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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?"
1) post to slashdot
2) ????
3) ????
4) Profit.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Google summer of code is pretty good for practical experience, but the application period closes tomorrow :(
:(
Head on over to bugs.gnome.org and start by fixing the easy ones, then work from there. Once you are comfy, take a look at OpenOffice or Mozilla's bug tracker and see what kind of help they need. You'll be saving the world AND be able to put this on your resume. "Contributing developer to the open source GNOME desktop, OpenOffice, and Mozilla Firefox." It looks really nice on a resume... though you might want to leave the part about working as a truck mechanic off there. -ellie
Basically either find an open source initiative and volunteer your time. Get involved in open source, or sit down with a print out of the linux kernel and read it until it all makes sense. Then contribute.
I do not know how many CSC PHD's that just read the linux kernel, and are amoung the smartest people I have met out there.
Internet Retail spaces are wonderful. Get over it!
but, at least from my own personal experience, its pretty late in the game to be looking for a summer job, esp. if you don't have very much experience. Not that you can't, but I would look into open source stuff and just your own personal computing needs to find stuff to work on. Many people will go on in detail about open source, so I'll just speak to the latter:
Do you have any monotonous tasks that you do on your computer that you think could be automated? Well then automate them! Even if it isn't very good, it will still familiarize you with the various languages and how computer programs work to solve various problems.
Monstar L
While I don't program every single day at my job, I have helped out with some Java servlets stuff using Hibernate and Spring. I've also picked up some Ruby on Rails for another project that the company had going. (Once the contractors leave, someone has to make sure it gets updated!) The trick is to never stop learning, and keeping an open mind to different languages. While I do wish I were better at Common Lisp, there's still time for that, and it was intriguing enough when it was taught in my Programming Languages course. Understanding algorithms and data structures will probably give you the biggest advantage in conquering whatever language you have to work with and bending it to your will. If the foundations are strong, you can easily get by (or even master) a new language when it comes up.
However, I'm also living in New Jersey, the state of a million suburbs. New York and Philadelphia are just far enough over the border to cause massive congestion and high property values (and taxes, and cost of living). My advice: while San Francisco may be rife with software companies and others who need development expertise, you might do much better looking outside the money-guzzling city.
I feel a little bit like I just gave you old-man advice.
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Work on some of your own stuff, make a cool game, or a tech demo that shows off something somewhat complex (some physics, AI, graphics, whatever you're into).
The experience doesn't have to be in a company, most likely its going to be VERY difficult to get a job when you don't even really know the language yet. Be sure to get experience with the more difficult programming concepts in C++ such as templates, singletons, and auto-registration (if your compiler supports it).
-Bill
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....
... will probably not involve C++ development.
There are a few reasons for that. The minor ones are that most C++ / ObjC projects are big enough that it's difficult to bring an experience programmer in to work on them for just a few weeks, let alone someone with no large project experience. Not impossible, by any means, but not something that a larger company is likely to do outside of a more formal (and longer term) sponsorship arrangement.
The big reasons are that the absolute _last_ thing you need either on your resume, or to enhance your skill set is a brief job coding. The basic coding is something that you should be picking up the basics of in college, rounding out a little with some personal coding (helping out with the countless open source projects out there, for instance) and won't really bring to fruition until you're doing it full time.
The skills you're less likely to pick up there, but which you can pick up in a shorter temporary project are things like QA, marketing, sales, system administration, maybe even customer support. So look at picking up a grunt work job in the field that's not directly touching code. QA and testing (for a real software company, not EA or anything in that field) is a gig you might well be able to pick up, and which would teach you more about good software design and good software project management in a painful 8 weeks than you'd learn in a year writing software. If you can do that in an early-stage startup, and see that business process too, at least from the sidelines, even better.
Heck, if you could wangle it, working as a gopher for one of the Sand Hill Rd VC firms would be one of the best introductions to a career in the software field, I think.
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.
1) post to Slashdot
2) ????
3) Get a Job
4) Profit.
I suspect step 3 might be recursive, though.
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?
In my time at college, I've found that the most valuable experiences I've had have been at internships with real companies. Ask around at school and see if there is any kind of Career Center or other staff for students looking for work that can help you find an internship over the summer. Don't feel held back by your lack of experience; just be honest and they will let you know if you're not qualified.
;).
In addition to getting a feel for the real world of programming (and maybe making some money over the summer), being able to put industry experience on your resume before you even graduate from college is immensely valuable and shows potential employers that you're serious about being in the field.
