Which is a harder: being a programmer or an engineer?

[AchillesWrathfulLove]

I saved up some money and am looking to study either some type of engineering or programming course in the future. I am leaning towards learning how to program since I am mostly on my computer all day and am very experienced with Google searching.

They are both high income skills and honestly I have no passion or desire to do either but out of all the main jobs out there these stuck out to me the most. Are you an engineer or programmer? Please give me your honest opinion/s thanks!

 

[BvU]

skills and honestly I have no passion or desire to do either

If you're in it for the money only, you won't last. Go into real estate or car sales !

 

[Klystron]

One can practice both careers by becoming a software engineer. Outside university I rarely wrote applications but created thousands of lines of code at the systems level that often called other programmer's apps and functions. I left work feeling fulfilled most days and never starved.

I eventually concentrated on IT, knowledge engineering, and data center design but I also have a strong electronics background. As technology improves IT might be a more lucrative career path.

Ask yourself if you enjoy solving difficult puzzles and mental games and helping others.

 

[hutchphd]

If you are in it only for the money you will also not be good at what you do. Not a big self-esteem booster.

Do us all a favor and find something you really want to do! Put in the work now...

 

[Dale]

I have no passion or desire to do either

They are both far too difficult to do well with no desire.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I have no passion or desire to do either

Then it is highly unlikely you will succeed at either.

 

[berkeman]

I am leaning towards learning how to program since I am mostly on my computer all day and am very experienced with Google searching.

Programming is very different from Google searching. Programming is more like a combination of understanding grammar rules, puzzle solving, very structured thinking, human factors and interfaces, more puzzle solving at a complex level, and very disciplined problem solving (debugging programs).

They are both high income skills and honestly I have no passion or desire to do either but out of all the main jobs out there these stuck out to me the most.

At an entry level, both jobs are mid-level in terms of entry-level incomes, not high-income. As suggested earler, if you have good people skills, then sales will give you a better opportunity to earn a fairly high income sooner. I actually considered working for a year or two as a car salesman at a point in my EE career where I was pretty burned out. The salary+commission would have been comparable if I could have pulled off the personal interaction part...

Are you an engineer or programmer? Please give me your honest opinion/s thanks!

I am both, and I enjoy both a lot. Back in undergrad, I had to make the decision between pursuing Physics (my first love, and I was very good at it at the undergrad level) and Engineering, and at the time in the mid-1970s the job market was stronger for engineering, so I got my degrees in EE. The first class that I took in undergrad that turned me from Physics to engineering/EE was ironically a programming class. The puzzle-solving nature of the programs, as well as my good background in English grammar (and hence my comfort with programming structure and grammar rules) were part of what turned me.

So as others have suggested, I'd recommend that you keep looking a bit longer for some career paths that interest you. The more interested you are in the work, the better you will perform at it, in my experience. Hope that helps.

 

[DEvens]

Before you give up in disgust: There are some places on the net you can learn to code for free. And there are some developer tools you can download for free. Google some up. Pick one that looks interesting. Try to code up something. See how it feels to struggle through that.
Here are a few examples of things you could try at an intro level:
- Code up something in HTML that will load in your web browser.
- Do some Java or Java script and make that HTML fancy.
- Get one of the MS Office products and learn some VBA. (Though that's not free. There are Gnu equivs but I have no experience with them.)
- Get a database app and make a simple database.
- Get Gnu C++ and learn to code "Hello World!"

There are lots of other possibilities, many free. There are several online free classes in video format. See if you find doing the beginner level stuff tolerable, fun, interesting. See if you can do it long enough to finish a project, and how stressed you feel at the end. Picture doing that for a full workweek for years. See how you feel then.

 

[Tua_kana]

I saved up some money and am looking to study either some type of engineering or programming course in the future. I am leaning towards learning how to program since I am mostly on my computer all day and am very experienced with Google searching.

They are both high income skills and honestly I have no passion or desire to do either but out of all the main jobs out there these stuck out to me the most. Are you an engineer or programmer? Please give me your honest opinion/s thanks!

You'll need a genuine passion for both. Difficulty is scalable depending on the depth and breadth of your preference. If you're gunning to be a programmer try MIT6.00.1x on edX and see how you like it. It's introductory but thorough. Good luck!