Programming as a career

is it worth learning to use stuff like eclipse and that because i guess while most people can do java C++ fewer people will know how to work with the specfic development tools etc?

It might also be helpful to learn about recursion, as told by H.P. Lovecraft:

http://www.bobhobbs.com/files/kr_lovecraft.html

3. Make up for lack of degree w/ experience (fuck going back 2 school)

I kind of sort of have this covered at my current position, but I'm sort of an ad hoc backwater one-person band supporting a group in a hardware company, so there's not a lot of support for me but also not a lot of priority given to me vis-a-vis promotions, accumulating job skills past a rudimentary point, etc. It's good for financial security, but if I need/want a real developer's job, I feel a bit underqualified, thus thinking about doing school part time to get a BA/BS. And that goes to Sock Puppet's 3b; I'm a bit intimidated by the mathier stuff on my own, I do much better in a classroom.

I have some Java on me now, I'm taking a C++ class at jr. college this Winter Q.

People who say #2 don't know what they're talking about.

Re: outsourcing -- does it matter that I work in Silicon Valley? I tend to assume that if the general trend is towards outsourcing programming, SV would be the place where it happens first.

is it worth learning to use stuff like eclipse and that

i guess it'd be a good idea to know how how yer basic ide works but no point going out of your way to learn any particular one. once you know one you know them all, more or less.

OTM. Every company has their own specifics w.r.t. IDEs so it's probably not a good use of your time to worry about the environment outside of what you need to know to get things done.

There's no concrete answer to the get/don't get a C.S. degree question. As you might have guessed already it depends... amount of experience, depth of background, relative visibility, the type of job you're looking for and what industry it's in (something like game development is it's own Universe). I can only offer up anecdotes from my own career - I've had exactly two formal programming classes, but 18 years of job experience from IT garbage collector, to webmaster, device driver wizard, and database king. Like everyone else has been saying, have a broad familiarity with a couple areas of deep knowledge. If I was starting now, I'd make Java one of those deep knowledge areas.

Also, don't underestimate visibility. Write some code, improve on it, and then blog the results. Write comments on someone else's coding blog. I've gotten a couple of contract gig offers just because I posted some sample code to my blog. Go figure.

Lastly, get familiar with database basics. Nothing ridiculous like Oracle but just your basic MySQL/PostGreSQL fundamentals. I didn't set out to be a database guy, but I knew some stuff and now four years later I'm a full-blown DBA and pretty good at it.

> I had heard that C++ had lost out a lot to Java

i think this is due to a shift towards webapps (java servlets). i'm a dyed in the wool c programmer now doing java for a living because everything is now sat on a server being served by JBoss.

(never had a lesson in java, hadn't been invented whilst i was in education... lol, z80)

i am aghast at some of the job adverts i see, the list of disparate things they expect you to know. but a lot of this is due to agency idiots. (that said, if i think about all the disparate things i use at work...)

the thing they don't teach you at college but is fundamental when working professionally and/or in groups is version control. get comfortable with cvs or svn or maybe even git. at the very least know what they do.

i'd also recommend having something you can show people, like contributing, or starting, an open source project. or just having some flashy applets somewhere.

this stuff all takes years, 25 years in i'm still picking stuff up.

Hm, I like a syntax-highlighting text editor with parenthesis matching and suchlike, but for the actual business of compiling and running I'm still alt-tabbing to a console window, guess I'd better stop being so afraid of letting the IDE take care of it...

Ha, agency job ads. Seen ads asking for 3 years' experience in technologies which aren't 3 years old.

This is good encouragement to actually listen to the woman who's been trying to get us all to use svn. The only version control I've used was command-line only and didn't do much beyond locking the file and adding a timestamped comment. Seems they're a lot more sophisticated now.

file locking is so '90s.

Hm, I like a syntax-highlighting text editor with parenthesis matching and suchlike, but for the actual business of compiling and running I'm still alt-tabbing to a console window, guess I'd better stop being so afraid of letting the IDE take care of it...

Yeah, I programmed in notepad etc for years, before moving to a proper IDE, mostly because I figured I should learn to program without any tools to help me out. In hindsight that wasn't a particularly good idea, it just made thinks more convoluted and slow. Rewriting code was a major pain etc.
Learning an IDE (Eclipse, for instance) is hardly any work at all, since you can start off treating it as little more than a fancified text-editor, and learn the cool tricks as you go along. I mean, hell, I'd used one for over a year before I even heard of "extract method"! Sheesh.

Actually, that reminds me that getting comfortable with Maven or Ant is fairly quickly done, and something well worth doing once you're comfortable with Subversion (SVN) or CVS.
Also, testing frameworks. JUnit if you're using Java. It's both quick to learn, and well worth it; just don't let the annoying Test-Driven Design (TDD) fanatics put you off.

there are things netbeans cannot do that easily vim will do in a heartbeat but i can't live without the code completion stuff as i don't really know the libraries (and they change). plus java projects have such a deep directory trees and our stuff is so scattered that you end up spending most of your time in vim typing directory paths to swapping between files (could use ctags i guess)

eclipse i never got to grips with - there's no 'compile' button as it's continually compiling and i like having a compile button.

svn can be used on the command line but we use tortoise.

