Course on How to Improve Creativity and Boost Your Programming Skills

There are questionable stereotypes that surround programmers. People unfairly label programmers as introverts that avoid social interactions and lack creative skills. Whether these accusations are true depends largely on the personality of an individual and not on the chosen profession. However, if you are a developer that wants to learn how to improve creativity, this course is for you! After all, tips and tricks on how to boost creativity can improve your programming skills. 

Personality traits of programmers

In many ways, your personality traits determine the way you code. For instance, if you are detail-oriented and picky, you might write code from a very sensible and theory-based perspective. Others might get a sense of freedom from programming, meaning that they will experiment and improvise most of their code and fix bugs as they go. 

You might think that programmers and coders do not need to learn how to improve creativity. However, this assumption is wrong. Why? Well, programmers are actually highly-creative: they are capable of finding solutions in the most unexpected ways. 

What personal traits correlate with good programming skills? 

In 2015, the Journal of Research in Personality gathered data for a meta-analysis to evaluate the people’s programming ability objectively. The results supported the idea that programmers need to learn how to improve creativity. Let’s take a look. 

The collected responses from people indicated that the strongest feature of programmers is intelligence. No surprise there, right? To write complicated structures takes knowledge, dedication, and, of course, intelligence. 

Another trait was introversion, meaning that the introvert-lifestyle fit the preferences of programmers. The next trait was conscientiousness, meaning attention to detail. However, neuroticism was not considered as the correlating trait, disagreeing with the common belief of programmers being socially awkward and unstable. 

One interesting discovery of the research indicates that openness correlated with the programming skills the most. Surprised? I do not think you should be. Programmers, maybe even without realizing it, are constantly learning how to be more creative. 

Meaning of neuroplasticity 

In this course on how to improve creativity, we also focus on neuroplasticity. This term refers to the brain's ability to adapt and change throughout life. Some common rules used to increase neuroplasticity include getting enough sleep, learning new things, acquiring new skills, minimizing stressful situations, reading, etc. This course will review more methods to increase neuroplasticity, keep your brain continuously changing and stimulate brain growth. 

How are programmers creative? 

Even though our instincts frequently lead to the assumption that programmers are not creative, their creativity side is stronger than you might think. One of the reasons behind believing that programmers are not creative is due to the relation between mathematics and programmers. Solving mathematical equations does not seem creative at all. 

However, every programmer needs to know how to improve creativity since they use imagination (supported by various programming languages) to create applications, systems, websites, etc. By learning how to be more creative, programmers can come up with extraordinary ideas for projects that they will pursue by using their theoretical and practical knowledge. Therefore, do not disregard creativity as a trait for painters or writers. Learning how to boost creativity is an advantage for all!