Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#51
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you please elaborate why? i plan to start learning to code and making a game would be one of the final milestones on the loose roadmap i've set for myself -- i get it's complex but would love to know why you advise against it.

Games are great for learning programming: one of the first programming projects I can actually remember doing was a Pong game written in BASIC when I was 19 or so. However, game companies have a reputation of being terrible to work for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Electronic_Arts#T...

ah ok i see, thanks for clarifying. thankfully i don't see myself working in that industry.

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#53
post #28
post #5

Whatever you do, don't get into gaming.

can you please elaborate why? i plan to start learning to code and making a game would be one of the final milestones on the loose roadmap i've set for myself -- i get it's complex but would love to know why you advise against it.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I have a bit of insight here. I've been happily employed in the games industry for the past 10 years and don't have any plans to leave it, but while I have absolutely recommended programming/software dev as a career field to people before, I would hesitate to _suggest_ the games industry to someone who wasn't already excited about it.

To your comment, making games is great and fun and I think it's great you want to do it. Working in the games industry is different from making your own games though.

For one - you pretty much will never have creative input on the game you're making as a programmer (unless you're on a really small team).

Probably the biggest reason to avoid the games industry is salary. Game developers make less than their peers in other areas of software development. Lots of people blame this on there being a huge supply of fresh grads to hire cheaply, but that explanation feels like a myopic/simplified view from people on the outside looking in to me. My opinions aside, the fact is that if I left my job today and got a job programming something that wasn't games, I'd almost certainly make more money. I'm paid well enough to live a very comfortable life, but if your goal is just to maximize how much money you make, game dev is a bad choice.

Next thing to point to is crunch. Game development is notorious for "crunch" (aka - long periods of 70-80 hour weeks). Some studios do this more than others. It always sucks. It's also a fact of life in games. Even teams that "don't crunch" will usually wind up doing something like it at some point. I honestly have no idea if other programming fields do this too, it's just a common criticism that I've seen levelled at games industry jobs.

Being a game developer also means that you're not working with the kinds of tech stacks that the larger software industry as a whole is using, which feels like it would make switching fields more difficult (not that I've tried). For example: I haven't had to build a real database since college, have written maybe two unit tests in my life and don't think I've ever worked anywhere that's used the C++ standard library, despite working in C++ for most of my career.

It's also super unstable. It feels like most game studios will close (or transition to not making games) within ~10 years of starting up. Layoffs and studio closures are also a really common occurrence. Every time a meeting gets randomly added to my calendar at the last minute, my first thought is that a layoff is going to be announced (even though this has literally never happened at my current job). This is less of a concern at large studios (although definitely still a thing), it's a huge deal if your dream is to work at indie studios though.

There are lots of great things about working in games, but the above wall of text are some of the reasons why I'd hesitate to encourage folks who aren't already interested in the field to choose game development as a career.

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#54

There is nothing special about software development in terms of a career. You learn it like you learn anything else. Some people have a natural aptitude, some people will never get it, most are in the middle: capable of becoming competent developers. I mean, 90% of development these days is knowing what parts to glue together and where to get the parts. You're converting business rules into code: for the most part, i…

Sometimes, if it’s a large and complex code base, the difficult part can be knowing where to glue parts together, and how it relates with the rest of the functionality. So even if one has the aptitude to learn programming well, both patience and some grit is good to have to make a good career of it.

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#55
post #32

There is nothing special about software development in terms of a career. You learn it like you learn anything else. Some people have a natural aptitude, some people will never get it, most are in the middle: capable of becoming competent developers. I mean, 90% of development these days is knowing what parts to glue together and where to get the parts. You're converting business rules into code: for the most part, i…

> it's really not that hard I think this is a myth that people who learned a long time ago and learned over a long time say. It is hard - there's a lot of complexity involved. It does a disservice to other software engineers.

I recently put my wife through a programming videogame (exapunks). She gas a mechanical engineering degree. She has great memory, but she said the hardest part was holding 2 nested loops in her brain to foresee the execution.

That's when I remembered that way back I had similar problems. It takes time to develop that skill and the average person will struggle with that

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#56
I'd probably ask the same thing I do of everyone who asks for career advice: "What kind of problems do you want to work on?" Similarly, I'd ask: "Imagine you are getting ready to retire... What do you hope to have achieved? What does your CV look like at that point?" IE: begin with the endgame in mind.

This might get them to reflect on whether software is where they want to spend their energy and time. If so, then great, figure out how to get them pointed in the right direction. But, if they realize they are mostly interested in software because they've heard stories about sweet money and fame, maybe it isn't the best choice for them.

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#57
IMHO you can't really be a software developer without knowing and understanding computer science. Some try but never move beyond web/front-end stuff, which is fine, we need people like that. It is however only a small subset of actual development.

Like any field based on science, you can't really drop yourself into it and expect to do well. You need an education in said science.

Obviously there is the self-taught crowd, who are a special breed who love life-long learning. This takes time.

My recommendation would be to show anyone with an interest in software development the Python REPL. Using REPLs gives a good taste of the concepts of programming without all the foreign concepts of IDEs, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#58
In the "old days" there was a dividing line we noticed in class. If the student could understand pointers they would succeed, if not they wouldn't. It was quite accurate for the time.

Today things are higher level so I think there is room for a wider range of folks. One group are folks that are great at spreadsheets and the like. Gamers or someone who is interested in tinkering with javascript. Perhaps they have a technical career that requires attention to detail.... a tax lawyer, medical billing, accountant? Music? Ok. Otherwise it will be tough.

My first thought is to sit them in front of the PBS Computer Science Crash course series. (Can be found on Youtube but need NewPipe or PBS app to watch commercial free. Watch at .8x speed or slower, because I feel they speed it up to appeal to hyper teens.)

If they can get through to the last episode before giving up, I think they deserve a shot and encouragement.

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#59
post #3

I tell those friends - it's not for everyone, you sit for hours in front of a computer not socializing - it can be a very rewarding career, there are many tracks one can go down - it requires a mindset that learning never ends, many people have stopped learning, so restarting that process is difficult - that switching careers typically takes full time effort to be successful. - to checkout the Grasshopper app to get…

1. My number one suggestion - have intellectual curiosity to the point of obsession. You can succeed without this quality, but you won't be as forward looking and will be doing what is required by the task at hand. 2. Heathcare has been secretly booming for the last 10 years without very much attention at all. The convergence of regulation and technology leaves a _huge_ opening for innovation right now. Specifically,…

> this year the patient will own their data and…

Anyone have a link?

Re: Ask HN: What do you say to someone who wants to get into software development?

#60
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's really not that hard I think this is a myth that people who learned a long time ago and learned over a long time say. It is hard - there's a lot of complexity involved. It does a disservice to other software engineers.

I recently put my wife through a programming videogame (exapunks). She gas a mechanical engineering degree. She has great memory, but she said the hardest part was holding 2 nested loops in her brain to foresee the execution. That's when I remembered that way back I had similar problems. It takes time to develop that skill and the average person will struggle with that

That's a great game. I feel like my skills improved a bit playing it.
Post reply on HN