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Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#71

Post by pengo »

I had a non-technical management role and a business need that could only realistically be met with software. I had no budget and company policy prohibited purchasing or commissioning software anyway. So I thought "how hard can this be?", took a laptop home and taught myself to code.

I started in BASIC because that was bundled with the laptop. I quickly became aware of its limitations and moved to C (working in DOS back in 1990).

From there I became the company's go-to person for glueware. We had a dozen silo'd systems that all had some form of file or COM port based I/O, and I was soon proficient at getting them to talk to each other.

Six years after I wrote my first line of code I hung up my management lunchbox and became a fulltime software engineer.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#72

Post by adamredwoods »

glonq wrote: post #66

I got into computers when my dad brought a Commodore Vic-20 home in 1982. Learned BASIC by typing in programs from Compute magazine. Then in high school they taught us Turbo Pascal on the PC. I had no intentions of going to college, but my parents prompted it. That was a very smart idea. I did a two-year degree/diploma with a co-op option. I finished with high grades and after graduation got a job with one of the pla…

> I got into computers when my dad brought a Commodore Vic-20 home in 1982. Learned BASIC by typing in programs from Compute magazine.

Me, too! Commodore users unite!

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#73

Post by skydhash »

It was a long road. I was always interested in crafting things and a curious child. My father has many books and I got interested in the ones about tech and such. But what really helps me is being capable of understanding the theory without the practice. We didn’t have any computer or access to the internet, but I was able to retain a lot of informations from my reading.

The actual path started when they bought a laptop for my brother for the university. It came with Windows 2000 and we paid a guy to install XP on it. I quickly became friends with him and learn how to install Windows myself and all the things that it entails. So when one of my close friend had his own laptop, I was mostly the one tinkering with it as I was the “computer expert” in the neighborhood. Then I stumbled into Blender (I was interested in visual arts) then Python after I learnt about the Blender Game Engine. One of the forums that did help me was “Le site du zero”. I was not that good in english and it was one of the best French forums for beginner. I learned Python, then C with their programs. Another good forums was “Comment Ca Marche.net”. They had this program that was basically a wiki with an overview of all the major aspects of computer science.

I went to do an electronic engineering degree. But the major time was spent learning more about computers, programming languages, and software engineering. I volunteered for a few projects (one of them got me a personal laptop). But my first paying job was through a friend and with that I realized that I could do it part time to earn some good money. That’s when I signed on Upwork and since then, I’ve worked on several projects that earned me more money than I could have made locally.

The journey was more eventful than that, but I think that captures the gist of it. I’m still working as a freelancer. It can get a little bit lonely (I work from home) but I don’t mind as the country is not that stable (I live in Haiti).

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#74

Post by drost »

When I was 14, Turbine Games released a patch to Asheron's Call which broke Decal for a few months. Decal is/was a framework for developing and running plugins for the game. These plugins could do anything in the game that the player could.

One such plugin at the time was ElTank. ElTank was primarily a combat macro. It would hunt and loot for you. But since decal broke, so did ElTank.

I still wanted something to play the game in this way for me. So I found another tool, ACTool. ACTool was a scripting environment which was normally able to hook into decal but it didn't require it for some basic things.

I spend a days learning the ACTool language and managed to put together a VERY crude botting system that would be (poorly) navigate through one specific dungeon. Only one dungeon since I had to hard code my route. It would also manage my vitals -- health, stamina, and mana. Additionally, it was able to keep me buffed and log out if I died.

I managed to do all of that by pixel scraping. Based on the color of specific ranges of pixels I could do some pretty nifty things.

This was the first time ever programmed anything and it was SO hard and SO rewarding.

At this time, I didn't even realize that Software Engineering was a career path. And if it was I didn't think I would be able to make it through an engineering degree because of the math requirements.

Fast-forward to age 19. Engineering wasn't even a consideration, neither was school. I joined the Navy instead.

