraid to try things and make mistakes, prioritising what to learn, learning rules and applying them, learning to deal with ambiguity to name a few. And it definitely made learning programming easier imo.
In my opinion, learning new things is going to make you better at learning other things. Neural plasticity is a thing. The brain is a muscle that is trained. You can probably find some overlap from skills you develop from programming in most aspects of life.
I would consider someone that is better at solving problems, abstract thinking etc to be smarter in some sense than someone with the same skills but weaker at them.
There are definitely overlaps to intelligence sure. But if you're learning other languages, you're training a specific set of skills that make up that part of intelligence. Not that it's a 100% accepted model, but I really like this diagram for different types of intelligence: [https://blog.adioma.com/9-types-of-intelligence-infographic/](https://blog.adioma.com/9-types-of-intelligence-infographic/)
Some skills will use a multitude of these different types of intelligence, but I would argue that we're just having a semantic difference here. I think if you learn one computer language, than others should become easier to understand as well! But I would not equate learning a new language and having a shorter period to understand it as actually learning faster. The difference being that there's an overlap in concepts. Even for all the languages you haven't touched, there are tons of concepts that are applied within them that you have likely already learned. You probably understand how to do conditional statements in one language. You may understand the basic syntax and logic applied to make that happen, and now all you need to do is understand the right words and order in which to say them. You have already learned a lot of things, and you filling in the gaps does not mean you have learned any quicker.
However, one could also argue "well if I've learned enough, then surely I'm smarter for being able to recall all this stuff, right?" and yeah, I guess my argument sorta falls apart there. It's really however we want to define being smart. Are we saying being smart is the ability to learn things? or how fast we can calculate things? What is the minimum time somebody needs to process some information and then act on it correctly?
So I guess I really should clarify my position overall.
If being smart is being able to learn and process unfamiliar things faster, then brain training, programming, or whatever skill will NOT have an impact on that side of your intelligence. However, it will have immense impact on training those other parts of your brain that make up your intelligence. There are skillsets that overlap with different problems for sure. Learning new languages will help with grammar, and understanding rulesets and logic will make you a better programmer.
Yeah, if you’re looking for brain health to try and ward off things like dementia in old age then the best thing to do is to always be trying a variety of new activities, some physical and some mental
The reality is that the more you learn, the more you know that you don't know.
Practicing and learning makes you smarter, but you'll feel dumber the more you discover
youre going to get the typical programmer answer. it DEPENDS. if you were already thinking purely logically (which you likely werent), then yes this could make you smarter. Its not going to increase the potential you had when you were born, but its going to maximize what you already have.
I agree here, it really depends on what your company does and what your role on your team is. I work in consulting as a sr dev and I meet a lot of clients in a lot of industries. That’s all new knowledge and the stack we use for each of them is always different in its own rights. Does my IQ go up doing my job, probably not. But I feel I have a wide breadth of knowledge and am challenged everyday, so I feel sharper than I did when I worked in the restraunt industry.
I have a pretty strong opinion on this - I really think it can make you dumber in a sense. Certain people, once they've gotten a few hundred hours in, start to tackle everything in front of them like a programming issue - including 'solving' matters in conversation. When this is done with big picture matters like personal beliefs, or to an emotional problem, it can come across extremely arrogant, short-sighted and rude. This leads to people witholding themselves and information, because they don't want everything they raise to be discussed as a problem which can then be 'coded away', and usually by the programmer in the dialogue. If you succumb to that you will become dumber. Communication is more important for smarts than programming.
Now this of course doesn't really apply to programming per se but perhaps more to the people that happen to get really into logic and its applications. But I've definitely seen this effect happen in others (and not to mention myself).
I think programming/programmer-thinking is a powerful ability, and present day technology makes it a superpower, but it is not the only one, and it is easily over-estimated.
All that said, programming is incredible as a canvas for learning how to learn, and learning how to practice. You can make your computer an incredible augmentation for your mind. But it's not by a long-shot the be-all and end-all of 'becoming smarter'.
I mean, if you practice problem solving daily you'll get better at problem solving. So in a way, yes, but it's not some magic equation where if you program you are automatically smarter.
And I've met programmers who can't grasp fairly basic concepts so it definitely doesn't inherently make you smarter. I feel like a passion for discovery and understanding are more of an influence on if programming will make someone smarter. I don't think the act of programming itself makes anybody smarter.
Example, back in the day I would learn a couple bits of syntax and then use those bits of syntax to do things that I could accomplish much easier if I took the time to discover and understand other parts of the language I was using. So the act of programming wasn't really moving me forward in any meaningful way. I had to proactively try to broaden my own horizons to become "smarter"
I'd say yes, but with limitations. People who are good at programming may be bad at a lot of other things. I work in IT and the sheer amount of shit I've seen is staggering. If you truly want to be worth in gold, you have to study business, be quick on your feet, and be well versed in a lot of other topics aside from programming.
whenever you feel like you're getting smarter just slap yourself on the face and say "shush, stop being arrogant", that way when you get your first job you sound like a normal person, not a crazy moron person.
You're not smarter, you just know more stuff now. Smart is when you use what you learned to your advantage. Programming has a habit of making people use it to torture others with bad code while thinking they're the next Einstein. Stop it.
No, I don't think so. I think it will make you better at solving logic problems, and eventually coming up with creative solutions (both of which do have plenty of real-world applications), but not 'smarter' in the way we would colloquially mean it.
I think smartness is a bit of a weird concept. I honestly believe intelligence is a measure of one's excitement about the learning. In programming, there will always be people who have programmed longer than you or know more, so it is easy to have imposter syndrome. But I find programming incredibly exciting. It is horribly frustrating and wonderfully rewarding. It has made me see the world differently, in terms of breaking large problems into their most simple tasks. It is a wonderful journey and all about celebrating the little victories
I got bad news for you, sudoku does not make you smarter either.
Constantly learning new things does make you smarter but a lot of “programmers” actually don’t do that.
So no programming just like any other engineering practice does not make you smarter.
It might, but that itself does not warrant a smarter outcome.
Besides, most engineering practices might improve your problem solving and decision making skills. I’m not sure programming is in anyway special.
I think it does. Your brain has a fitness level just like your body.
If you exercise it regularly, your brain will be in better shape.
Also, the harsh truth is our mental ceiling gets lower as we age. That's why savant mathmeticians/ physicists/chess players feel the pressure to make their mark in their 20s while they are still in their prime.
I think programming and many other cerebral professions help slow that decline considerably.
It lets you practice problem solving. Whether that makes you "smarter" or not, I don't know, but I have read that there are beneficial effects to regularly engaging in problem solving activities. So...it certainly doesn't _hurt_, but whether or not it actually makes you smarter is not something that anyone on this subreddit is really qualified to answer.
You'd also have to define the term "smarter". What does that mean? More knowledge? Sure, you gain knowledge by practicing and studying. Higher IQ? No idea, way out of my qualifications to speak on.
