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Practical Experience As a Beginning Programmer?
LuckyLefty01 writes "I'm 21, going to college, and working part time doing odd jobs like math tutoring. In the past nine months or so, I've discovered and taken to programming (so far mostly C/C++/Obj-C). I am now looking seriously at something in this area as an eventual full time job. Since I don't have much scheduled this coming summer, it would be great to try to get a job of some sort at a tech-related company in order to get some practical experience in the field. Even if I don't have the background to get a job involving actual programming, I think that the knowledge of how such a company works would be valuable. Fortunately, I live in the SF Bay Area, so there should be plenty of companies around. I'm flexible about what I'm going to be doing, and very willing to learn just about anything anybody cares to teach me. If there's some (or even quite a bit of) boring grunt work involved, I can do that too. What type of job would benefit an aspiring but inexperienced programmer the most? What methods might I use to find such a job?"
Maintenance programming in general is an excellent place to start. There is no better way to appreciate and learn about good and bad architecture, good and bad code, and to develop understanding of those attributes which influence maintainability. It allows you to focus on how to build without the interference of what to build.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I suppose it would depend on the company, but I would suspect that this tendency is becoming less and less of a concern as more people are using OSS in their everyday lives.
kaens.blogspot.com
If you do decide to apply for an internship or something, make sure you really mean "C/C++/Obj-C". Though C++ and Obj-C both build on C, they are quite different from each other, and each introduce several concepts that are not found in C and that you would be expected to know thoroughly if you claimed knowledge of the language. Also keep in mind that because of these differences between the languages, it is even possible to sort of offend some people by lumping C and C++ together as C/C++. Though I haven't experienced it myself, I would expect the same to be true of Obj-C.
Finding a job is your first practical experience. Finding a job is the most important project which will repeat throughour your career :) I am a Perl programmer, and I get most of my jobs through Perl Mongers, directly or indirectly. Build up your personal coding experience, and build up your reputation in the local groups for your programming language. Also, when in doubt take an internship. Working for $10 an hour as a programmer keeps the lights on and ramen on the table, and builds up lots of resume fodder.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
Slashdot is a bit of a weird place, in that I can just imagine the majority of the answers are going to talk about things like Google Summer of Code, or working on an open source project, building your own software, etc...
I'll tell you, those things may help you learn your language or platform better but it will not help you be a better engineer. Unfortunately only time in the trenches does that. Being a good engineer fit for a job at a software company, you need to know how to work on a team, set and meet deadlines, write documentation, etc... all the stuff that you don't tend to get doing the informal stuff that everyone is likely to be talking about here.
An internship or entry level position doing continuation engineering or a junior/associate engineer is going to get you more useful experience than all that other stuff, assuming you actually do know how to write software.
Start at the cold hard rock face of development. The Testers, skills required are not as sophisticated (you have to repeatedly break stuff) but it will give you a great insight into just how badly some "professional" developers code.
Testing has the added advantage of being a place where its low paid and turnover is high so its a good place to get started in IT.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
A good truck mechanic can make 50 grand to a hundred grand a year......
You might want to pick a less worthy job for comparison....also, hard to *outsource* a truck mechanic job, yes?
I wouldn't leave the part about being a mechanic off of there. Personally, I think it shows a capacity to understand things from multiple perspectives in a cross-trained fashion. And there's nothing wrong with showing people that.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Since you sound pretty new to programming in general, I'd spend a few nights a week just messing around. Make a blackjack program, add graphics, create a login system with different users and accounts. Just fuck around and get so used to programming that it's like writing in English. Have an advanced math class? Make a graphing calculator and write your own syntax for equation solving, whatever you are into... and just keep plugging away looking for jobs, you'll find one.
In any case, I wouldn't look down on mechanics. Most of "them" are probably smarter than most of "us", if you really stop to think about it.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
An excellent sign of a company you don't want to work for. If an interviewer ever said something to that effect, I would thank them for their time and leave.
There's no reason why you can't contribute to the community project of your choice without Google's pre-approval. If anything, Summer of Code, with the hand-holding it's supposed to have, is probably less representative of a real workplace than just showing up is. (Although neither really gives the sort of workplace experience he wants.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I don't know how easy it is as someone with a fundamentals-only grasp of C/C++ to just jump into a major open source project and "start fixing the easy bugs". Everyone seems to suggest this and forgets that working with Open Source projects has a steep learning curve of it's own.
