About career, is low level programming job market that small we see in this threads comments ? I want to be C/C++/Rust programmer. This is quite frightening.
Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
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Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#22As someone who can code in C/C++ and was recently looking for work, I don't think someone should learn low level programming for a career. What I would consider simple PHP jobs were easily paying more than C++ jobs. If you look at everyone reinventing the wheel in electron and not caring about performance I don't think the situation is going to get better anytime soon.
Can I ask where you live? Maybe this was just the spot market at the time you were looking? That seems odd.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#23As someone who can code in C/C++ and was recently looking for work, I don't think someone should learn low level programming for a career. What I would consider simple PHP jobs were easily paying more than C++ jobs. If you look at everyone reinventing the wheel in electron and not caring about performance I don't think the situation is going to get better anytime soon.
Please don't spread generalizations like these. I'm sorry about the job situation in your area but I live in a Canadian metropolis where 1) there's no shortage of low-level work and 2) they will pay much more than your average PHP consulting shop. In fact, I maxed out very early what someone can hope to earn at my level of experience.
My point is that your job market is not representative of the whole world and you're acting as if it were.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#24This is great, but does any one have any gentler intros ? I'm trying to teach low-level programming to one of my junior devs. She graduated from a boot-camp school and is struggling a bit. EDIT: Thanks for the replies. Alot of good links.
Maybe one of the beginner friendly microcontrollers would be an easier intro?
Like an arduino kit (https://www.arduino.cc/) or ARM mbed (http://mbed.com/).
Either one is fairly low-level (C, or C like), but has plenty of beginner-friendly documentation. And if they progress beyond that, moving down to assembler is supported for both.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#25CS:APP 3rd version you can buy on Abe Books the global edition for $20, then follow this course and watch 'old videos' https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~213/schedule.html Everything in this style guide is covered in CS:APP https://matt.sh/howto-c There's also http://rust-class.org/ and https://www.nostarch.com/Rust
Wow, what great links! Thanks. Also I had no idea No Starch had a Rust book.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#26Low level programmer here. This is great but the job market for low level programmers is very small. Recently, while interviewing, I described a thread safe, concurrent queue implementation to a hiring manager and he asked me -- "so how does this relate to big data and ML"?
Yeah, unfortunately there are people behind the scenes pumping out a whole lot of BS and aggressively manipulating the dev ecosystem with VC dollars. You have to wonder what percentage of devs are jumping on these trains out of naivete and what percentage are jumping on out of cynicism, as both are good explanations. The explanation that rarely applies is "this is the best way to solve our problem". None of us should…
>"Yeah, unfortunately there are people behind the scenes pumping out a whole lot of BS and aggressively manipulating the dev ecosystem with VC dollars"
Can you elaborate on this? This intrigued me but I didn't follow your arguments after. Can you give a concrete or specific example?
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#27I want to create a new operating system even though we don't need one right now. So this looks very attractive to me. Thanks for posting.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#28This is great, but does any one have any gentler intros ? I'm trying to teach low-level programming to one of my junior devs. She graduated from a boot-camp school and is struggling a bit. EDIT: Thanks for the replies. Alot of good links.
Not sure if it exactly matches what you are looking for, but mentioning a few anyway, in case they are of help:
- For concepts as well as execution, from the bottom up (hardware level etc.), I've read that nand2tetris is good. It gets mentioned once in a while here on HN. Check hn.algolia.com for threads about it.
- any good book on assembly language programming. I've looked at Randall Hyde's book earlier, seemed good. There is also another which I think is good, by an American professor called Paul Carter, IIRC.
Googling should find all of those and more.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#29As someone who can code in C/C++ and was recently looking for work, I don't think someone should learn low level programming for a career. What I would consider simple PHP jobs were easily paying more than C++ jobs. If you look at everyone reinventing the wheel in electron and not caring about performance I don't think the situation is going to get better anytime soon.
You're taking a very specific case and generalizing it like crazy. The CS industry isn't all Electron apps and simple jobs.
The most obvious example would be the video game industry were you're not straying very far from C++ anytime soon. Performance, speed and native compatibility are a big deal there.
There's definitely a valid career path there.
Re: Low-Level Programming University – A roadmap to becoming a low-level programmer
#30Low level programmer here. This is great but the job market for low level programmers is very small. Recently, while interviewing, I described a thread safe, concurrent queue implementation to a hiring manager and he asked me -- "so how does this relate to big data and ML"?
I struggle to find good low-level devs. It is surprisingly hard to find good C / kernel / network programmers.
Just out of curiosity, what would it take for you to conclude you had found a good c/kernel/network programmer?