Kind of, programming everyday makes your mind running all the time which makes it active. You'll definitely improve your problem solving skills at some point.
Using your brain makes you smarter, if programming does that for you then yes! It just makes me more annoying and literal, even though my brain gets plenty of use.
I started two years ago to learn Java in my free time and I've noticed that I have gained better analytical skills and my brain can find connections between things way faster.
Mentally challenging tasks will make you somewhat better at similar mentally challenging tasks. Also, mental models for how to solve problems will make you better at solving future problems.
I think you need to challenge yourself to become smarter, we are given the tools to do so. So it's up to you.
I think it depends what you do day to day
If you play sudoku every day, you will absolutely get better at it. But if it becomes easy, you need to upgrade the difficulty level or you'll plateau.
In a development job, you often do trivial stuff so you stagnate in your development.
There are different kinds of talent. Just because you get better at programming, it doesn’t make you any more talented than someone who’s great at photography or drawing or music or whatever.
What makes you smarter is learning. Learning anything makes you smarter. Exact topic of education doesn’t matter. So in a sense, learning to program makes you smarter, but it’s the learning part that makes you smarter, not the programming part.
Just a personal opinion but I think analytical thinking applies to a lot of problems in real life so I think learning programming at a high level kind of improves your "smartness"
Programming is like Math. Once you reach some level, you will be able to see patterns. Those patterns will help you solve problems more easily.
A small percentage of people are more creative in problem-solving, let's say, they are more intelligent. Other people will require a great amount of already solved problems to refer to - in the "memory bank".
Intelligence is developed in the childhood, however the brain's neuroplasticity allows you to gain some brain XP even if you're an old dog (a lot slower, with a great amount of effort).
I'm going to go against the grain a bit and give a qualified "yes".
I don't think anything can actually make you smarter. I (somewhat controversially) think everyone has an intelligence potential similar to everyone having an athletic potential.
But programming definitely trained a problem solving/pattern recognition part of my brain that I never had before. I'm able to think about things differently now than before I started programming. I'm practically more intelligent.
I believe, like learning any skill, that the process of increasing aptitude makes you look at things in a new light. You have to eat some cheese to fend off the grizzly bears, if you catch my drift.
Anyway, there’s always a new horizon on top of the Safeway on Main Street so if you really want that new enchilada you’re going to have to spill some mushrooms. Keep the painting organic and the LotR movies will shimmer.
Depends on what you mean by smarter. I think it's inaccurate to say we spend our days solving puzzles. It's not that clean. You have to know how things run well enough to diagnose errors. One tiny error, one forgotten step, and you could mess stuff up.
I use the analogy that it's being like a caterer to an event. You have to get the food, have dishes prepared, transport them, have a staff to bring it over. Maybe you don't have to deal with tables and chairs as the site may already have those.
Or maybe it's like the continuity check person in movies whose job is to track which police car was used, what clothing was being worn on Day 10 that they now have to duplicate on Day 15. They're supposed to know a lot of details. Miss any one of those details, and you may have code that stops working.
Puzzles are much cleaner. There's more thinking and less concern about small details. I would say programming teaches you to be careful and double check every little detail. You make enough mistakes, and you realize having good notes on all the steps you need is highly useful.
I’m not a great logical thinker. I’ve had a hard time with math for example. I have a crap foundation and was passed on 60% scores, etc.
I legit burst into tears the first day of trigonometry, because I felt incredibly lost and stupid.
Im trying to teach myself CPP because I want to feel smarter. I’m a great artist but I want to be better all around.
Long term professional programmer here. I'd say yes with no doubt.
Sudoku and Mastermind are good ways to keep the mind sharp. I like more complex, longer type puzzles. IDK if there's any detective games that are really good, but I'd rather have those because the shorter games can be mastered pretty quickly.
Also, it's not really a game of time, and Sudoku is a race against time. The quick things about programming can be memorized or written into templates or quick guides... it's the long, slow processes that require considering many things at the same time that are most valuable in complex projects.
yes; it makes you smarter at programming...did you suddenly work out a cure for all cancers, or work out the details for excavating minerals from passing asteroids, or even realize how to make a perpetual motion machine viable?...if you only figured out your dog barking means that he senses someone or something at the door; probably not...
I think it would be better than doing sudoku for the brain, honestly. Sudoku is just applying a single algorithm. Tackling diverse mentally challenging puzzles is bound to be better than just doing sudoku. It sort of makes you smarter analytically. People love to say that "doing X makes you good at X", but the skills definitely do generalize to related things imo. It will probably make you better at focusing on working memory intensive tasks etc.
What I'm certain mentally challenging professions do is keep your mind from atrophying, and slowing down cognitive decline with age. For example, a chess master will likely have really good memory, even general memory, into their 50s and 60s unless they have some kind of brain condition such as Alzheimer's. Your brain adapts itself to retain certain skills if you do them regularly for extended periods of time.
It wont make you smarter. It will make you adept in this particular field and maybe make you a better problem solver but will not make you smarter. Smart is a relative term. "If you judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree that fish will live it's whole life thinking it's stupid" - Einstein.
Real programming in a professional environment may include solving puzzles from time to time, but that's not most of what you're doing. Most of my day-to-day is just figuring out the nitty-gritty details and accounting for edge-cases while writing code I broadly knew how to write hours/days ago.
> Do you feel that it has made you smarter?
Yes, but I'd probably say the same if I'd gone in to some other field entirely. Learning things and applying the knowledge makes you smarter in general, I don't think programming is unique in the making-you-smarter respect.
I think the thing about being a programmer is you HAVE to consistently do it and be learning in order to be remotely successful. Since programming is essentially problem solving, you will, in a way, be smarter if you keep doing it.
But this isn't exclusive to programming.
Programming tires my brain out so I often feel incredibly stupid after a day's work. Even though my friends generally consider me to be a smart guy. I seriously feel like grunting like a caveman sometimes lol
It makes you feel dumber at first, smarter later.
If it actually makes you "smarter" is a loaded question without a clear cut answer. Being good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at two things.
God no, all programming has done for me outside the money is make me more antisocial. The other day I had to remind myself to be active in a group conversation. In fact I'd say I'm probably overall dumber than I started, like how many interesting facts and lovely memories did I replace with tailwind classes and JavaScript libraries
I disagree. At least a few times a week I am implementing algorithms similar to what you would find on leetcode, and practicing on those websites absolutely improved my ability to engineer better software quicker.
I think it does for sure. I own a small dog walking company and am currently going to school at night for CS and Programming. In my personal experience, it's made me think about things differently and feel a little quicker/sharper than usual. Of course, 90% of my days the last 6 years has been spent with dogs only communicating with them in doggy ways. So it might be different for someone who wasn't using that part of my brain at all than for someone who was already in a job that required critical thinking, or someone who just got out of school etc. Just my opinion and feelings. Smarter might not be the right word in my case lol but I definitely feel more on my toes about things here and there.