And if you find that you hate working in the real world, you find out before graduating from school
Before getting involved in an Open Source project ask yourself - and this is a difficult thing to ask - what it is going to be useful for and what kind of business might use it. Is that the kind of business you want to be in? If you don't know, do some research. Remember a valuable fact: contribution to, say, the Linux kernel is easy for anybody anywhere in the world, whereas writing code that extracts and condenses human knowledge and then turns it into a system is far easier where the relevant human beings live. If you live in the Bay Area, it should not be too hard to work out where the business opportunities lie, where automation might cut costs or have other benefits, and what Open Source projects might be relevant. Then choose one, learn it, and send your resume round to people who might be interested.
What I am describing is a lot of hard work, by the way. But you already knew that, if you wanted to succeed in programming, you were going to have to work hard.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you want to do corporate programming, experience in a corporation is much more important than the actual day-to-day work. You have to learn how these environments function. All to many slashdotters dismiss the entire eco-system as "lots of stupid, pointy-haired bosses."
Bad firms have bad bosses, good firms have good bosses, etc. It's hard when you're inexperienced, but aim for the good firms: being a genius at a bad firm is just damaging to your health.
1. Inventory your skills: are you a programming god or just good? do you want to work long hours, or are just willing to? do you want to build relationships or just write code? does meeting clients excite you or seem a distraction? Answer honestly, and you've got a good cover letter.
2. Hit personal relationships. No hard sell needed, just point out you're looking for a summer job and ask the person to keep you in mind. Mention the points in 1, so he'll feel comfortable in making a recommendation (last thing I want is a person telling me he wants to write code, I refer him to a peer, and the applicant spends all summer trying to meet clients, etc.)
3. Do the usual sending resume stuff. It doesn't hurt and you might find a match.
4. Write code, build on-line relationships w/ other tech people, contribute to open source projects, etc. Sure, it's not a job, but it's better than nothing. I've hired a lot of people based on their OSS participation or academic work.
Since you asked about a JOB rather than "how do I learn programming", I'll skip the usual dumb "join an open source project!" response.
Personally I think an actual job is a better route, because it'll put you in contact with more people who use the software, rather than implementing some feature request someone made possibly on another continent. Plus, you actually get PAID (which is important to anyone in College without rich parents). Actual job experience looks a LOT better to most employers than working on a random, often unheard of open-source project. Not to say open source stuff isn't good experience, I'm just not certain how many employers value it.
As to how, this may be obvious to you, but many Colleges and Universities have programs to connect students with companies. Those can be quite beneficial, and you usually get paid pretty decently compared to most student jobs. Have you not looked at the various job boards, talked to your instructors, etc?
I'd also recommend just looking internal to your University. Many departments have come to use the student programmers as a cheap workforce. Scientists often need someone to do some programming for them, though they may want you to program in something quite outdated, like FORTRAN. Departments have programming needs as well. I think one summer I had three different programming gigs.
AccountKiller
Someone will hire you. You've clearly got the right attitude: that's 90% of getting a job.
The other thing I will suggest is applying to many, many companies to start with. HR departments at companies are black holes in general, and it may take quite a few applications before you get anywhere.
I'm just coming off a longish job search myself, so I know how frustrating the process can be. Keep your chin up, and good luck!
The skills you're less likely to pick up there, but which you can pick up in a shorter temporary project are things like QA, marketing, sales, system administration, maybe even customer support.
I see your point, but I sort of think if he wants to be a developer, he should do development. If anything offer to program at a very low rate as others have suggested. I've seen many people that want to code get stuck in QA for years. If he does take a QA job, he should definitely try to get access to the source code and try to write up much more detailed bugs than the other QA engineers and always be telling people he's interested in becoming a developer. This is definitely a delicate subject because the QA managers will probably not be happy with that. Also, I don't see this path with marketing/sales since it's really a different world and does not interact as much with development as QA or sys amdin. I have seen customer support folks move over to development on occasion too. But again, all of these take a lot of time and hard work, when if you have development skills, I'd suggest just being a developer right off the bat in any way possible (e.g. internship)
No Sigs!
If you can't find a paying gig where they are willing to bring on a novice, find a non-profit and do volunteer work, e.g. creating web sites, maintaining databases of donors etc. Just avoid any controversial topics or organizations with religous affiliations, stick with things like hospitals and animal shelters.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I suggest looking for an opportunity in a small start-up. Perhaps you don't want to associate with the proverbial two nerds in a garage, but you can learn much more in a small firm, that perhaps has a dozen people dividing all the work between them. You'll learn to do much more than programming, and working in a small firm is more fun. And besides, a small cash-strapped start-up is more likely to hire a college kid to do some coding, than a large established firm.