You have to learn version control systems, the community, what constitutes "easy", you have to learn the scale and meaning of each piece of the project, you have to learn communication and moreso, you have to know enough to actually fix things.
If you're just looking to learn, you've got plenty there. But using OSS projects to learn means a very high overhead and initial learning cost before you learn about coding or code design at all.
I know I'll get modded down for posting an offtopic reply, but my message is very, very important to all /. users (except the 1% who are female): guys, stop this "girls hate me because I'm a geek" nonsense!
The two great loves of my life have been CompScis, and they are two of the greatest guys I ever met. They've helped me learn to program, take things apart with screwdrivers, read some great books, and have a much more interesting life. Geeks are great. The only problem comes when you take being a geek as an excuse not to wash, to dress like an asshat, and to forget your social skills.
To the original poster - don't listen to anyone who tells you a computer-related job will kill your love life. Expand your knowledge, be passionate about what you do, and anyone who (metaphorically) mods you down for it isn't worth knowing. Also remember to shower, and get some nice shirts :)
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
1. You're in college
2. You're in the bay area
You must simply become an intern. There are plenty of resources at every college for finding out about this and applying for an internship. I've been a SW developer for almost 10 years, and it really is the second best way to get a job as a developer. (the best way is to know someone)
Even though we're sliding into an economic downturn. Interns are so cheap (most get paid in the bay area, but not much) that companies look to them to shore up their need for employees in the rough times. Once you're done being an intern though, you will find it very hard to get a job unless you had some fantastic internships.
There is little demand for junior developers right now(if this was 1998-2000 you would have no problem), and it is going to get worse before it gets better.
Not sure why this had to be an Ask Slashdot.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A woman's POV isn't worth much on what attracts women? Yeah, I can see that I made a big mistake there...
Who said a geek guy has to go out with a geek girl? My point is exactly not that. It's that "normal" girls won't find you unattractive because you're a geek, but they will find you unattractive if you don't wash and can't hold a conversation!
And if you really think I have a "large pool" of geek guys? You have to be kidding! You're all too convinced that women hate you to offer us more than a suspicious sneer ;)
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Programming credentials will fit on a single page, with plenty of room to spare. If I structure my resume so that what you need to see is foremost and then I show you that I am also a well-rounded individual, with skills in more than one area, and maybe even something that shows social skills, and you as a hiring agent do not appreciate that, then I do not think you are a very good hiring agent.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
>To the original poster - don't listen to anyone who tells you a computer-related job will kill your love life. Expand your knowledge, be passionate about what you do, and >anyone who (metaphorically) mods you down for it isn't worth knowing. Also remember to shower, and get some nice shirts :)
While you are no doubt correct that a geek profession is not an absolute barrier to a lovelife for a straight guy, there are several things to consider
1)If you become a coder, you will most likely not be meeting a girlfriend at work if your job mostly involves staring at a screen and working only with other guys, particularly if your development organization is isolated in its own building or part of campus. Other professions are more advantageous for meeting women on the job:doctor and teacher are two that come to mind. Studies have shown that an embarrassingly large percentage of people met their mates at work.
2) Development can involve insane schedules if you have poor managers which is the case at most places. Poor management being the #1 reason why most software sucks. Less time for going out and meeting women .
3) You won't be able to talk about your work with most women. Either they will find it tedious or incomprehensible due to the lack of technical background. This is not necessarily a bad thing, most people find 'shop talk' in social settings a boring topic, but it's not nearly as advantageous for dating as saying "I'm in a band, hey you should come see us play." Or "I fly jet fighters" or " "I'm independently wealthy. I devote my time to helping needy kids and saving fuzzy puppies" or "I'm an artist. I'm having an exhibition at xyz gallery."
4) Your daily work environment is not likely to improve your social skills or physique, unlike say, being in sales or an apartment moving company. Various jobs practice different skills. Coding will in fact make you more logical and literal which are not advantageous to forming an emotional connection with someone.
But still, correlation does not imply causation. There are plenty of married geeks, and plenty of people have poor social skills which are often preexisting long before getting into technology.
Best of luck to you.