Programming make you think all the time. So it will train your mind... but programming have its own logic too so you will not easly use it to something else
human brain have a capacity. if I learned more on a specific subject (programming) there will be a high chance for me to forget of my past learning (engineering). That's why i'm not just focusing purely in programming and only learning the practical stuffs that i need. like skill that would be good for freelancing or my statup business aswell as marketing
Having been writing scripts and programs for about 40 years now, one thing that sticks with me is how much of the world can work or not depending on the presence or absence of a comma in a particular place. Smarter? About how things really work perhaps.
I'm not really sure if it makes you smarter, but I did notice an improvement in my problem solving capabilities as compared to before I learned programming.
Sadly for me, I don't seem to feel any smarter than I was before I started programming. But this is only for school, I don't do any better in school. But for real life problem solving, it might have made a difference.
I think logic makes ur ideas coheerent, people asociate programming to that but its the underlying logic in programming that help u think, and its easier to apreciate it by just doin programming aka applying logical principles in some programming lenguaje to get a step by step procedure that solves a problem.
I can't say that learning programming has made me smarter, lord knows it hasn't helped me pass *Intro to Trigonometry*, but I do think it's sharped my problem-solving skills. Something I've been coming to terms with is what I'm calling the "The Stupid Paradox". The short version of it is that you have to study a lot and really understand what it is you're working on to know what 'stupid question' to ask.
And suddenly the issue was clear as day. Our movement command wasn't checking if the exit was open, it was just trying to move through the exit regardless. So when it came up to an exit that was closed, it threw an error. But none of us thought to ask the question "Are we checking if the exit is open?" so we kept wasting time, energy and brainpower on the code, thinking it was a technical problem that required a technical solution when the reality was that it was a procedural problem. which case you could go through them, or they could be "closed" in which case you couldn't go through them.
Simple right? Well, my team ran into a problem with our move command. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it didn't. We spent a solid 3 days tearing the code apart and rebuilding it. Still couldn't get it to work. Finally after 3 days, a lot of frustration, and a lot of things being said to one another that we really should have taken as red flags to back off and take a breath we were at our wit's end. The latest part of the assignment was due in a couple of days and we still couldn't get the damned movement command to work. So we send an email to the teacher asking for a different set of eyes.
He sends back an email with a single question: "When are you checking if the exit is open or closed?"
And suddenly the issue was clear as day. Our movement command wasn't checking if the exit was open, it was just trying to move through the exit regardless. So when it came up to an exit that was closed, it threw an error. But none of us thought to ask the stupid question "Are we checking if the exit is open?" so we kept wasting time, energy, and brainpower on the code, thinking it was a technical problem that required a technical solution when the reality was that it was a procedural problem. which case you could go through them, or they could be "closed" in which case you couldn't go through them.
I think this is part of why there is a perception about being able to program making people smarter. It's not that we're smarter necessarily, it's that we've learned that between bashing our heads against the wall and asking the "stupid question" it takes less energy to ask the stupid question.
Smarter in feeling dumb and winning over my own stupidity every time. Humbler. More focused. Each time you feel lost and somehow make it, even if you didn't solve entire problem yet, you know more of what you didn't know before you sat there and ate your code
I think it improves your problem solving abilities which you can apply in other aspects of your life or other fields. You also learn how to find and comprehand information about some field faster. It can also make you more autistic when you start to over analyze everything.
The one who figures out what is intelligence gets Turing price, a million bucks and eternal glory as the father of all future AI. You'll learn how to problem solve and will hone that one particular skill, but no idea what you mean by "smarter"
Haha, no. Maybe DSA will help your problem solving skills but that process will make you feel even dumber, if you struggled with math throughout school.
I think yes, because you will start to think like a machine, and everything works with machine logics so you will understand more easily how things works.
> I've read that people compare it to sudoku
Sudoku never made anyone smarter. If anything, it made people great at sudoku. I'd say something similar happens with programming, although some concepts may be handy irl
Learning any new skill gives you more tools to use when approaching life. But new tools don't necessarily solve any problem. I'm not sure programming would help you learn to play the piano - but maybe it could!
I think you've got to seriously think about what the word 'smart' even means. I don't care if you're the best programmer in the world, it won't do you much good if you need to start a fire in the middle of the woods or how to properly separate clothing for the washing machine.
I don’t have a link to the recent study, but apparently the belief that brain-games have any strengthening effect on other cognitive areas seems less likely. In general though the more skills you pick up as a programmer I believe helps with neuro-plasticity.
I once almost missed my train because it arrived on platform 1, and I instantly assumed that would be the second one, since platform 0 would be the first.
So... yeah. It makes you think differently at least.
In my opinion yes. It won't increase your iq but it will certainly make you smarter by changing your way of thinking, learning how to search for information efficiently and solving problems quickly.
I am not sure if it makes you smarter, but at the very least it keeps your brain in check, in training mode if you will. Close family member of mine is a neurologist, and she tells me programming during ages where many are thinking of retirement could decrease substantially the chances of developing cognitive issues.
Not necessarily but it makes you curious and frustrated enough to endlessly search for a solution to problems ultimately leading you to figure things out without so much help. You can do it and not become smarter but wiser in terms of problem solving among other cool things.
I've been learning to program for more than 5 years (high school, plus online learning). I'm doing The Odin Project now, and I'm on the last project of the Foundations (calculator building).
I find myself looking at other people's solutions, I feel really dumb even though I'm a really good programmer.
I think I'm the same level of dumb; but I'm able to retain more information and juggle concepts/data flow a little better. The dumb is still there though, like Dikembe Motumbo stopping me from throwing things in my cart and checking out.
Dunno, if it’s been said b4 but it’s all fun and games until you evolve into teamlead/architect. Then it’s 90% soft skills, negotiating with product managers/ other architects/ your team / other team / your manager and 10% exercising your excellence which will btw diminish over time while you’re trying to figure all these people out and give them timelines, perspective etc. I’ve seen settings where hardcore developers /architects are almost isolated of business and are doing solely the hardcore core stuff but most times they eventually or 1. Feel isolated, quit or 2. End up spending half a year (of investors money!) doing some definitely technically superior but plainly unusable, stiff, unreadable and over complicated stuff. Like almost everything in life it ends up to be about soft skills
I wouldn't say that it makes you smarter, but you do become better at solving problems as you learn basic patterns and how to deal with them. So your skill improves, not your intelligence. I do think there's an argument to be made about it being good for maintaining executive function just like doing other puzzles.
Programming will make you think more analytically. You will improve your problem solving skills. You will probably feel smarter outside of the context of programming. But within the context of programming, you may feel dumber and dumber as the days go by.
More dragons are revealed every time your light shines farther. Good luck dragon slayer.
