Bored Panda wanted to get software engineer Andrew's opinion on whether or not it's important what programming language people start with. He shared that if you're pressed to learn a new language, for example for university, you might get the motivation to go above and beyond.

"My undergrad program was taught in C++, but where I went to grad school, they used Java. To catch up, I wound up taking graduate-level classes and the freshman intro class in the same semester. My fellow students in the freshman class wondered how I suddenly became their TA in the following semester," Andrew shared a snippet from his own life.

Andrew fully believes that programming allows for a lot of creativity and expression. In his view, saying that programming isn't creative is "like saying using a sewing machine isn't creative. It's creative if you make something creative with it! It's a craft that can be done both artfully and in the service of creating great art. Or you can program a garage door opener with it."

He quipped: "If people say it isn't creative, you won't hear them over the sound of your garage door closing."

Software engineer Andrew also opened up to us about his latest creative projects. "I've been working on a song called 'Fire Escape,' with a couple of my Boston friends singing backup, recorded remotely, and a synth bass part with a lot of pitch shifts in it. Inspired by the synth bass of Britney Spears's 'Toxic,' I hooked up a MIDI joystick to control pitch in the left-right direction and vibrato in the up-down direction, emulating the way the joystick on some '80s synths worked. The song as a whole is nothing like 'Toxic,' a whole different sound, but for the bass part I wanted that vibe!" he told Bored Panda.

Meanwhile, he's preparing to release his LeastAverageImage project's code open-source next week, "along with some results of running the program with a classic Simpsons episode as input." He also "did a little photoshoot with a favorite toy from my childhood last weekend, for a silly joke making fun of NFTs."

The r/ProgrammerHumor subreddit has nearly a whopping 1.8 million members, as well as an additional 54k followers on Twitter. Created way back in 2012, it celebrated its 10th anniversary at the end of January this year.

Whether you’re a veteran programmer or are completely new with a freshly-baked diploma, if you plan on sharing memes on the sub, you should always aim for relevant jokes. All the humor has to be programming-related, so jokes that are generic and cover other professions are best kept for other online communities.

Software engineer, musician, and artist Andrew previously gave Bored Panda some great insights into the work, life, and world of programming.

He explained that debugging can actually be fun and said that programming as a whole is very rewarding when you finally manage to figure out the puzzle. For him, programming is definitely all worth it.

According to software engineer Andrew, the core of any programmer or computer scientist’s joy lies in creating new and exciting things and then watching them work as they had intended.

"The best moment for any programmer is seeing something you built work for the first time. It seems almost too good to be true, when something goes from an idea to a bunch of lines of code, to something that actually works and is helpful," he said what keeps him passionate.

"You don't even need to invent anything to experience this thrill. Often it's just a matter of taking a well-known algorithm and applying it to a new situation,” Andrew said that someone can experience joy without programming something entirely unique and never-before-seen.

“There are many great teachers out there who can teach about algorithms and the thought process of how to apply them—people who can take something that has the potential to be really dry and make it fun and interesting," he said.

Andrew shared one recent moment of programming joy. It happened when his software-based art project finally started working as intended. "I certainly had that kind of moment when my image processing program LeastAverageImage spat out the 'airplanes' image and it was exactly what I had been hoping for," he said.

"But I had a similar feeling when a program I intended to reduce photos to only the colors available on a Lite Brite completely failed but made a 'running paint' effect much cooler than anything I was intending to make," he told Bored Panda. "That program isn't called LiteBriteColors now; it's called The ErrorSpreader," he added

However, like in most professions, big breakthroughs and moments of adrenaline don’t happen all the time. Usually, things are more mundane, the happiness that you get from your work is calmer, simpler.

"Those 'eureka' moments don't happen every day, but the day-to-day fun in programming is debugging. I know that sounds crazy because if you're debugging it usually means the code you wrote doesn't work! But everyone I work with feels this way. The more confusing and strange the program's behavior is, the more fun it is to unravel the mystery, find the cause, and fix it. It's like a puzzle."

Andrew shared with us a witty conversation between a teacher and a student that he heard back during a grad class that he took.

"Teacher: Since we don't care about the language specifics, I'm going to write the example in pseudo-code.

Student: Pseudo-code...isn't that the puzzle with numbers on a grid?

Teacher: No, that's Sudoku."