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From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

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Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#31

Post by denisenepraunig »

acemarke wrote: post #24
denisenepraunig wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is not my first language, sorry for the grammar mistakes, I tried my best :-) I asked a native speaker friend to help me to fix it ASAP. I will pay more attention to this in the feature! Thx!

Hey, don't worry about it too much. Probably a few bits of grammar or phrasing that could be tweaked, but it's perfectly readable as-is. I spent four years teaching English in China, so I've got a pretty good feel for the various levels of English fluency in non-native speakers - you're doing fine, trust me :) Really, about the only thing that tripped me up reading that was the German quotation marks, and that's just…

Thank you for your encouragement acemarke :)

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#32

Post by denisenepraunig »

Mz wrote: post #22
denisenepraunig wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is not my first language, sorry for the grammar mistakes, I tried my best :-) I asked a native speaker friend to help me to fix it ASAP. I will pay more attention to this in the feature! Thx!

In the future, you can run it through an online grammar checker, like Paper Rater or Grammarly. It will not catch everything, but it will help.

Thanks for the hint!

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#33

Post by ohgh1ieD »

jakobegger wrote: post #5

A bit of background: in Austria, many people do an "Apprenticeship" ("Lehre") instead of going to high school. You work at a company and visit a vocational school (about 20% of time). This is great for practical people -- less theory, more real world experience. But there is a major downside: If you didn't go to high school, you are not allowed to go to university without first completing preparatory courses that can…

> (you don't have to pay this back, and there also is no tuition)

You have to pay it back, if you fail in your courses.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#34

Post by bragh »

eduren wrote: post #20
hillz wrote: post #4

It's kind of a bummer that she knew she wanted to work with computers the whole time but her parents thought it would be more responsible to be a secretary. Glad she got there.

Yeah, I don't understand parents trying to curb aspirations in favor of practicality. I can understand if she wanted to do something that was ambitious + risky, but it's just computers. There's been nothing risky about getting an education in computers for 25 years now.

It might be some kind of weird older generation disdain for computers. Graduated high school in 2005 in Estonia, some of my language teachers and relatives pretty much looked down on anything computer-related and saw it as only 'playing around with widgets'. Of course, come 2009, that attitude had changed a lot after seeing that the IT-sector was the only one still hiring.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#35

Post by praptak »

lacampbell wrote: post #29
mi100hael wrote: post #2

Another good example of someone learning to program on their own because they wanted to and then leveraging that experience to get a job doing it professionally. The big secret to learning to program is that there is no big secret. It's basically a glorified trade job and everyone already has the tools in front of them.

It's basically a glorified trade job and everyone already has the tools in front of them. That attitude certainly explains a fair few 'legacy' systems I've seen.

I wish it was a trade job. What I see in crappy systems is lack of tradesmanship.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#36

Post by denisenepraunig »

muninn_ wrote: post #27
shnauzer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's from Austria, so English is not her first language. Guess a mistake or two in regards to grammar is the price you pay for broadening your horizon ;)

So quick to feel offended. I had nothing negative to say about her or her story, just that the story was hard for me to read. It's always nice when somebody writes in a language that isn't their native language, but that doesn't make it any less difficult for myself or others to read. Over the last few years I've come to realize that a native-born European speaking English isn't quite the accomplishment it once was.…

I totally get your point! It is also hard for me to read articles by Non-German people. In our SAP community network (SCN) we all share what we know in English, most of them are not English native speakers. I can't tell the difference what is right or wrong. I will try to get native speaker help for Medium and learn a thing or two along the way ;-) Thanks!

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#37

Post by xb95 »

Another Delphi person!! Yay! I spent so much of my life writing Delphi code. As a teenager. Basically from 12-18 I wrote Delphi/Pascal. Hundreds of stupid little Windows apps (and some stupid big ones).

I ran into the same sort of thing you did re: Delphi jobs. I was pretty sad, honestly, having started in the original Delphi days (version 1!) and going to 6 I had gotten pretty good at it...

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#38

Post by nickpsecurity »

denisenepraunig wrote: post #30
nickpsecurity wrote: post #18

That was a great read. Held back by parent's preferences into a secretary position, starts experimenting for fun/laziness (many great works started that way), keeps improving, fight the fight in college, and now at SAP working with serious tech. Congratulations on making it to finish line, Denise! So, you've worked from Excel to GUI's to databases to web stuff. You plan on trying a new paradigm of programming or what…

Thank you very much for your kind words nick! A bit of bragging, I am also quite proud to have a black belt in karate (Shotokan, 1st Dan). Currently I am doing native development (iOS with Swift) at work and I really love it! As a JavaScript developer Swift feels very familiar (and you don't suffer from the current JavaScript fatigue ;-)

Cool on the Black belt. I did Shotakan, too. I stopped just before Brown since I discovered Bruce Lee's teachings along with Ninjutsu & military styles. Pivoted into those to learn different things. I keep recommending martial arts to people in general sense the mental agility, toughnes, & determination pays off in other areas.

Including I think in programming when trying to solve problems or especially debugging failures that lead others' libraries you just had to use.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#39

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

eduren wrote: post #20
hillz wrote: post #4

It's kind of a bummer that she knew she wanted to work with computers the whole time but her parents thought it would be more responsible to be a secretary. Glad she got there.

Yeah, I don't understand parents trying to curb aspirations in favor of practicality. I can understand if she wanted to do something that was ambitious + risky, but it's just computers. There's been nothing risky about getting an education in computers for 25 years now.

No, it makes sense, go for the thing that will reasonably make you enough money to be comfortable and independent.

It's funny though, for me an education in computing was the practical thing. I have a science degree too but I had next to no intention of being a professional scientist.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#40

Post by greggyb »

jakobegger wrote: post #5

A bit of background: in Austria, many people do an "Apprenticeship" ("Lehre") instead of going to high school. You work at a company and visit a vocational school (about 20% of time). This is great for practical people -- less theory, more real world experience. But there is a major downside: If you didn't go to high school, you are not allowed to go to university without first completing preparatory courses that can…

> (you don't have to pay this back, and there also is no tuition)

You likely pay taxes....

No qualitative judgment here, except against a view that conflates "no explicit costs" with "no costs".

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