There may also be good opportunities in companies that aren't in the IT sector, but in research & development, for example a biotech company. Usually these companies don't have very strong IT departments (and again, you will learn more in a small team), and they will hire people on short term contracts to complete specific projects. Even a medium-sized biotech might not employ a single skilled C++ programmer on a permanent basis (the density of C/C++ programmers in this environment is around 0.3%), so they might be willing to hire you.
Or, if it interests you, look for small firms that develop hardware, such as instrumentation, robotics, or consumer electronics; or small engineering outfits that produce custom development and automation. There isn't that much C/C++ in a typical IT job these days, rather a lot of the work is now in web development, database applications, Java and .NET. But people who interact with hardware, especially if it's time-critical, still have a need for the level of detail and control that C can offer.
And probably it's best to work through an agency or consultancy firm. I don't know US practice, but on this side of the pond it IT directors who need and extra person on the team won't place adverts or look through job applications. Instead, they will send out a request to specialized agency or consultancy firm.
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.
It seems to have worked pretty well for him. There are lots of good ideas in this thread. And maybe, just maybe, one or two other young younglings are in his shoes?
The best job/internship you could get is where you would become a junior member of a development team. This development team would follow the unified process (or some development methodology). They would use version control and bug tracking software. You would learn by seeing others work. It would be best if you were actually mentored by senior programmers (but in my humble experience this rarely happens). At worst, you learn a lot just by looking at senior programmer's code.
If I were looking to bring in an intern, my first job for you would be to create end user documentation and comment existing code. Even this would require supervision, but you'd be exposed to a lot this way. Eventually, I might have you fix a few bugs. That's probably the best way for you to learn.
Are you studying math? If so, where? You might be able to find a internship as a programmer. Many big software companies hire math graduates for programming positions.
Also, there is an alternate option. It's not as good as the first, but it's probably easier to find. On the downside, you don't want to get stuck in these types of jobs. Find any place that would hire you as a programmer. Even if it's building small in-house apps. At first, your work is going to really suck (that's a technical term folks). However, over time, if you start to research on your own, you learn some best practices and develop some skills in software design. Plus, hopefully, you'll be able to land a gig in a development shop as mentioned above.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
As a lead developer for a software company, I disagree. I think it is vital for developers to know how to do QA, with and without having access to the source.
You need to be able to understand what your QA engineers are saying when they give you feedback. If you've never done it, its a lot harder to understand what they mean when they don't know the innards of how the software works.
A developer that understands Marketing/Sales can also understand how to help those areas without comprimising the application standards and usefulness. You as a developer are almost always driven indirectly, and sometimes directly by sales and marketing. Understanding that process will help you deal with their requests more appropriately when they make some request that appears completely stupid to you as a developer.
There are far too many developers that write code without any real understanding of what its being used for. A good developer not only understands how to write code, but how to write code that the users will USE. You can write the most beautiful, standards compliant, fastest software on the planet and you won't sell crap if the users can't use it, or the sales people can't sell it.
There is a lot more to being a developer than just writing code. Especially the higher up the developer food chain you are. You need to understand where all of your input is coming from, why, and then you figure out how to best implement their requests. A developer who produces code based on their own personal agenda as a developer (be it standards compliance, code speed/size, readability or whatever) won't last long when working for a development company, or at best, you'll always be the guy on the bottom of the ladder who just churns out whats thrown at you.
For any future developers out there, PLEASE learn how to understand your bug reports and end users requests before you start thinking you're gods gift to the CPUs of the world, you aren't, someone else is better at both writing code, and making it what users want. Always.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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
In hiring somebody with a CS degree but not lot of professional experience, there are three things I look for, in increasing order of importance:
So definitely look at jobs that give you maximum insight into the whole process. QA is indeed a good place to see what's going on. Product planning, user research, and server operations also have plenty of grunt work, and valuable perspectives that are often neglected. You would also learn a ton from tech support, but that can look a little inglorious on a resume, so only do that in a shop small enough that tech support is just one of those things that programmers or product managers do as a sideline.
I also strongly encourage you to look for a shop that is as agile as possible. Some companies, especially startups, are doing one-week iterations and weekly releases. Many are doing two-week iterations and monthly releases. Your internship will be much more valuable to you if you can see 8 weekly release cycles, rather than 1/3 of a 6-month release cycle.
> How and why did you make the switch?