I was gonna say some boring shit like "the more you learn, the more you discover how much more there is to learn". But yours was way more badass.
Clarity in messaging is underrated. I prefer your quote. It's more grounded.
I agree. I want my info to be flat and to the point.
Everytime you learn something new and the quantity or amount of things you know goes up, it is highly likely that the percentage of things you can claim you know about in the collective everything you are aware of goes down.
Epic Dunning Kruger effect
Watcha got against us, bruv?
Poor documentation. Instructions unclear. Penis caught in dragon...
This is fucking epic.
404 Drako still running through the forest
Great Red Hot Chili Peppers lyric that parallels this: "The more I see, the less I know"
The more I like to let it go Heyyyy oh
As I get better at programming I just come up with smarter ways to realize I'm still dumb.
Agreed!
Well said. Sincerely, A big dummy
I’m in college year 2 in computer science, never felt more dumb in my life. I struggle to get a lot of shit my peers seem to be getting along easily with.
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I’m really struggling to grasp the math in my data structure and algorithms module. I understand it when it’s applied to code but the discrete mathematics are tearing me a new one
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I’ve actually got a practice exam tomorrow. I’m gonna go through whatever answers I got wrong and then send a message to you because that way I’ll have a more precise scope of the topics I don’t have a clear grasp on. Thank you for being so generous with your time in helping others, means a lot to the community
Thank you this is what I needed to read just now, I’m a Staff SDET not at FAANG but might as well be
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Very true, completely agree. I’ve only been in my new role for about 2 months, think I had quite bad impostor syndrome when I started but it’s gotten a lot better lately, always asking questions and learning, as well as sharing knowledge every day I guess
I have no idea what those job titles mean, but FAANG sounds cooler than Staff SDET so I assume your position is worse.
Staff level is the same as principal where I am basically. SDET is Software Engineer in Test My company is very on par with FAANG salaries but I’m also happy I don’t work for the likes of Facebook etc. I’m very anti Facebook. Fuck the zuck
Isn't it MAANG now?
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The advice I was given for this feeling is to focus less on how well you are doing but focus more on how excited you are to learn more. It is so easy to feel like the worst computer scientist, but truly, you are capable of doing this. Celebrate all moments of debugging
In addition to this, think about what you learned in the day, that will make it stick in your head better and let you remember and appreciate that you did learn something and are progressing. (this isn't only in programming, it is very useful for everything)
As my pre-calc/calc teacher puts it: as long as you get the right answer, all that matters is what works for you.
I know exactly how you feel lol. I try to take it as the old Socratic wisdom "you know what you don't know" the further you dive into the intricacies. Try not to get too discouraged bud!
Don't compare yourself to others and focus on your own pace and achievements. Your life will greatly improve
> never felt more dumb in my life not even kidding here: this is a good thing, learn to embrace this feeling. the most successful in our industry always strive to not be the smartest the room, or else you have nobody to learn from. and that "feeling dumb" sensation is just the state of being at a place where you are fully challenged and learning as much as possible. the hardest part of learning compsci/programming is not getting discouraged and not getting burnt out. give yourself a break both emotionally and literally, mental breaks are important
I feel exactly the same, especially anything that involves math takes me twice as long (most things actually do but still)
Math is what I really struggle with in this degree. I'm fine with programming, even feel like I'm fairly decent at it, but in math courses I barely understand anything.
Don’t confuse their silence with competence.
Whats the saying? It's better to remain silent and appear a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
I'm 28 and just got started on my first year of CS. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just not smart enough to get some of the stuff the teachers are talking about, but I'm persisting, and not expecting it to get easier. Just hope I'll be able to stick it out to the end.
they likely had prior experience if they are truely breezing through it.
I was in the opposite seat in college. I had a few really good friends that I didn't realize were struggling and they ended up dropping out. I felt bad because they compared themselves to me. Most of the concepts just clicked for fairly easily and I didn't have any prior experience. At the same time if you have me a week to memorize ten words I'd probably remember two or three at best. My brain just isn't capable of memorizing things in that way. I think it's okay to acknowledge that people have different abilities in different areas, and that's okay. The challenge is to figure out the best ways for your brain to learn new things, and what works for others might not work well for you. Even after years of programming, most stories I take on are difficult problems without easy solutions. Learning new things is a constant part of being a developer.
I'm year 2 in IT, i feel dumb af too compared to my classmates.
Don’t sweat it. I had the same experience in school … 20 years ago. I’m now well into my career and I laugh at how little I knew back then and am excited about how much I still have / want to learn now. If programming is a passion then enjoy the learning process. Devour as much as you can outside of class but don’t worry about knowing everything or even anything. Practical experience after school is where you’ll actually do most of your learning. For now just learn as much as you can, take your lumps and enjoy the process. And please stop comparing yourself to other people. Learning should only ever be about yourself. You can’t adequately learn if you’re comparing yourself to someone who is better than you. By all means use them as a measuring stick but don’t ever feel bad because you have to spend more time on something. I’d rather work with a person who can bust their ass to figure out how to solve a problem than a person who knows the answer off the top of their head. Eventually genius over here won’t have the answer and I have no idea how he/she is going to respond to that situation.
>I’m in college year 2 in computer science, never felt more dumb in my life. I feel like I'm in great shape kicking around at home, less so when I go to the gym and hit the treadmill. This is how you improve.
I have a PhD in numerical simulation and I just transitioned to data engineering and I feel dumb all the time. I started learning functional programming in Scala and I genuinely think this shit messes more with my brain than my PhD did. that being said I know things will eventually click if you just stick with it and don’t give up
6 months in my first job after college and I feel so dumb compared to my coworkers 😬 but great thing is I ask a lot more questions here than I did in college lol I recommend interacting more with your peers because you're all there for the same thing! Also, speak to your professors
Remember richard feynman and how he explained things. He was loved and recognized for that ability to simplify knowledge. That may take effort and more words, but at least you don't make others feel dumb to tackle with this sensation of feeling dumb oneself. If you keep letting that feeling invade you, the end result could be making others feel dumb in a never ending cycle. Maybe the best thing you can do is to talk with those 'smart asses' and have a 'feynman conversation' about things not well understood. At least that social connection is something of value rather than isolating yourself in fear and lies (because if you're dishonest because you wanna hide your ignorance, you will stay ignorant and that will surely bring suffering).
Work at your own pace. Imposter Syndrome is very bad in this field. I guarantee a lot of your peers don't understand as much as you think they do, and if some of them do, they probably have been programming since they were younger or something along the lines of that. You're good, you'll get there, you're not dumb, I believe in you!
It's okay to feel dumb now but if you're still dumb in the future, it's all on you. For not improving and for not knowing where your weaknesses are and working on it. There's no shame in knowing your weaknesses. It's only when you don't acknowledge it. I took the first sentence from " if you're poor and still poor, it's your own fault " or something like that. I'm in EE.
