What are the physical surroundings, work hours, and mental and physical demands of computer programming ?

What training and educational background is needed for this area of employment? Will these career area be in demand in the future? What are the starting and advanced salaries for this job?

What are the physical surroundings, work hours, and mental and physical demands of computer programming ?
I've worked with programmers for more than 10 years now. Sometimes they are in isolated cubes, not seeing anyone all day. Other times, they are packed into a common room, 5 feet apart. The atmosphere is usually like a morgue---no noise, unless there is a heated argument on how to implement something.





Hours? LONG. Plan on working your days off.





Mental demands: Must be able to visual abstract concepts. Must be able to remember where one file is and what its name is out of 5000 other files in that directory and what files are associated with it or dependent upon it.





Physical demands: Carpal tunnel, numb shoulders, arms, and butt. Must be able to tolerate lots of caffeine and sugar.


Must pry the body off the chair after 21 hour sessions.
Reply:Physical demands can be quite low for a computer programmer in todays world however mental requirements can be high and tend to be stessful. Work hours can be hectic at best when crunch time hits and you may find yourself putting in extra hours without additional pay. You typically are working in a development team and not on your own, allowing you to play towards your strengths but at the same time gaining help in your weaker language and syntax areas.





The job itself is always in high demand however the area you specialize in will greatly influence your desirability for employers. I recommend taking college freshman courses first, Intro to Computer Programming, JavaScript, VBasic, QBasic, Cobolt, etc to see if the field interests you that much. One will also need to decide which area they will specialize in; whether it is Web programming (shopping carts, server side programs, CGI scripts for guestbooks and other form handling) or and of the other numerous other industries. Intro should effectively give you an idea of what to expect in the workforce for this field. To make it in the field you will likely need to be able to write programs in several different coding languages and keep the code tidy, efficient, and lacking in what is called spagetti code structure.





Your physical surroundings will typically be at a cubicled desk with access to a production network and server with the tools you need to design, build, test, and implement your program coding.





Wages will vary of course depending on the job and averages change yearly. I would say the current starting salary is around 30,000 a year with a degree, bachelors or most often an AS in programming with certificates in the desired languages, and probably upwards of 50,000 senior with some making over 70,000. This is however a rough estimate and not researched recently, based mostly off two year old research and current Information Technology wages.
Reply:To be honest I just took c and c++ in programming c++ was easy. I believe it had to do with the instructor change and the books were different. But I think it will pay off. Normally you will start out as an apprentice and work with someone a journeyman then get picked up by a company with a starting salary around 35-40k if you make your own buisness and try to muscle the big companies around normally they will buy you out for a great profit and you will make 60-70k then depending on your experience and company you work for your salry will vary. Does that make sense?
Reply:You need to be proficient at XBOX, drink loits of diet coke, eat doritos and have plenty of zits and no personality.





At least that describes all the comp [progs that I know,