Programmers are the magicians of the modern age

Not the ones I've known. And I've known more than a few.

buncha putzes

Programming is the worst

DevOps is the worst.

Software Engineer USA™

we like to pretend we're architects and engineers and builders but we're really more like apprentice mechanics or those dudes that assemble pre-made furniture half the time

programming is great if functions and syntax are well documented. it is the worst thing imaginable otherwise.

I do enjoy the critical thinking parts of my mind that were unlocked by learning CS theory and programming over a period of time, but it really chafes me to see software developers think that they're able to solve non-software societal problems with that toolkit

professional googlers

Oh, I forgot that one. Software Architect. Classic.

I much rather SysAdmin, coder, developer, webmonkey/webmaster, script kiddie

Mind you, my end goal is probably to be a 'Software Architect', so I should lol carefully

yeah, really smart or tricky code makes you seem like a wizard but what it really makes you is an asshole if it's ever meant to be maintained

pretty sure my coding style has gotten progressively dumber on purpose

^^ thank you

I think software/systems architect is a fine title, even if my actual designs-buildings-and-structures friend recoils in disgust. I hate when people introduce themselves as "architects" without the qualifier.

Now, the part of the business where people use "architect" as a verb... not so good.

I do enjoy the critical thinking parts of my mind that were unlocked by learning CS theory and programming over a period of time, but it really chafes me to see software developers think that they're able to solve non-software societal problems with that toolkit

― a strange man (mh), Monday, June 9, 2014 5:09 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they probably also think they can throw together that application in a matter of a few days

programmers are horrible estimators

working with computers makes people feel very powerful because computers are powerful

bring back punch cards

ya, it's just funny because in canada you're not really allowed to use "software engineer", because, well, you're not an engineer. but in the states, it's quite common

I feel like 'engineer' is fair

you are designing and building something more abstract, but you are still designing and building something

I should be a software architect because I have all the artistic pretensions that building architects have

interesting how engineer and developer have become prominent as the job has become less about programing

you should be an engineering software architect or an architecture software engineer.

my dad once purchased landscaping software from a barnes & noble. i sometimes think about the people who developed that software.

i dunno, engineering would imply a discipline that's way more predictable than software. there's no ISO manual you can check that tells you the number of tests you need per 1,000 lines of java.

They might as well claim to be 'magicians of our modern age' and finish the job.

pretty sure metrics for unit test coverage in large companies are getting there

Yeah but are they as useful as "minimum cross-section for structs on suspension bridge given expected load" etc etc, I mean physical engineers actually know things

Programmers - the next job to become demand-weakened by too many people who enjoy it ad thus do it for free

That will never happen, I don't believe there are enough psychos out there who also love programming that'll fit the demand

as a cs student, I'm really not feeling the hyperactive "hackathon/build a startup in a day/be the next zuckerberg" horseshit mentality that i fear dominates. I mean, it's obvious that I'm doing this in order to get a job, why do i have to care about forming a startup

it's difficult, because you do need to keep up on new technologies and development practices, but to do so you end up viewing/reading/attending material that has an overlap with people who are WE ALL MUST MAKE NEW BUSINESSES and it's irritating

I guess the larger tech-oriented gatherings don't have that problem, but then you're at Microsoft's Build conference or JavaOne or whatever the fuck people go to these days

Every year my dad never fails to ask me to go to this one Oracle conference with him

on the bright side, the huge corporate ones usually have really cheesy entertainment

I think I went to one yeeeears ago with Mini Kiss, Battlebots, and a Rolling Stones cover band.

Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

programmers are horrible estimators

Guilty as charged.

Can I still charge by the hour though?

^Just call yourself a consultant instead of a freelancer and you should be good

the problem we had previously is that eclipse, netbeans, visual studio code and intellij all had their own ideas about standards. but the only thing we've mandated so far, and written config for, is the ordering of imports as that was the thing that would change erratically between commits depending on ide. and was just adding noise to every review.

the one thing that jumps out at me in the new suggestions is the max line length being bumped to 130 characters. i hate having to horizontally scroll to see all the code.

(vertical scroll is fine, mouse wheels exist for a reason)

130 is probably excessive, but everyone needs a Logitech MX Master. Horizontal scroll, baby

Looking again right now and the pickings are slimmer than I remember it ever being since I started my career. Everything's focused on AI right now, which sucks, and whether that proves to a bubble, IDK. In any event, I wonder if it'd be worth taking some devops courses, since I do see that a fair bit? I've always been a web dev, so even though I wouldn't be starting exactly from scratch, I'm sure there's a lot I don't know.

I had a front end dev job for about 18 months, ending in Feb. 2023. I spent the rest of of 2023 and all of 2024 looking for a job and/or building my side project app. I have since bailed from the career entirely.

I should add that I have OK knowledge of Python, but no Go or Rust (which I also seem to see in a lot of these platform-oriented descriptions).

