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From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

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Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#91

Post by lovich »

genieyclo wrote: post #75
denisenepraunig wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about 10.000 lines of code in one function at a job interview. I did not accept that job offer and I am quite happy that I don't have to maintain this... This is a serious lack of craftsmanship! A little bit of Clean Code for every programmer please... But I am drifting a bit off topic now.

How is this possible...what language/framework/tool was this in or for?

I've found this pretty frequently at every corporate workplace I've come into. Pretty much every job I've had involved heavy refactoring of the code base for the first month or two. The worst I have ever seen was at my current where I discovered that for every new function the old dev added, he had copied and pasted the entire code from the previous function and then added his new stuff at the end. The last function was over 20k lines if I remember correctly.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#92

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

ScottBurson wrote: post #68
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it makes sense, go for the thing that will reasonably make you enough money to be comfortable and independent. It's funny though, for me an education in computing was the practical thing. I have a science degree too but I had next to no intention of being a professional scientist.

No, it really doesn't. Secretaries have been mostly replaced by computers already -- a trend likely to continue.

I as replying to why some parents attempt to curb aspirations in favor of practicality.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#93

Post by 49531 »

denisenepraunig wrote: post #74
49531 wrote: post #71

> There are also a lot of developer bootcamps: within 8–12 weeks you can become a developer. I think this is great if you want to become a developer within a small agency or working in house. Those „fast tracks“ mainly teach you how to code, but not other important stuff like software engineering, algorithms and data structures, patterns, databases, theoretical stuff about computers and so on which you would need in…

That sounds fascistic! Do you mentor them? Or are pair programming and code reviews part of your company culture? I can only state my perception about required qualifications I saw in job postings; big companies: university, small companies: skill A, B, C.

We have apprenticeships where they work under a senior engineer for 6 months, during that time they're moved around the engineering team in different capacities to help them soak it all in. It's a really fantastic program.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#94

Post by mablap »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #81

The thing that struck me is "anyone who is fascinated by computers and spends all their free time playing with them can be a developer." Back before developers were perceived as 'rich' and 'pampered' there were people who were fascinated by computers and spent all their time playing with them and were called 'nerds.' Then it became "cool" to be a developer or "you can get rich as a developer at a startup!" and then y…

    then you get people who don't care at all about computers
    and really never have, working as developers
You can say this about any profession though. Just look at the medical field. Some MDs have "true passion" but a lot have chosen this path because it pays well and comes with high status. At least that's what my personal experience suggests.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#96

Post by cosinetau »

kirse wrote: post #88
ChuckMcM wrote: post #81

The thing that struck me is "anyone who is fascinated by computers and spends all their free time playing with them can be a developer." Back before developers were perceived as 'rich' and 'pampered' there were people who were fascinated by computers and spent all their time playing with them and were called 'nerds.' Then it became "cool" to be a developer or "you can get rich as a developer at a startup!" and then y…

they are often just working a day job. I used to be snooty about this too until I had a member join one of my teams who is exactly this type of person... Treats it like a day job, and absolutely rips through well-defined coding tasks as long as I do the general solution-finding and lay the architectural groundwork ahead of time. They don't burn out either, because it's just work to them and they take regular vacation…

Solid lesson. Thank you for sharing this.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#97

Post by amorphid »

farhannyc wrote: post #84

I don't think you can be a developer in 8 - 12 weeks, as mentioned in this article. Software Development is a skill as much as anything else, and there is no time frame. All you can use to assure yourself is if you have practice, and the confidence in yourself by that practice. For some people that confidence comes after a year, maybe even two years. But then again, that confidence can even come in 2 months.

Sure you can, for a narrow range of things. There's value in getting someone to the point where they can grind away on different bits on a website, prototyping mobile features, diving into bugs, etc.

But in general I agree with you that there's a big jump from enthusiastic newb to experienced veteran. It took me a couple years to figure out all the stuff that came after knowing how to code.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#98

Post by lbotos »

jrm2k6 wrote: post #82
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money.

Could explain it. I think also easy access to information/tutorials/affordability for self-learning?

People have just as much access via youtube for cooking tutorials but people are _not_ flocking to be chefs. For the cost of a Macbook you can definitely get a pretty decent kitchen + laptop and also literally feed yourself delicious meals... it's the money that brings people to tech. Full stop. I always tell my friends that I got lucky that my passion also happened to pay well. Because if I wanted to be a chef, the road is much harder to make the same money.

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#99

Post by dismantlethesun »

stale2002 wrote: post #77
throwawasiudy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most, not all, but most of the good developers I've known learned to code when they were teens. CS skills have been discounted endlessly compared to other engineering professions solely because it doesn't cost anything to learn. Other forms of engineering cost a lot of money to learn beyond the knowledge required for the job. That doesn't mean software dev is any easier. And, it's great that CS has such a low barrier…

The unfortunate thing about what you are saying is that a CS bar exam, or certificate, wouldn't "prove" that you have any worthwhile skills. CS degrees are math degrees. They don't address the needs of the millions of Web Dev jobs out there. I am not a computer scientist. I am a web developer and proud. And any web developer accreditation program needs to address the needs of web development and NOT address the needs…

Understanding the computer science underpinnings are fairly useful. For instance, what if you are unhappy with the rendering speed of React? Rather than faff about complaining about it, you can just pull out your textbook, re-read that chapter on graph algorithms and you too can implement your own virtual DOM that calculates the least set of changes to apply to the directed graph that is the browser DOM.

That's how we end up with projects like Preact, Inferno, etc.

Now does that mean you need to read the latest papers, and be a proper computer scientist? Nope. I find that reading papers from the 70s and 80s will take you pretty far. Just rip and reapply to new circumstances.

I am a web developer.

A lot of code that I write is 'good', but its hardly clever or original---it's a simple reapplication of old practiced done 100 times in desktop GUI applications, now applied to the web.

I found that a lot of old-school GUI developers never really crossed over to the web, so a lot of that knowledge has been lost to the community at large. You can still find it in text books though :)

Re: From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way

#100

Post by jholman »

jrm2k6 wrote: post #83
throwawasiudy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most, not all, but most of the good developers I've known learned to code when they were teens. CS skills have been discounted endlessly compared to other engineering professions solely because it doesn't cost anything to learn. Other forms of engineering cost a lot of money to learn beyond the knowledge required for the job. That doesn't mean software dev is any easier. And, it's great that CS has such a low barrier…

Canada is actually the closest to having an "accreditation" for Computer Engineering if I remember correctly. I have never interviewed in Canada so I cannot tell if your school/degree matters that much, but not everybody can consider themselves software/computer engineer if they don't have the degree going with it. Once again, I don't know how this is in practice.

In Canada, representing yourself as an "Engineer" is like representing yourself as a "Doctor". There's a professional organization that gets to say who is and is not a member. That includes "software engineer" (it does not include train engineers, btw). There are, I think, a number of legal privileges and responsibilities that come with that. I dunno, I'm not an engineer.

This has almost nothing to do with "software engineering" in practice, except that in Canada we generally call the people who write software "developers" (or "coders" or "programmers"). If a given company calls their developers "engineers", it's code for "we're an American company (and we don't respect the law (until APEG sues us))".

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