The most difficult task, which we have to perform, is work on ourselves. We can under- stand it in many ways - cultivating new, better habits, quitting behaviours that we do not fully enjoy or acquiring new skills. These tasks are often associated with changes, usually radical ones. The Heraclitus‘ of Ephesus words that the only constant thing in life is a change, probably best reflect the fact that our development will not happen by itself.

Unfortunately, there is something in our psyche that we consider the unknown as scary. Changes very often require getting out of our comfort zone. This means that we have to partly abandon our sense of security. Unfortunately, changes are necessary. Staying too long in one place usually dooms us to failure. It is worth noting that, according to research, a change, even if positive, causes psychological discomfort.

Hop, down the rabbit hole!

These words can be applied to many activities in our lives. I want us to focus primarily on the issue of developing programming skills. For many people IT industry is a kind of enchanted land - programmers, like sorcerers, create some puzzling spells, earn quite well and still enjoy their job. So it's no wonder that with the worn-out slogan that Poland lacks over 50,000 specialists in IT, and the EU lacks over 600,000 of them, people want to rebrand. And let's be honest, there is nothing wrong with that.

However, it is worth disenchanting reality. Programmers are people who work in a creative and logical way, are curious about the world and fond of solving problems. Therefore, programming is a field which requires the ability to combine facts into a logical and coherent whole, to transform conclusions in a language understandable for the machine, to gather requirements and willingness to learn about many different fields, by the way, programming is a very mathematical field. Considering all the above - entering the IT industry as a programmer or a tester is often a change of mindset from the point where it was forbidden to think in your own way (unfortunately, I mean the school system) to one where you need to create a solution from available materials and knowledge.Of course, in terms of materials, there are programming languages and the tools that were created with them.

And it’s not an easy task. Seriously.

Practice versus theory

It is believed that so far there haven’t been many differences between rebranding into IT and other sectors of the economy. It’s enough to learn one specific language and just do your job. There is some subtle difference here, though. Having knowledge, which is not supported by practice, is simply useless. We can compare it to going through an entire English textbook without saying a single word in the language while learning. We won’t get along - we have to practice.

Proper education is obviously important, but the emphasis on theoretical concepts should be correspondingly smaller than on practice. But how much does it mean ’correspondingly‘? As far as I am concerned, up to 80% of the time you spend on learning how to programme should be practical. Practice means writing a code, applications, websites... You can find some ideas yourself by trying to programme your hobby (for instance by creating a tool to manage your collections) or mapping existing projects.

At this point, being reliable requires mentioning that it is not so obvious. How are we supposed to choose the technique, language or even tools / libraries / frameworks? We have to go through hundreds of publications, reports and finally make the decision what to choose. The question is: is the choice good?

We may come across a series of articles about an interesting technique that can be great indeed, but of marginal importance. This, in fact, may cause you to do something that will not get you closer to achieving your goal, as you could expect.

Mentor

For centuries, there has been a pattern in which a person aspiring to achieve a status, takes advantage of more experienced person’s support. The same way it works in schools. Students are not left alone - the teacher supports them. Educational institutions have worked this way for centuries. The idea is right and it works or at least it did work. Nowadays it could work as well if it wasn’t for overzealous attempts to rank knowledge and unlearn creativity. Today’s schools rush with the material, not giving a chance to explore the subject and study it on your own. This way, the element of independent thinking is excluded.

So who is a mentor? He is definitely not a teacher in the school sense. Neither is he a coach. He is rather a person who supports, supervises and sets directions for development. He takes the responsibility for managing this mentees‘ development. The whole burden of work lies with the learners, but to be honest, it is exactly the same in more traditional education systems. The difference is that a mentor is more than just a teacher. A good mentor will not tell you how to solve a problem. He will rather focus on its analysis so that you could come up with the solution yourself. Questions asked are the key. Talking is the key. Searching is the key.

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Blake J Harris

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Guarantee

No one can guarantee that they will teach anyone a certain material in a certain time. It is possible to guarantee that a given range of knowledge will be provided at a given time - nothing more. Giving such a guarantee is just cheating. For no one can guarantee that if a person devotes, for example, 40 hours weekly to explore a given topic, they will level up to people who are at a higher level. Such guarantees are pure estimates, based on the average performance of a group, but you have to take into account that everyone has their own pace and needs accordingly more or less time to master a given aspect. A mentor can’t give such a guarantee either and if he does - he lies. What‘s more, most mentors will give up cooperation with people who don’t show initiative. This is due to the fact that mentor’s mentees‘ progress, as well as the fact that they the respect their time - which the mentor could dedicate to someone more ambitious, is also beneficial for the mentor himself.

I realize it's cruel, but sometimes a mentor estimates who has the best chance - and often people who work hard, have a better chance than people who are simply talented. A good mentor will tell you truth. The best one will do it bluntly, but gently.

Summary

Mentoring is for people who want to get involved and achieve visible results. The mentor thanks to his experience, knowledge of the industry and contacts in the community is able to maximize his mentee’s work efficiency. In my opinion, there is no better form of learning, especially in the IT industry, but it must be honestly said that not everyone is persistent to this extent to be able to study the materials on their own - but only under the supervision of a more experienced programmer.