Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

learnwithjeff.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 183 posts

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#41

Post by ktsmith »

alanning wrote: post #22
InfinityX0 wrote: post #2

Great to see that. There's plenty of "you should learn how to code" posts, Codecademy, Treehouse etc, but there are very few case studies of people who seemingly A) used these tools and/or B) actually ended up being able to wing it learning to code mid-to-late-stage in their career. Not sure if this post really qualifies as either of those, as well. If there's more examples of this that I'm missing, please let me kno…

Not really a case study but my sister went from never having coded, middle-school math teacher to junior consultant at ThoughtWorks in 5 months via DevBootCamp. TW may be a bit unusual though in that they are willing to train you for a year before actually making money on you.

Our industry needs a lot more of this. Many industries expect that new hires are in apprenticeship mode and will be learning on the job. In our industry people are expected to walk in and know exactly what and how to do things.

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#42

Post by zalew »

Domenic_S wrote: post #37
duked wrote: post #10

I don't mean to be a mood killer but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Ruby/Python/Perl are awesome language for beginner because it abstract so much that they think they know how to code after a day, and when they have to learn a new language like C they are completely lost and produce spaghetti code. That might be ok for web development where you can hack here and there (with JS/CSS/HTML) but I really chal…

Right, because you never see bad code in java applications... StringReflectionFactoryInterfaceBean() If you follow a couple of the OP's points (read a ton, write a ton, talk with people more experienced than you) you can write in basically any language for almost any application. Read/Do/Talk, isn't that basically what school is, anyway?

contrary to self-learning, school discourages taking shortcuts.

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#43

Post by nhangen »

meritt wrote: post #20

While I absolutely applaud the effort and tenacity of this individual, at the same time, I feel a substantial amount of trepidation regarding the current state of the tech / start-up industry. Virtually every hot new startup I see on blogs, it just takes a few minutes of basic penetration testing to find gaping security holes. Everything from simple XSS or CSRF to blatant leaking of sensitive user data. Obviously he…

How do you propose people learn those skills?

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#44

Post by wtracy »

duked wrote: post #19
jeffreybaird wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally want to learn C, but I wouldn't even have thought to try if I hadn't tried ruby first. I got my first look at C digging through the Ruby source code, trying to figure out how it implemented Array.sort. Ruby opened me up to the world of programming and I look forward to exploring the rest!

If you're looking at how ruby implemented Array.sort you are definitely on the right track ! I'm not sure that's how all people who started with Ruby/Python are evolving but that's good. However I'm not too comfortable trying to lure people to believe that you can write a web client in 2 lines :/ PS: Got downvoted for making a usefull comment ? Seriously guys you can't give a different opinion than the crowd...

I upvoted you. :-)

OT: Up until maybe two months ago, the moderation on my posts might not have always been what I wanted, but it at least consistently made sense. Since then, moderation has gotten increasingly erratic. Yay Eternal September?

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#46

Post by mquander »

meritt wrote: post #20

While I absolutely applaud the effort and tenacity of this individual, at the same time, I feel a substantial amount of trepidation regarding the current state of the tech / start-up industry. Virtually every hot new startup I see on blogs, it just takes a few minutes of basic penetration testing to find gaping security holes. Everything from simple XSS or CSRF to blatant leaking of sensitive user data. Obviously he…

Although I really sympathize with your frustration at the amount of crappy software being written, the alternative is the same software not existing at all; there aren't nearly enough programmers to write everything we need.

In most cases, I would prefer crappy, insecure software to nothing, so I'm all in favor of newbie programmers trying their hand at filling the holes in our world. (Also, newbie programmers working now increases the expected amount of skilled programmers fifteen or twenty years from now.)

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#47

Post by psylence519 »

duked wrote: post #10

I don't mean to be a mood killer but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Ruby/Python/Perl are awesome language for beginner because it abstract so much that they think they know how to code after a day, and when they have to learn a new language like C they are completely lost and produce spaghetti code. That might be ok for web development where you can hack here and there (with JS/CSS/HTML) but I really chal…

Why must all software developers be able to operate in all domains? What other industry has a requirement such as this?

There's more than enough work out there, why must a web dev know or care how to twiddle bits, or vice versa?

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#48

Post by meritt »

mquander wrote: post #46
meritt wrote: post #20

While I absolutely applaud the effort and tenacity of this individual, at the same time, I feel a substantial amount of trepidation regarding the current state of the tech / start-up industry. Virtually every hot new startup I see on blogs, it just takes a few minutes of basic penetration testing to find gaping security holes. Everything from simple XSS or CSRF to blatant leaking of sensitive user data. Obviously he…

Although I really sympathize with your frustration at the amount of crappy software being written, the alternative is the same software not existing at all; there aren't nearly enough programmers to write everything we need. In most cases, I would prefer crappy, insecure software to nothing, so I'm all in favor of newbie programmers trying their hand at filling the holes in our world. (Also, newbie programmers workin…

Oh I agree with you. I'm extremely ambivalent on the situation.

Except for the abundance of "Share thoughts/messages/pictures/music with your significant other/close friends/social network/professional network/the world on our exclusive app!". We have enough of that software.

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#49

Post by lachyg »

aik wrote: post #32
jmtame wrote: post #17

The problem with self-learning is one of discipline and motivation. I started a learn-to-code startup and iterated 7 times (now profitable). It's nearly impossible to keep someone engaged without having a human involved. When I think back to how I learned to program, it wasn't alone. I surrounded myself with CS students. And I had a lot of intrinsic motivation before I started. Join a program like Dev Bootcamp. You'l…

Have you been through Dev Bootcamp? Did you find it immensely useful? Did it help with getting hired? I ask because it has quite a large upfront cost... perfectly reasonable if it really is that great.

Disclaimer: I advise Dev Bootcamp.

Here are three student reflections on Dev Bootcamp:

- http://douglascalhoun.tumblr.com/post/26059106238/beautiful-...

- http://newbietoruby.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/devbootcamp-ref...

- http://mehulkar.tumblr.com/post/18897643140/devbootcamp-test...

And here is a Quora thread with a lot of relevant responses: http://www.quora.com/Ruby-on-Rails/Should-I-quit-my-job-and-....

Please feel free to ask any other questions!

Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months

#50

Post by wtracy »

nhangen wrote: post #43
meritt wrote: post #20

While I absolutely applaud the effort and tenacity of this individual, at the same time, I feel a substantial amount of trepidation regarding the current state of the tech / start-up industry. Virtually every hot new startup I see on blogs, it just takes a few minutes of basic penetration testing to find gaping security holes. Everything from simple XSS or CSRF to blatant leaking of sensitive user data. Obviously he…

How do you propose people learn those skills?

The OWASP Top Ten Application Security Risks is a good starting place: http://owasptop10.googlecode.com/files/OWASP%20Top%2010%20-%...
Post reply on HN