Work your ass off (...) So, in order to make the kind of
strides I made, expect to spend at least 10 hours a day,
six days a week dedicated to programming activities.
How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
81–90 of 183 posts
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#82I 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…
In my opinion, there's a certain set of core rules, you need to learn, after which it's relatively easy to transfer your knowledge between programming languages and domains. I'm fairly sure you can get this fundamental toolbox in any language.
Btw. I don't agree with the sentiment that it's somehow easier to learn web development than writing device drivers or other closer-to-the-metal stuff. On the contrary - web development is chaotic and complex. Low level stuff is much more straight forward. It might be less accessible, but I don't believe it to be fundamentally harder.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#83I should probably do a write-up about how a year later I still do not have a job doing development. Jeff touches on a few things I am pretty sure I would do differently. I think the most important thing is working on visible projects and seeing them through to completion, as opposed to acquiring more depth through study. Additionally, I would have went with Ruby instead of Python. Python jobs and internships seem to…
I'm debating whether to learn Python or Ruby. And the initial post as well as this one has me leaning towards Ruby despite all the good things that have been said about Python. Are there non CS majors out there that picked up Python as a first language and had doors opened for them?
I think every minute spent thinking about which one to pick is a minute you could have spent learning either of the languages, I think it really doesn't matter which. Once you master one the other one will be a lot easier to learn as they're so similar. Just flip a coin, pick one now! :)
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#84I'm interested. My wife currently tries to do exactly this. The article might be encouraging.
But I cannot read it due to a big yellow square overlapping the content, so.. useless link for me.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#85"Work hard, write a lot of code, be transparent and be enthusiastic."
Sums it up for many industries. Just replace code with something valuable in your profession.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#86I should probably do a write-up about how a year later I still do not have a job doing development. Jeff touches on a few things I am pretty sure I would do differently. I think the most important thing is working on visible projects and seeing them through to completion, as opposed to acquiring more depth through study. Additionally, I would have went with Ruby instead of Python. Python jobs and internships seem to…
I'm debating whether to learn Python or Ruby. And the initial post as well as this one has me leaning towards Ruby despite all the good things that have been said about Python. Are there non CS majors out there that picked up Python as a first language and had doors opened for them?
The two are about the same with regards to employment and educational purposes. If you happen to like one, go with it, otherwise you can just flip a coin and get to the real problems!
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#87I got some of these same bitter, angry, defensive responses when I posted my "how I became a developer" post a while back. I dunno what it is about programmers here but for some reason "programmer" is considered some sacred title you have to earn. Whatever.
Right on! The nerve of some programmers to think their profession is in the same league with the big boys that need college and university degrees! Who do they think they are, some kind of scientists or engineers?
It doesn't. It shouldn't. Our profession has progressed past that medieval method of instruction.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think that's true at all - every organization I've worked with has planned for a 1-2 month ramp-up program. Generally you start off doing trivial bugfixes until the codebase makes sense and move on from there. Hell, learning on the job extends past this phase and is essentially neverending.
You just need to have enough background to make it through the ramp-up phase and start teaching yourself. That holds true whether you went to college or are self-taught.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#89Great 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.
(Former ThoughtWorker) TW does have a very solid training program. Before the program ends, the trainees are often contributing bug fixes and features to production codebases, pairing quite a bit with experienced devs and so on (at least in the version in place when I used to work there).
TW is a great company to work for (if you are working on enterprise software, and you don't mind some agile/oo rah rah ism) but for someone with no experience, it is an absolute no brainer. Its training program is the most effective I've seen in my career.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#90I'm an unemployed programmer with 10 years of experience and I've been looking for a (part-time) job for less than six months. I keep telling myself it would be great if instead of looking for a job I could spend all that time just coding. I have plenty of ideas. I've avoided that because it feels like running away from my responsibilities, but this post makes me think again.
On the other hand the situation seems to be more difficult where I live (Geneva, Switzerland). I've always been so enthusiastic about programming that I want to encourage everyone to learn it, but today it sounds like bad career advice around here.