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First programming job – a 4 month reflection

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Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#4

I've worked at a total of 3 companies over the course of 5 years. 2 of those 3 companies I've worked for have no coding standards at all, which is surprising because the company is able to make money despite the quality of code.

Why does that come as a surprise to most people? Businesses don't care how their code looks - if it works, it's good enough.

Which is also why changes are discouraged - no need to mess with something that works unless absolutely necessary.

Not the best policy, but if it works - it works :-).

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#5
The minute you stop thinking about "they" and start thinking about "us", there is a chance. If you just walk around thinking and knowing things are sour but are not going to do anything about it - guess what. Nothing is going to change. But if you take the lead, sell your ideas, execute upon the change, you will see daylight one day.

Most engineers never exit the "whining" phase though. But those who do, make a truly good mate to work with.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#8
The place I just finished working at employed people to manually run regression tests on HTML forms... I implemented an automated system using selenium and Jenkins which ended up mostly working. I say "mostly" because Selenium itself is kind of flaky (I had a read, and wasn't impressed) and there's a lot of crazy stuff going on with the web drivers. Next time I think I'll use Phantom JS.

I feel it, OP.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#9
post #4

I've worked at a total of 3 companies over the course of 5 years. 2 of those 3 companies I've worked for have no coding standards at all, which is surprising because the company is able to make money despite the quality of code.

Why does that come as a surprise to most people? Businesses don't care how their code looks - if it works, it's good enough. Which is also why changes are discouraged - no need to mess with something that works unless absolutely necessary. Not the best policy, but if it works - it works :-).

Again performance and security improvements come in at later stage when the business wants the systems to be more cost-effective and performant.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#10
If you want to be/work with engineers and build something real/hard, I would start looking for your next job. Even without professional experience, don't settle, find a place where the standards are up to yours.

(We're looking for engineers at my company if you're interested..)

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