I switched because of snow, more specifically feeling around in the snow to find a hammer I dropped while changing a leaking wheel seal behind a weigh station. My hands were so cold I couldn't feel it when I picked it up. Nothing I have experienced in IT has been worse than that. Running cable through a blown-insulation attic on the hottest day of the summer is a very distant second.
-ellie.
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.
I live in the south now, but all my younger years up in "everything is rusted tight and rotten and frozen, and nasty crap falls in your eyes, and...) land. Two sets of tools, keep one inside and heated, swap out as they get frozen, build tents around vehicles and run out infra red bulb clamp lights, laying down in frozen slush, etc. nuts.....
Anyway, thanks for the reply, I guessed as much there would be an interesting story behind it! I'm still just a generic multi function tool user, here on de farm, but appreciate all the fine and not so fine code that devs put out. Me brane doesn't exactly work that way to do it myself (nor any huge interest truth be told, inside is for relaxing, outside is for work and make money, hard coded in my DNA I guess..), but I throughly enjoy using computers, great communications tool. I like writing, that's about it for being a keyboard commando.
Things are heading more and more towards web based applications. Take for example the article recently featured regarding Adobe's Photoshop express, that is accessed online. Then you have maps, spreadsheets, word processing etc etc. As a web developer who recently graduated in computer science at university, finding a job was not too difficult. I had only very basic skills in MySQL and PHP to begin with but became quite competent later on. I was required to learn beyond what I had learnt at university, these skills included the Zend Framework (an OO PHP framework), AJAX, CSS and HTML that conformed to the W3C standard and programming techniques in general. My skill level has increased 10 fold. I suggest learning as many programming languages/frameworks/techniques used in web development as possible (.NET, Zend Framework, PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Perl, Python etc), and possibly creating your own website. This site could then be mentioned on your resume and attract positive attention. Like other people suggested you could also work on Open Source projects, again having a website would be useful as you could list all your accomplishments in one easy to access location whilst showing your skills as a web developer.
Taking software development as a job will spoil it as a hobby.
... big time".
(I should know)
In the current market, it's not even a financially sound choice: you should have noticed by now the comments about how hard it is to find work as a Junior Developer - take it as a warning.
If you do manage to punch through the no-job-unless-ur-senior barrier that the service outsourcing trend has raised in IT, then life isn't too bad, though nowadays, unless you're a very specialized freelancer, software developers are paid barely above less specialized jobs.
Given the frequency of posts here on Slashdot about redundancies, outsourced jobs and in general overworking and death marches (don't get me started on that), I'm amazed nobody else has come out and said it before me: "Nowadays, working in IT sucks
In addition to learning C/C++/Obj-C, don't forget Mandarin. You'll need it to communicate with your fellow employees.
-- Ed Skinner, ed@flat5.net, http://www.flat5.net/
I think the first thing you should do is decide if you're interested in programming as a career and not just as a "full time job". As a wise person once said, "Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life."
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
First off, check out monstertrak.com; it's specifically for college students, both upcoming graduates looking for permanent jobs and those further away from graduation looking for internships. Now, some comments, as a 1-person operation whose business is growing out of control and who actually has a job listed there, and other places:
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.Not only does it show a capacity for understanding things, I suspect it shows an understanding of, and capacity for, hard work--believe me, that's something that smart employers understand and appreciate.
...but, at least from my own personal experience, its pretty late in the game to be looking for a summer job...This, unfortunately, is quite true. But speaking from my own personal experience, there are always employes who start looking quite late--don't give up.
The trick is to never stop learning, and keeping an open mind to different languages.So, so, so true. So many schools have computer curricula that are junk and only prepare you to have your job sent offshore in a couple of years. Of course most employers look for the buzzwords of the day, but there are ones who look for signs of high intelligence and real passion--and for those people there are jobs out there that won't be offshored. Also take hard advanced math classes, particularly discrete mathematics, and get good grades in them. Then lie during your interview and tell me how easy they were ;-)
Be sure to get experience with the more difficult programming concepts in C++ such as templates, singletons, and auto-registration (if your compiler supports it).Damn straight. Most people who claim to know C++ only know a really dumbed-down baby subset. Read Alexandrescu [amazon.com], then read it again, until you understand it all. Then branch out to other books on template metaprogramming. A candidate who could explain the primary differences between Boost smart pointers and Loki smart pointers, and the rationale for the decisions, is one who's going to impress me.
I don't know US practice, but on this side of the pond it IT directors who need and extra person on the team won't place adverts or look through job applications.In the U.S., employers do list and actively search for the new, soon-to-graduate talent. Over here, your advice applies more to those who are already out in the job market.