We are given some time at work for "personal development", I started an AWS devops course and they would have paid for the exam, so it was an ideal opportunity, but it was soooo dry (to the point of memorising meaningless three letter acronyms) I had to bail for my mental health.

Oh and about half of our dev team have just been let go, thanks to venture capital.

devops can be a good gig

I don't think I've programmed anything for quite a while now, unless you'd count shell scripts or terraform as "programming"

it's been an interesting career progression! I think I went from internal Java web apps to external-facing web dev to C# internal corporate desktop apps to integration/middleware with a smattering of C# web apps to C# web services/middlware to streaming data guru and now to almost full-time on Kubernetes administration and client consultation on best practices, all for data scientists who know nothing of how to structure production deployment

My goal a few years ago was to shift to more solution architect/planning stuff, but now I don't even know! Are there any good roles for a jack of all trades type?

Has anyone tried using ATS services? Someone on LI (tbh they sound like a chatbot but that's neither here/there) said that they rate my resume at 33% effective or w/e, which kind of jibes with my experience of how few hits I've been getting past the application stage, even when I'm fairly confident that I have the important qualifications that the JD is looking for.

Heaven help me but I used ChatGPT to rewrite my resume, and the number of items I have to fix because it just started making up numbers and metrics is sad.

Be sure to put some injection prompts in white text for the AI that reads it.

we are busy and because(?) of that they are introducing mandatory pairing on tickets

and it's being imposed by people who aren't going to be involved

is this irl or wfh? we often "pair" over slack, instead of actual video call + screen sharing.

it's wfh. there's a rota, fixed pair, 1 ticket for 2 weeks, rotate.

so instead of 8 of us working on 8 tickets (more tbh) there'll be 4 pairs working on 4 tickets and that's meant to make us faster, somehow. and we have a hard deadline (world cup).

The argument is that pairing is ultimately faster in terms of code quality, QA, etc. I'm on the fence. I'm sure it does lead to better code and fewer bugs but is it really twice as good / fast?

the opposing argument is that pairing prevents me from listening to music and dicking around on the internet

I had a job that highly encouraged pairing but we were in an open office and the skill range between developers was immense. I learned quite a bit working alongside one of the best developers I've ever worked with but I almost certainly slowed him down overall

I don't think there's much benefit when both devs are fairly skilled. Occasionally we'll pair on a challenging bug. I'm suspicious of any place that mandates it. Makes me think they want to police non-work activity

I pair a lot with a colleague who is slow as shit to show him many tickets can in fact be turned around in a single day :D it does slow me down but it lessens my agitation.. hopefully one day I can get him up to speed

a week into the pairing experiment and the time spent pairing = 0

the day before we were meant to start i was assigned a system design to write, just me. not that you can pair on reading anyway. between things i was half a day away from finishing (after two months), him doing reviews, him redoing code based on reviews, me doing my usual BAU tasks, meetings etc it's just not been convenient.

but now i'm in a position to actively join him on something he's been doing for a couple of days and i go to catch up over lunch and there're no comments on the ticket, no branch in github, nothing. (his last piece of work got into review with no comments on the ticket, no comments in the code, no description in the PR, and 33 changed files... contractors, eh...)

do they still call it EXTREME programming?

adventures in pairing:

yesterday, nothing at all from him after 15:50 and then he comments and checks in half-done stuff at 17:02 (i had something to eat, watched the skateboarding, then sat here fixing his bugs until about 8)

today, some back and forth, about how it has got to be better than that. and how he will try and improve. he's checked in wip but hasn't asked me to do anything towards it. last message 16:00. it's now 17:24. has he left? am i still waiting?

I still hear about XP but haven't worked in a place that actively advocates for that, so I'm likely out of touch.

Doesn’t really sound like pair programming in any way that I’ve read about it in the past Koogs! This sounds very painful.

I thought the idea was that one person would vocalise the approach and the other person would write the code?

generally the way we do it, tdd, one person writes unit tests for the new feature, the other one implements it. swap. repeat to fade. yeah, normally sat side by side but now we are remote it's done via teams or slack or, in this case, neither.

i have other things to do but given you don't know whether they're going to get back to you in 5 minutes or 5 hours it's hard to know whether to start on those.

as for leaving at the end of the day without saying anything, that's just rude

Yeah, totally agreed.

I haven't pair programmed in eons but the other bonus of it is that you have two people familiar with the code

That is funny...I recall shops mandating (but more commonly just encouraging) pair programming 15-20 yrs ago, but I have not seen this recently. We don't do it commonly at my very large shop.

For me, I find the social engagement and requirement to articulate why I am doing each small action just too distracting. Explaining it in chunks is easier.

If pair programming was as incredibly helpful as some believed, we would all be doing it. It's time has passed.

I think it's a nice method to have in your repertoire but forcing it seldom works. second pair of eyes, etc. when trying to figure out why something isn't working right is good

half the time I think you could do the rubber duck thing instead, though

today's standup, the end of which was meant to be us changing pairs, finished with the words 'fuck it. fucking sort it out yourselves'.

all i do anymore is instruct agents