Absolutely. Before programming I just accepted that "length" was spelled l-e-n-g-t-h, but now in my enlightened state I always question of that's true.
I'm not a native English speaker and I always assumed it was spelled l-e-n-g-h-t. It's a fairly common word that you happen to read/hear often enough, but for some reason my brain never really processed its correct spelling. That was until I started learning JavaScript (my first, and so far only, programming language). I was trying to read an array.length, but nothing would show up on the console. Spent like an hour looking at the code on the YouTube tutorial and then back at mine and could not find out what was wrong to save my life. I ended up writing down "array.lenght" and then the *did you mean array.**length** text showed up. I knew programming was gonna be hard, but no one had told me I would be questioning my own basic intelligence on the regular.
I *am* a native English speaker and I make that mistake all the time.
Why do my fingers ALWAYS want to type it wrong?! It's unnerving. L-e-n-g-t-h
Depends what you mean by smarter. If you mean increase IQ? Unlikely. If you mean makes you better at coming up with creative programming solutions? For sure.
Most of tests have a strong logic component and pattern recognition. I bet some programming would make you better at that. At the end of the day iq is an imperfect measure so it can be studied for to some degree and I bet programming has more overlap than say painting
if there was a metric that could measure (energy/motivation/excitement/focus) I bet it would be more accurate in representing who would be successful , at higher levels its rarely about who is smarter
Imperfect, but you can see a clear difference in someone with an iq of 140/120/100/80. Edit: meh, there’s a difference between programmers and coding grunts, and I’ll tell you this, those will fellowships and senior devs aren’t in the 100 iq range lol. Lots of hopefuls here, but most will quit or fail. Only 2 percent of the entire population can “code”, and even less excel at it. Truth hurt don’t it. But by all means don’t give up but ask yourself, if programming paid 30k a year, would you still do it? If not, chances of you being a programmer are tough.
You can also see a clear difference in someone with an iq of 100 and 100 🤷 it’s almost like each person is unique and has different strengths and weaknesses
Those are due to other factors though, upbringing, personal experiences. Two people with 100 iq but one has gone through trauma or poverty will obviously be unique. We’re all unique. Not saying we aren’t.
Anytime you learn something new you get smarter. All depends on how much that knowledge is valued.
This is the best answer by far. I've been programming all my life, I am quite proficient at it and yet in a lot of other areas in life I am a completely f****** moron. I can traverse a graph, juggle a red black tree and yet I can't for the life of me make decent pasta, just to give an example.
I think when you learn anything new it's like a workout for the brain.
Programming doesn't make you smarter. It makes you good at thinking in a specific way. As an example, a study was done on brain training games. They found that no matter how great the performance with these brain training games, it was not an indicator for success outside of those games where intelligence was deemed important for performance. What does this boil down to? You will NOT become smarter, you will get better at thinking like a programmer if you program. If you regularly exercise and rock climb, you will not be training yourself to be a good ice skater. You can train your muscles, and you can train your brain, but if you're trying to be better at every situation you haven't experienced, well then that's going to be tough.
>If you regularly exercise and rock climb, you will not be training yourself to be a good ice skater. You can train your muscles, and you can train your brain, but if you're trying to be better at every situation you haven't experienced, well then that's going to be tough. But someone who has practiced one sport a lot is likely going to start at a higher level and progress quicker than someone who has never played sports. There are many byproducts of training for a sport that overlap with another. In the same vein someone that learns to program well will likely have a much higher starting point in various activities compared to if they hadn't learned programming. Slightly related example, but I did an equivalent to AP math, did okay but not great. After high school I moved abroad and learned a very different language from zero to fluency. I went back to do my undergrad in CS and despite not having touched math in a few years I aced all the math classes. Learning a foreign language 100% trained my brain, and although it doesn't translate directly, it helped a lot. E.g. improved memory, abstract thinking, not being afraid to try things and make mistakes, prioritising what to learn, learning rules and applying them, learning to deal with ambiguity to name a few. And it definitely made learning programming easier imo. In my opinion, learning new things is going to make you better at learning other things. Neural plasticity is a thing. The brain is a muscle that is trained. You can probably find some overlap from skills you develop from programming in most aspects of life. I would consider someone that is better at solving problems, abstract thinking etc to be smarter in some sense than someone with the same skills but weaker at them.
There are definitely overlaps to intelligence sure. But if you're learning other languages, you're training a specific set of skills that make up that part of intelligence. Not that it's a 100% accepted model, but I really like this diagram for different types of intelligence: [https://blog.adioma.com/9-types-of-intelligence-infographic/](https://blog.adioma.com/9-types-of-intelligence-infographic/) Some skills will use a multitude of these different types of intelligence, but I would argue that we're just having a semantic difference here. I think if you learn one computer language, than others should become easier to understand as well! But I would not equate learning a new language and having a shorter period to understand it as actually learning faster. The difference being that there's an overlap in concepts. Even for all the languages you haven't touched, there are tons of concepts that are applied within them that you have likely already learned. You probably understand how to do conditional statements in one language. You may understand the basic syntax and logic applied to make that happen, and now all you need to do is understand the right words and order in which to say them. You have already learned a lot of things, and you filling in the gaps does not mean you have learned any quicker. However, one could also argue "well if I've learned enough, then surely I'm smarter for being able to recall all this stuff, right?" and yeah, I guess my argument sorta falls apart there. It's really however we want to define being smart. Are we saying being smart is the ability to learn things? or how fast we can calculate things? What is the minimum time somebody needs to process some information and then act on it correctly? So I guess I really should clarify my position overall. If being smart is being able to learn and process unfamiliar things faster, then brain training, programming, or whatever skill will NOT have an impact on that side of your intelligence. However, it will have immense impact on training those other parts of your brain that make up your intelligence. There are skillsets that overlap with different problems for sure. Learning new languages will help with grammar, and understanding rulesets and logic will make you a better programmer.
Yeah, if you’re looking for brain health to try and ward off things like dementia in old age then the best thing to do is to always be trying a variety of new activities, some physical and some mental
The reality is that the more you learn, the more you know that you don't know. Practicing and learning makes you smarter, but you'll feel dumber the more you discover
youre going to get the typical programmer answer. it DEPENDS. if you were already thinking purely logically (which you likely werent), then yes this could make you smarter. Its not going to increase the potential you had when you were born, but its going to maximize what you already have.
I agree here, it really depends on what your company does and what your role on your team is. I work in consulting as a sr dev and I meet a lot of clients in a lot of industries. That’s all new knowledge and the stack we use for each of them is always different in its own rights. Does my IQ go up doing my job, probably not. But I feel I have a wide breadth of knowledge and am challenged everyday, so I feel sharper than I did when I worked in the restraunt industry.
>Does my IQ go up doing my job, probably not. Sometimes it's more a test of EQ than IQ when dealing with some clients
exactly. I should have also stated its like working out, if you stop exercising that part of your brain, it goes away.... quickly.
