I've been programming for nearly 5 years now, and I've learned a lot in that time. I learned full-stack web development, mobile apps, and I know more than 10 programming languages.
But the most important thing programming has helped to teach me is not so much about writing code as it is about how I approach problem-solving.
Programming attracts a variety of people. Some of us (or maybe most of us...) are control freaks: we love the amount of control we have over a computer. It does every single thing we tell it, to a T (or to that missing semicolon in your Java code...).
Others enjoy programming because of the wide area of influence: coders can change the whole world with nothing but a computer to type on.
There are many other things people find attractive about programming, but one that really stands out is this:
Programming attracts the people who are able to endure a lot of frustration.
As programmers, a whole lot of our time is spent not writing code, but fixing bugs.
As a result, we go through a whole lot of frustration.
The difference between a working program and one that doesn't work can be as small as one character in width.
That's what we go through every day: we write code, it fails. We fix it, then keep working, and it fails again.
Needless to say, that's not attractive to everyone. Only the people who somehow find it fun to deal with mind-wrenching problems for a living.
So...does this mean you can't become a programmer if you can't deal with frustration?
Absolutely not. Because programming doesn't simply attract the kinds of people who can deal with frustration. It produces them.
When I started programming, working for days on a problem deeply integrated into hundreds of lines of mangled text would probably have caused me to quit. But now that's what I do every day. So what happened?
Programming happened. When I first started, my code wasn't that complex. Sure, my errors were frequent, but they were easily solvable. As I progressed, the problems got harder. Did I give up on some of them? Yes, of course. But I didn't give up on programming.
As my problems got harder, so did my ability to problem-solve. More importantly, so did my ability to stay with a problem until it was solved.
And I'm still learning this.
But one thing I can say from experience is, programming has taught me a lot about dealing with problems and frustration. I had to completely rewrite my first app 3 times. But I didn't give up.
Was it because it was fun? No, we were miles away from fun at that point. Please understand that coding is NOT always going to be fun. The reason I kept at it was because it was a problem that needed solving, because I new there was opportunity on the other side, and because I know now that every problem is a chance to learn something new.