My Navy rating had me doing some linux system administration stuff and I thought that was really cool. At the same time, a friend of mine wanted to do a Java class at the local Community College and didn't wan't to do it alone, so I did it with him. And it was so much fun that I decided that I was going to become a software engineer. SO when I finished the Navy I focused all of my energy towards college. When I graduated I was able to line up a job.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#75

Post by adamredwoods »

mikewarot wrote: post #22

I'm old (57), so this happened back in the 1980s, and isn't very relevant to current market conditions. I started out in amateur radio, and made connections through a friend with a Man who had a small computer repair shop. I started fixing things while still in high school. One day he got an EPROM programmer, and there was a program that talked to it written in Turbo Pascal. The next thing you know, I was programming…

Are you still interested in programming as a career? My personal anecdote: I refreshed my programming skills in my mid-40's at an in-person coding bootcamp (General Assembly, but there are better ones out there). I had to take on a private loan to do it, put in a lot of effort, but it was worth the risk. I did the javascript/react/node tech stack, but did some python and C# on my own afterwards. It really helped my brain re-start and get back into the employment game.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#77

Post by zeroego »

I just recently accepted my first Software Development position. Copy pasting from another post but this is basically how I did it:

2015 - Graduated with BA in History.

2018 - Started self teaching how to program, got an office job and automated everything I could.

2019 - Took four semesters of night classes to meet the math per-requisites for my local CS program.

2020 - Took a butt load of CS classes while working.

2021 - Finally convinced my company to let me help the software team (part-time).

July 2021 - Partner gets job out of state, apply for dev jobs in that city even though I hadn't finished my degree.

August 2021 - After a long interview process, accepted an offer for my very first software development job!

Books that really helped: The Players Guide to C# by RB Whitaker, Learn to Program by Chris Pine

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#78

Post by rayraegah »

Back in 1993, I took an interest in Wolf 3D a hot new program on DOS which my dad described as “video game”. It was my first time looking at a PC and a video game. I went down that rabbit hole, majored in computer science and started working as a contractor for the military designed and built games used for training soldiers. It went down hill form there, joined EA worked on a few mobile titles and then quit the gaming industry for good.

Restarted as a system engineer, worked on backend systems and databases, then infrastructure management, and then on frontend. Took a break from software development and tried my hand at design. Lead product design at 3 startups all acquired within 2-3 years.

Went back to software engineering, something was off tried engineering management and it still did feel right. Took a engineering role on the growth team of a early stage Chinese startup and hacked a short video app’s growth and put it on the map.

Decided that I love solving problems; and engineering and psychology were my strong points. Wanted to learn how to manage (very large) business and dabble a bit in finance. Now I’m a product manager for a very large business.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#79

Post by tmaly »

I started out as a kid in the early 80s doing BASIC coding on computers that had to be booted from 5.25" floppy drives. We made simple maze games.

When I was 11 I use to spend a lot of time in Radio Shack playing with electronics. When I was in high school I would program games on the TI calculators.

I think my experience in the early 80s was what stuck with me. I finished a degree in Computer Engineering, and I work in FinTech today. I still love learning new things and new programming languages.

Getting an early introduction to coding had such a big impact on my life. I decided to give back.

I have been volunteering to teach coding and robotics at my daughter's school. The students really enjoy enjoy learning about these topics.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become a software engineer?

#80

Post by danpetrov »

I have been studying programming since my early childhood years, because apparently I had decent logic skills and parents in the city would sign up kids for this private math and programming evening school.

Later though I originally picked to pursue an aerospace engineering degree and was working as a live dealer at a live casino company while studying, but the same company also had a large engineering department, and it was very tempting. So I went back to my roots, started out as a manual tester to get the foot in the door, and later slowly transitioned to automation QA and then to a backend developer. Now I switched universities and am doing a Bachelor's in Computer Science, mostly for fun and to fill in any knowledge gaps.

Really the new company didn't care about a degree, and I honestly learned way more from independent study and my work than I did at university so far. Blogs, conference talks and books are really what helped me a ton. While the new job is quite difficult, my colleagues are great, and we take very relaxing breaks and do lots of activities outside of work. Knowing that my work impacts millions of people around the world is quite inspiring.

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