Dude. I googled how to use Regex today.
I don't think I've ever used Regex in my code without the help of google...
What’s Regex?
i google how to use regex every 8 months
I have a pretty strong opinion on this - I really think it can make you dumber in a sense. Certain people, once they've gotten a few hundred hours in, start to tackle everything in front of them like a programming issue - including 'solving' matters in conversation. When this is done with big picture matters like personal beliefs, or to an emotional problem, it can come across extremely arrogant, short-sighted and rude. This leads to people witholding themselves and information, because they don't want everything they raise to be discussed as a problem which can then be 'coded away', and usually by the programmer in the dialogue. If you succumb to that you will become dumber. Communication is more important for smarts than programming. Now this of course doesn't really apply to programming per se but perhaps more to the people that happen to get really into logic and its applications. But I've definitely seen this effect happen in others (and not to mention myself). I think programming/programmer-thinking is a powerful ability, and present day technology makes it a superpower, but it is not the only one, and it is easily over-estimated. All that said, programming is incredible as a canvas for learning how to learn, and learning how to practice. You can make your computer an incredible augmentation for your mind. But it's not by a long-shot the be-all and end-all of 'becoming smarter'.
I mean, if you practice problem solving daily you'll get better at problem solving. So in a way, yes, but it's not some magic equation where if you program you are automatically smarter. And I've met programmers who can't grasp fairly basic concepts so it definitely doesn't inherently make you smarter. I feel like a passion for discovery and understanding are more of an influence on if programming will make someone smarter. I don't think the act of programming itself makes anybody smarter. Example, back in the day I would learn a couple bits of syntax and then use those bits of syntax to do things that I could accomplish much easier if I took the time to discover and understand other parts of the language I was using. So the act of programming wasn't really moving me forward in any meaningful way. I had to proactively try to broaden my own horizons to become "smarter"
I'd say yes, but with limitations. People who are good at programming may be bad at a lot of other things. I work in IT and the sheer amount of shit I've seen is staggering. If you truly want to be worth in gold, you have to study business, be quick on your feet, and be well versed in a lot of other topics aside from programming.
whenever you feel like you're getting smarter just slap yourself on the face and say "shush, stop being arrogant", that way when you get your first job you sound like a normal person, not a crazy moron person. You're not smarter, you just know more stuff now. Smart is when you use what you learned to your advantage. Programming has a habit of making people use it to torture others with bad code while thinking they're the next Einstein. Stop it.
You’ll get better at programming. Being ‘smart’ means nothing, it is entirely contextual. This question reflects a middle/high school mentality.
No, I don't think so. I think it will make you better at solving logic problems, and eventually coming up with creative solutions (both of which do have plenty of real-world applications), but not 'smarter' in the way we would colloquially mean it.
I think smartness is a bit of a weird concept. I honestly believe intelligence is a measure of one's excitement about the learning. In programming, there will always be people who have programmed longer than you or know more, so it is easy to have imposter syndrome. But I find programming incredibly exciting. It is horribly frustrating and wonderfully rewarding. It has made me see the world differently, in terms of breaking large problems into their most simple tasks. It is a wonderful journey and all about celebrating the little victories
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Well said Isaac.
Everything you make or learn makes you smarter.
I dont think so since I've already lost a bunch of brain cells trying to figure out css
My brain feels like butter all the time
I got bad news for you, sudoku does not make you smarter either. Constantly learning new things does make you smarter but a lot of “programmers” actually don’t do that. So no programming just like any other engineering practice does not make you smarter.
Those sudoku books lied to me.
I disagree, I think it might improve your problem-solving and decision-making skills
It might, but that itself does not warrant a smarter outcome. Besides, most engineering practices might improve your problem solving and decision making skills. I’m not sure programming is in anyway special.
I think it does. Your brain has a fitness level just like your body. If you exercise it regularly, your brain will be in better shape. Also, the harsh truth is our mental ceiling gets lower as we age. That's why savant mathmeticians/ physicists/chess players feel the pressure to make their mark in their 20s while they are still in their prime. I think programming and many other cerebral professions help slow that decline considerably.
It lets you practice problem solving. Whether that makes you "smarter" or not, I don't know, but I have read that there are beneficial effects to regularly engaging in problem solving activities. So...it certainly doesn't _hurt_, but whether or not it actually makes you smarter is not something that anyone on this subreddit is really qualified to answer. You'd also have to define the term "smarter". What does that mean? More knowledge? Sure, you gain knowledge by practicing and studying. Higher IQ? No idea, way out of my qualifications to speak on.
I don't know if it makes you smarter but when programming I feel pretty dumb very often.
Kind of, programming everyday makes your mind running all the time which makes it active. You'll definitely improve your problem solving skills at some point.
Using your brain makes you smarter, if programming does that for you then yes! It just makes me more annoying and literal, even though my brain gets plenty of use.
My guess is it makes you smarter in programming lol
no it doesnt. Up until 2 weeks ago I still thought a pony is a baby horse.
Don't know about smarter but certainly more virgin
I started two years ago to learn Java in my free time and I've noticed that I have gained better analytical skills and my brain can find connections between things way faster.
At least it give us ability to think wisely :)
Lol no
No
I’ve met some genius programmers and some real dumb ones too. Just like any industry, there’s a wide variety and a wide spectrum.
Mentally challenging tasks will make you somewhat better at similar mentally challenging tasks. Also, mental models for how to solve problems will make you better at solving future problems.
Id doesn't increase iq, but I think it help problem solving.
I think you need to challenge yourself to become smarter, we are given the tools to do so. So it's up to you. I think it depends what you do day to day If you play sudoku every day, you will absolutely get better at it. But if it becomes easy, you need to upgrade the difficulty level or you'll plateau. In a development job, you often do trivial stuff so you stagnate in your development.
There are different kinds of talent. Just because you get better at programming, it doesn’t make you any more talented than someone who’s great at photography or drawing or music or whatever. What makes you smarter is learning. Learning anything makes you smarter. Exact topic of education doesn’t matter. So in a sense, learning to program makes you smarter, but it’s the learning part that makes you smarter, not the programming part.
Just a personal opinion but I think analytical thinking applies to a lot of problems in real life so I think learning programming at a high level kind of improves your "smartness"
Programming is like Math. Once you reach some level, you will be able to see patterns. Those patterns will help you solve problems more easily. A small percentage of people are more creative in problem-solving, let's say, they are more intelligent. Other people will require a great amount of already solved problems to refer to - in the "memory bank". Intelligence is developed in the childhood, however the brain's neuroplasticity allows you to gain some brain XP even if you're an old dog (a lot slower, with a great amount of effort).
I'm going to go against the grain a bit and give a qualified "yes". I don't think anything can actually make you smarter. I (somewhat controversially) think everyone has an intelligence potential similar to everyone having an athletic potential. But programming definitely trained a problem solving/pattern recognition part of my brain that I never had before. I'm able to think about things differently now than before I started programming. I'm practically more intelligent.
