A quick google search suggests “beginner”, “dabbler”, “inexperienced”, and “layman” as synonyms for “amateur”. I suspect this comes as no surprise to the reader. However, these synonyms completely miss the mark on the original meaning of the word; I suspect this comes as moderate surprise to the reader.

First, a quick disclaimer on the English language. Yes, I am very aware that it is completely normal for the colloquial and generally accepted use of a word to change over time. No, I don’t think every such word deserves a blog post as the section marked “etymology” on any given Wikipedia entry is more than adequate; but amateur is special. To me at least.

Amateur comes from a French word of the same name; from Merriam Webster:

One who admires or is devoted to something, derived from Latin amare ‘to love’.

Being an amateur has nothing to do with how well someone does something, but has everything to do with why someone does something. A professional does a task because they are paid to, an amateur does a task because they love doing it. Somewhere along the way, we’ve conflated “getting paid” with “being good” and while this meritocratic sentiment is fine in isolation, it becomes dangerous when the contrapositive is incorrectly assumed to be true. Anyone who has hired a budget handyman knows that paying for a job to be completed carries no guarantee that the job will be completed well. Payment doesn’t produce quality and loving a task doesn’t disqualify payment for its completion.

An amateur loves what they do and doesn’t need to receive anything in return to be motivated to do it. I get paid to program, but I also do a lot of programming that yields no return on investment (this shitty blog just being one example). In that way, I am both an amateur and professional software developer. Throughout the last decade, software development has received more attention from youtubers and traditional media; consequently we have seen an uptick in the number of computer science students and software engineers. Certainly some of these individuals love the field and are grateful to the influencers who exposed them to it, but many such individuals have chosen this field because of the shine and prestige their 1080p monitors laid before them. If you fall among this later group I offer a word of caution: life is too short to be spent not doing what you love and those who love what they do will out perform those who do not. This field is hard enough competing with professionals, don’t make yourself compete against the amateurs as well.