For many people, computer science started as a passion, a hobby. This passion helped launch a career and allowed them to be rewarded for doing what they love. However, the two should not be confused: each has its own rules and goals.

The heart of a passion is having fun, exploring, and learning. Some people work on open-source projects, others develop their own video games. The important thing is to have fun, and it doesn’t matter if our little personal project doesn’t come to fruition, as long as we had fun and learned a thing or two—and everything we learn will help us, directly or indirectly, in our professional work.

Now, I’m going to talk about computer science as a career. After years of experience, I can say with confidence that computer science as a passion and computer science as a career are two completely different worlds. Here are some rough percentages that represent the areas you need to focus on to succeed in a career as a computer scientist.

The first area is the technical side: programming, coding, and code architecture. I assign 40% importance to this area. You might find this figure a bit low, but after years of experience, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Writing code is the easiest part of every IT project. The hard part is knowing  how to structure the code,  what design pattern to use ? Which features should we prioritize for this cycle, and which ones should go into the backlog?. To answer these questions, you need to communicate effectively with your colleagues and clients. That’s why I’ve assigned 40% to the communication aspect. At the same time, you have to be careful: communication must be meaningful. Unfortunately, two-hour meetings that don’t lead to anything significant are not uncommon in our field.

Finally, I’ll wrap up with the last point: human interactions. It’s simple: be friendly and kind to everyone in your workplace.

After discussing passion and the professional environment, we must now turn to the new player on the scene: artificial intelligence. These days, we hear a lot about artificial intelligence. Based on my own experience and use of AI, I’ve found that 70% of what we hear is marketing aimed at businesses and does not reflect the true nature of the IT profession. At the same time, AI is a powerful tool. If used correctly, it can improve our professional productivity. At least in the short and medium term, AI will not replace IT professionals, but IT professionals who use AI will replace those who do not.