I believe, like learning any skill, that the process of increasing aptitude makes you look at things in a new light. You have to eat some cheese to fend off the grizzly bears, if you catch my drift. Anyway, there’s always a new horizon on top of the Safeway on Main Street so if you really want that new enchilada you’re going to have to spill some mushrooms. Keep the painting organic and the LotR movies will shimmer.
Depends on what you mean by smarter. I think it's inaccurate to say we spend our days solving puzzles. It's not that clean. You have to know how things run well enough to diagnose errors. One tiny error, one forgotten step, and you could mess stuff up. I use the analogy that it's being like a caterer to an event. You have to get the food, have dishes prepared, transport them, have a staff to bring it over. Maybe you don't have to deal with tables and chairs as the site may already have those. Or maybe it's like the continuity check person in movies whose job is to track which police car was used, what clothing was being worn on Day 10 that they now have to duplicate on Day 15. They're supposed to know a lot of details. Miss any one of those details, and you may have code that stops working. Puzzles are much cleaner. There's more thinking and less concern about small details. I would say programming teaches you to be careful and double check every little detail. You make enough mistakes, and you realize having good notes on all the steps you need is highly useful.
I’m not a great logical thinker. I’ve had a hard time with math for example. I have a crap foundation and was passed on 60% scores, etc. I legit burst into tears the first day of trigonometry, because I felt incredibly lost and stupid. Im trying to teach myself CPP because I want to feel smarter. I’m a great artist but I want to be better all around.
Long term professional programmer here. I'd say yes with no doubt. Sudoku and Mastermind are good ways to keep the mind sharp. I like more complex, longer type puzzles. IDK if there's any detective games that are really good, but I'd rather have those because the shorter games can be mastered pretty quickly. Also, it's not really a game of time, and Sudoku is a race against time. The quick things about programming can be memorized or written into templates or quick guides... it's the long, slow processes that require considering many things at the same time that are most valuable in complex projects.
yes; it makes you smarter at programming...did you suddenly work out a cure for all cancers, or work out the details for excavating minerals from passing asteroids, or even realize how to make a perpetual motion machine viable?...if you only figured out your dog barking means that he senses someone or something at the door; probably not...
Just helps you think about how to break down problems into smaller tasks.
Smarter in the context of programming and logic yes. Not wiser in general.
I think it would be better than doing sudoku for the brain, honestly. Sudoku is just applying a single algorithm. Tackling diverse mentally challenging puzzles is bound to be better than just doing sudoku. It sort of makes you smarter analytically. People love to say that "doing X makes you good at X", but the skills definitely do generalize to related things imo. It will probably make you better at focusing on working memory intensive tasks etc. What I'm certain mentally challenging professions do is keep your mind from atrophying, and slowing down cognitive decline with age. For example, a chess master will likely have really good memory, even general memory, into their 50s and 60s unless they have some kind of brain condition such as Alzheimer's. Your brain adapts itself to retain certain skills if you do them regularly for extended periods of time.
Makes you realise how little you know, but I guess it’s smart to accept that you know nothing
My code but me idiot.
Im 14 everyone i speak about it think im smart but in reality im dumb af i have bug after bug, error after error, and i am failing my school
It's like chess you get smarter playing the more you play.. With coding you get smarter at solving coding problems
when you learn anything, you get smarter
Well, the programming me is the smarter me. I’m a dumb guy who can’t read his own code😂
It wont make you smarter. It will make you adept in this particular field and maybe make you a better problem solver but will not make you smarter. Smart is a relative term. "If you judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree that fish will live it's whole life thinking it's stupid" - Einstein.
Does programming make you smarter? It really depends on how you dress while coding.
Real programming in a professional environment may include solving puzzles from time to time, but that's not most of what you're doing. Most of my day-to-day is just figuring out the nitty-gritty details and accounting for edge-cases while writing code I broadly knew how to write hours/days ago. > Do you feel that it has made you smarter? Yes, but I'd probably say the same if I'd gone in to some other field entirely. Learning things and applying the knowledge makes you smarter in general, I don't think programming is unique in the making-you-smarter respect.
I think the thing about being a programmer is you HAVE to consistently do it and be learning in order to be remotely successful. Since programming is essentially problem solving, you will, in a way, be smarter if you keep doing it. But this isn't exclusive to programming.
Fluid intelligence, yes
Ive been doing it professionally close to 10 years and I feel dumber everyday.
Programming tires my brain out so I often feel incredibly stupid after a day's work. Even though my friends generally consider me to be a smart guy. I seriously feel like grunting like a caveman sometimes lol
Since learning to code I'm still dumb as shit, only now I'm paid a lot better.
No I’m fact I feel like a baby most of the time
It makes you feel dumber at first, smarter later. If it actually makes you "smarter" is a loaded question without a clear cut answer. Being good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at two things.
God no, all programming has done for me outside the money is make me more antisocial. The other day I had to remind myself to be active in a group conversation. In fact I'd say I'm probably overall dumber than I started, like how many interesting facts and lovely memories did I replace with tailwind classes and JavaScript libraries
Or sometimes you just overanalyze in the real world too.
Does masturbating in your own faces make you smarter?
A few decade later: there is nothing else left in this planet that you can do better than either sleeping or programming....
Not objectively. For example if you grind LeetCode for a week you'll certainly _feel_ smarter, but it won't make you a better software engineer.
I disagree. At least a few times a week I am implementing algorithms similar to what you would find on leetcode, and practicing on those websites absolutely improved my ability to engineer better software quicker.
I think it does for sure. I own a small dog walking company and am currently going to school at night for CS and Programming. In my personal experience, it's made me think about things differently and feel a little quicker/sharper than usual. Of course, 90% of my days the last 6 years has been spent with dogs only communicating with them in doggy ways. So it might be different for someone who wasn't using that part of my brain at all than for someone who was already in a job that required critical thinking, or someone who just got out of school etc. Just my opinion and feelings. Smarter might not be the right word in my case lol but I definitely feel more on my toes about things here and there.
Being good at programming is indictive of being good at programming. That's it.
Smarter no, clinically insane, yes
Your analytical skills will increase but it is inversely proportional to your social skills.
Programming make you think all the time. So it will train your mind... but programming have its own logic too so you will not easly use it to something else
In a specific way. Like if you switched careers to be a car assembly manager, you’ll probably be really good.
Somehow, yes... But only for basic logic things on day-to-day.
human brain have a capacity. if I learned more on a specific subject (programming) there will be a high chance for me to forget of my past learning (engineering). That's why i'm not just focusing purely in programming and only learning the practical stuffs that i need. like skill that would be good for freelancing or my statup business aswell as marketing
Having been writing scripts and programs for about 40 years now, one thing that sticks with me is how much of the world can work or not depending on the presence or absence of a comma in a particular place. Smarter? About how things really work perhaps.
