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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

#41

Post by denisenepraunig »

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 heard about 10.000 lines of code in one function at a job interview. I did not accept that job offer and I am quite happy that I don't have to maintain this... This is a serious lack of craftsmanship! A little bit of Clean Code for every programmer please... But I am drifting a bit off topic now.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#42

Post by denisenepraunig »

xb95 wrote: post #37

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...

Hello other Delphi person !! Such a pity that we had the same sad Delphi fate...

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#43

Post by fencepost »

My mother worked with someone well above this woman's age who went from basically the department admin (admittedly, in IT with a programming group) to what was apparently a pretty solid Lotus Notes admin, though she did a bit of job hopping in the process before ending back at the same company where she'd started.

Many administrative jobs probably offer a variety of paths that could lead to this. The person working can be someone who does the job as presented to them, or they can be the person who finds out what's needed and figures out the way to do it, learning along the way. An awful lot of programs are written because someone with the skills wants to automate something they find boring.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#44

Post by jakobegger »

ohgh1ieD wrote: post #33
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.

That's only true for the first year, and only if you fail badly (ie. stop doing any work at all) -- unless they changed it very recently.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#45

Post by henrikschroder »

Apocryphon wrote: post #9
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…

Sounds like along with Germans, Austrians have the right idea of pushing alternatives to four-year colleges.

When I went to "high school" in Sweden in the 90's, you could choose between a few theoretical, three-year, "college-prep" programmes, or a multitude of vocational programmes that would pretty much land you a job straight out.

But in the 2000's sometime, our glorious politicians decided that it was "unfair" that students who chose the vocational programmes couldn't go straight to university, so they were all changed, a lot more theoretical subjects were added, such that everyone would be eligible for college.

Naturally, a complete disaster, because the kids who previously chose vocational programmes because they were really tired of school and wanted to do something else, didn't do well in the new programmes and started flunking out en-masse instead.

I hear there's talk of going back to the old model again, but that's a decade or two "lost", because of political short-sightedness.

Yes, it's better to get your population college-educated than not, but you can't force people to do it. If people want to quit studying after elementary or high-school, let them! And if they want to go back to school after a few years, take them in again!

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#46

Post by denisenepraunig »

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.

And guess who always had to fix my parent's computer in the end... Finally my interest in computers was useful xD ;-) they are very proud of my career now and are a bit of envious when I can travel the world for some SAP events :D

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#48

Post by eduren »

denisenepraunig wrote: post #46
eduren wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And guess who always had to fix my parent's computer in the end... Finally my interest in computers was useful xD ;-) they are very proud of my career now and are a bit of envious when I can travel the world for some SAP events :D

I'm glad it worked out! The article was a good read.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#49

Post by ohgh1ieD »

jakobegger wrote: post #44
ohgh1ieD wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

That's only true for the first year, and only if you fail badly (ie. stop doing any work at all) -- unless they changed it very recently.

> Daraus ergeben sich auch die zwei wesentlichen Anspruchsvoraussetzungen, die „soziale Förderungswürdigkeit“ und das Vorliegen eines „günstigen Studienerfolges“.

That's from their page, for me this looks like you have to pay it back if you, for example got bad grades, in fact I can ensure you, that the limit is 50%, if you screw up in more than 50% of your courses, you are done.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#50

Post by me2i81 »

bragh wrote: post #34
eduren wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An instructor told me around 1977 that there was not going to be much need for programmers in the future, because every piece of software that was needed had already been written.
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