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First programming job – a 4 month reflection

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Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#41

Post by nawitus »

baq wrote: post #13
ivom2gi wrote: post #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…

it's easier to just quit and look for a better job. it's the engineer's solution. what you suggest is a challenge to improve your soft skills. it's probably worth it but it's not for everyone.

I think a compromise is more constructive: fix as much as you can in a given period, and then find a better job. Apparently a 4 month programming stint doesn't lookt that good in a CV.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#42

Post by nawitus »

neverminder wrote: post #21

I've been there years ago where OP is now. I can tell him this: you've only scratched the surface. Just as there are very good programmers there are also very bad ones. Trying to make a bad programmer into a good one often ends up in a catch 22 - he would already be a good one if not for all the constants in equation that makes him a bad one. My advice number 1 is this: move on, find a team of solid professionals. Ad…

I recommend learning JavaScript for web (backend) development. In fact, the OP already knows it.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#43

Post by nawitus »

meowface wrote: post #22
matiasb wrote: post #7

"I've began wondering if all work environments are like this." Yep, it's pretty common (and sad).

Common among government agencies and universities, sure. Fortune 500 companies? Some, but not most. Tech companies? Not so much.

And from what I've heard, bad practices are more common in PHP shops.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#44

Post by neilk »

_RPM wrote: post #14

I forgot to add that my manager might be cosidered a "micro-manager", I've heard him tell other developers that they should change a single variable name. and re-commit. Another thing that I've noticed, and that has happened > 1 time is that I'll write something, spend like all day on it, then come to work the next day to have found out that the manager re-wrote it claiming "simplification" of the code, which is in f…

> I've heard him tell other developers that they should change a single variable name.

That is totally legit, if there is a naming convention in place on the project and the developer violated it. If it's just his personal caprice, then yeah it's dubious, but better an idiosyncratic dictator than no standards at all.

> then come to work the next day to have found out that the manager re-wrote it claiming "simplification" of the code, which is in fact not true

This is extremely common. You've already documented how this shop has no good procedures, so people waste a lot of their time rewriting stuff.

I hate jobs where I have to be someone else's extra hands. It's a sign of poor organization on every level.

That said - I hope as an open source programmer you've learned not to get attached to your code.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#45

Post by MisterBastahrd »

jotm wrote: post #4
csgavino1 wrote: post #2

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 :-).

I learned this the hard way. I am the sole developer at the company I work for. I write code for 10 different web products. One of them receives inventory feeds from a myriad of different content providers, and most of these companies (with teams of developers) don't really know the first thing about proper xml design. I wrote a basic framework to do the bulk of the work for consuming their data, but the decisions they made run the gamut from just plain laziness to utter incompetence. Still, I'm not paid to critique their decision making process. I get paid to write the code that makes their data work with our system.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#46

Post by fisherprice »

It is always easy to complain but you never know how all this evolved. Maybe the founder had hard times to find the first developer. Maybe the first developer could not do it better. Maybe this setup only attracted weaker developers and suddenly this mess was set in stone. Maybe the business model doesn't provide enough margin to justify a rewrite of large parts of the legacy code and so on.

And I could also easy complain about you: why did you choose this aged stack for your first programming job in 2014? This stack is still very popular and nothing bad but yeah, there must be some reasons why you chose this stack which I don't know.

But I won't complain.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#47

Post by eik3_de »

Type in 'ruby-lang.org' and get redirected to the https site where you find 'security' as a main menu entry. There you find known issues and ways to report vulns.

Try this on php.net.

[Edit: I tried to download the stable php release via https. Try to guess how that worked out]

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#48

Post by SchizoDuckie »

Welcome to the real world. Where code is not perfect, but somebody pays for a timeboxed piece of work and legacy code will exist.

You will not come into heaven straight from university and you will have to learn to work in environments like this.

Blame your study for not telling you about how the real world works. Don't blame legacy code because it's something that exist no matter how unicorny the world is.

Negotiating managers and project owners is even more important than just being able to write testable code.

So take your skills and apply them (iteratively) to your current job, or go work at a startup where everything is hip and trendy. But remember you're at the bottom of the ladder right now, and you're the one making things better for companies and yourself.

Also remember the golden rule:

No one wants to pay to refactor code that works into more beautiful code that works.

Re: First programming job – a 4 month reflection

#49

Post by gkya »

IvyMike wrote: post #12

> One file has 3000 lines of code, and is a huge switch() statement. Kids these days. I once worked on a system where the size of the switch statement broke the compiler. I believe the limit was 64k lines in a switch, although my memory is a little hazy. Of course you couldn't actually reasonably edit a single file with that much code, so it was split into several files, each of which was still thousands of lines lon…

No, that did not ever happen. I reject to believe. Oh my god, how frightening is this!
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