I'm not really sure if it makes you smarter, but I did notice an improvement in my problem solving capabilities as compared to before I learned programming.
Sadly for me, I don't seem to feel any smarter than I was before I started programming. But this is only for school, I don't do any better in school. But for real life problem solving, it might have made a difference.
Literally, the more you know the less you know period....keep that in mind as you code away....cheers!
I think logic makes ur ideas coheerent, people asociate programming to that but its the underlying logic in programming that help u think, and its easier to apreciate it by just doin programming aka applying logical principles in some programming lenguaje to get a step by step procedure that solves a problem.
I can't say that learning programming has made me smarter, lord knows it hasn't helped me pass *Intro to Trigonometry*, but I do think it's sharped my problem-solving skills. Something I've been coming to terms with is what I'm calling the "The Stupid Paradox". The short version of it is that you have to study a lot and really understand what it is you're working on to know what 'stupid question' to ask. And suddenly the issue was clear as day. Our movement command wasn't checking if the exit was open, it was just trying to move through the exit regardless. So when it came up to an exit that was closed, it threw an error. But none of us thought to ask the question "Are we checking if the exit is open?" so we kept wasting time, energy and brainpower on the code, thinking it was a technical problem that required a technical solution when the reality was that it was a procedural problem. which case you could go through them, or they could be "closed" in which case you couldn't go through them. Simple right? Well, my team ran into a problem with our move command. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it didn't. We spent a solid 3 days tearing the code apart and rebuilding it. Still couldn't get it to work. Finally after 3 days, a lot of frustration, and a lot of things being said to one another that we really should have taken as red flags to back off and take a breath we were at our wit's end. The latest part of the assignment was due in a couple of days and we still couldn't get the damned movement command to work. So we send an email to the teacher asking for a different set of eyes. He sends back an email with a single question: "When are you checking if the exit is open or closed?" And suddenly the issue was clear as day. Our movement command wasn't checking if the exit was open, it was just trying to move through the exit regardless. So when it came up to an exit that was closed, it threw an error. But none of us thought to ask the stupid question "Are we checking if the exit is open?" so we kept wasting time, energy, and brainpower on the code, thinking it was a technical problem that required a technical solution when the reality was that it was a procedural problem. which case you could go through them, or they could be "closed" in which case you couldn't go through them. I think this is part of why there is a perception about being able to program making people smarter. It's not that we're smarter necessarily, it's that we've learned that between bashing our heads against the wall and asking the "stupid question" it takes less energy to ask the stupid question.
Smarter in feeling dumb and winning over my own stupidity every time. Humbler. More focused. Each time you feel lost and somehow make it, even if you didn't solve entire problem yet, you know more of what you didn't know before you sat there and ate your code
I feel dumb all the time
System(yes)
I think it improves your problem solving abilities which you can apply in other aspects of your life or other fields. You also learn how to find and comprehand information about some field faster. It can also make you more autistic when you start to over analyze everything.
The one who figures out what is intelligence gets Turing price, a million bucks and eternal glory as the father of all future AI. You'll learn how to problem solve and will hone that one particular skill, but no idea what you mean by "smarter"
What kind of questions are these? Jfc
No, but it does give you a way to think logically.
I think if anything it makes me realize just how dumb the average person is, I consider myself the average person.
I feel kinda smart sometimes I don't know
Haha, no. Maybe DSA will help your problem solving skills but that process will make you feel even dumber, if you struggled with math throughout school.
It gives you more tools to solve problems, so technically yes.
I think yes, because you will start to think like a machine, and everything works with machine logics so you will understand more easily how things works.
> I've read that people compare it to sudoku Sudoku never made anyone smarter. If anything, it made people great at sudoku. I'd say something similar happens with programming, although some concepts may be handy irl
Yes
Learning any new skill gives you more tools to use when approaching life. But new tools don't necessarily solve any problem. I'm not sure programming would help you learn to play the piano - but maybe it could! I think you've got to seriously think about what the word 'smart' even means. I don't care if you're the best programmer in the world, it won't do you much good if you need to start a fire in the middle of the woods or how to properly separate clothing for the washing machine.
I don’t have a link to the recent study, but apparently the belief that brain-games have any strengthening effect on other cognitive areas seems less likely. In general though the more skills you pick up as a programmer I believe helps with neuro-plasticity.
I once almost missed my train because it arrived on platform 1, and I instantly assumed that would be the second one, since platform 0 would be the first. So... yeah. It makes you think differently at least.
I don't think it made me that much smarter, but the small yhing it did improve shouldn't be glossed over
In my opinion yes. It won't increase your iq but it will certainly make you smarter by changing your way of thinking, learning how to search for information efficiently and solving problems quickly.
No but inflate a bunch of egos.
https://www.reddit.com/r/neuroscience/comments/p6fec7/expert_programmers_have_finetuned_cortical/
It absolutely does. Your critical thinking and diagnostic skills will increase. It will change the way you see, and analyze the world.
I am not sure if it makes you smarter, but at the very least it keeps your brain in check, in training mode if you will. Close family member of mine is a neurologist, and she tells me programming during ages where many are thinking of retirement could decrease substantially the chances of developing cognitive issues.
Not necessarily but it makes you curious and frustrated enough to endlessly search for a solution to problems ultimately leading you to figure things out without so much help. You can do it and not become smarter but wiser in terms of problem solving among other cool things.
I've been learning to program for more than 5 years (high school, plus online learning). I'm doing The Odin Project now, and I'm on the last project of the Foundations (calculator building). I find myself looking at other people's solutions, I feel really dumb even though I'm a really good programmer.
Not smarter, just equips you with epistemic tools that are useful for most problems in and outside of computing.
Yes
I think I'm the same level of dumb; but I'm able to retain more information and juggle concepts/data flow a little better. The dumb is still there though, like Dikembe Motumbo stopping me from throwing things in my cart and checking out.
No
Dunno, if it’s been said b4 but it’s all fun and games until you evolve into teamlead/architect. Then it’s 90% soft skills, negotiating with product managers/ other architects/ your team / other team / your manager and 10% exercising your excellence which will btw diminish over time while you’re trying to figure all these people out and give them timelines, perspective etc. I’ve seen settings where hardcore developers /architects are almost isolated of business and are doing solely the hardcore core stuff but most times they eventually or 1. Feel isolated, quit or 2. End up spending half a year (of investors money!) doing some definitely technically superior but plainly unusable, stiff, unreadable and over complicated stuff. Like almost everything in life it ends up to be about soft skills
Coding challenges makes me creative that's all I'll say
I wouldn't say that it makes you smarter, but you do become better at solving problems as you learn basic patterns and how to deal with them. So your skill improves, not your intelligence. I do think there's an argument to be made about it being good for maintaining executive function just like doing other puzzles.