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Glorious wrote:

JBI wrote:

He's better than many devs with 4 (or more!) year degrees, but the lack of academic credentials came really close to sinking his chances.

The best programmer I've ever known *might* have an associate degree. In any event, his resume doesn't list it.

He just started doing it in high school and was so ridiculously good at it that he walked right into a job.

Redocbew wrote:

I don't think I've ever met another developer who isn't self taught by some amount, and once you're on the job being able to teach yourself new languages and platforms usually becomes a requirement in its self.

Redocbew wrote:

I don't think I've ever met another developer who isn't self taught by some amount, and once you're on the job being able to teach yourself new languages and platforms usually becomes a requirement in its self.

just brew it! wrote:

I realize that if you're still in school (or a recent grad) you may not have a job history, but we at least want to see something. Languages you know, projects you've completed as part of your coursework, anything you've done on the side, that kind of thing.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Redocbew wrote:

I don't think I've ever met another developer who isn't self taught by some amount, and once you're on the job being able to teach yourself new languages and platforms usually becomes a requirement in its self.

And that goes back to points made by numerous people in numerous threads over the last few months. You have to want to do it, you have to want to work through the hard parts, you have to have a goal in mind, you have to make progress towards that goal, and most importantly you just have to actually do it and see it through to completion. Real developers ship products. Until then it's just another whm circle jerk thread.

Redocbew wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

I realize that if you're still in school (or a recent grad) you may not have a job history, but we at least want to see something. Languages you know, projects you've completed as part of your coursework, anything you've done on the side, that kind of thing.

Some of the best advice I ever got while in school was to save all my senior level projects. Use that as your base of work, and even if it's not written in the same language as you'll be using at the job at least it's better than walking in cold off the street. Some people are perfectly competent as developers, but don't really have the gift of gab so to speak and probably won't fare so well if that's all they have to go on.

whm1974 wrote:

If I wasn't serious about this, I wouldn't have applied for Financial Aid yesterday morning now would I?

toastie wrote:

I'm pretty sure that in 10 years, most support jobs will be replaced by AI systems of some sort anyway.

Captain Ned wrote:

toastie wrote:

I'm pretty sure that in 10 years, most support jobs will be replaced by AI systems of some sort anyway.

Even finding a meat-ware help desk jockey that can pass the Turing test is rare these days.

whm1974 wrote:

If I wasn't serious about this, I wouldn't have applied for Financial Aid yesterday morning now would I?

whm1974 wrote:

I figured if nothing else, I'll learn one or two languages and get really good at them, and then I'll learn other languages later.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Captain Ned wrote:

toastie wrote:

I'm pretty sure that in 10 years, most support jobs will be replaced by AI systems of some sort anyway.

Even finding a meat-ware help desk jockey that can pass the Turing test is rare these days.

They don't pay enough to attract intelligent people in the US (not at entry level, anyway), because there's too much competition from overseas. So it doesn't matter where they're hired, there's a barrier to working with all of them.

toastie wrote:

I started my career in Tech Support, and spent the first half trying to get out. My overall suggestion is not to start there if you can go straight into development. So, study development in school. It is easier to go from Dev to Support than the other way around. You'll learn a lot in school that you may not pick up later, and there are some things that you just won't learn 'on the job'. In particular, if you really want to learn computer engineering or something along academic lines, that's not something you'll necessarily pick up in a job.

As for the pay, Development is a lot better than Tech Support, and I'm pretty sure that in 10 years, most support jobs will be replaced by AI systems of some sort anyway.

DancinJack wrote:

Waco wrote:

SQL is a fun (and not simple at all) dive into efficient queries. I'm a bit out of touch - do dev degrees include assembly, C, or anything low-level these days? I'm always short on developers that actually understand how hardware works.

Another anecdote for your consideration...

During my CS work (starting in 2004 and finishing in 2009), and even to this day (I just looked at the courses required to grad with CS at my school - a public, state Uni), we were required to take multiple low-level focused courses.

Embedded Systems that included C and Assembly.
Digital Logic Design while not exactly what we're talking about, and VHDL.
Computer Architecture which included multiple low-level topics and languages.
Programming Languages which is kind of an audit of a lot of stuff just trying to give you a good basis of things you hadn't learned through your previous two or three years in the program.
Compiler Construction was usually C or PASCAL.
Introduction to Operating Systems which mostly covered Linux and all its underlying craziness.

There are quite a few more electives that you could take to beef up on more low-level stuff, but these are the ones that were required to graduate in CS at my school. IMO a pretty decent foundation of low-level stuff to have when you're only 22-25 or however old when you graduate.

Edit: FWIW, I do want to emphasize that my CS program was in the Engineering school at my Uni. There are A LOT of CS programs in the Math/Liberal Arts schools at a lot of universities. There is a big, big difference in the underlying courses required to really get into the nitty gritty depending on which school you're in, and I think that's a big part of why the cirriculum is halfway decent at my school.

just brew it! wrote:

Don't get stuck in the mindset that you're limited to what is being taught in the curriculum at your school. Taking formal classes is just one piece of the puzzle.

There's an amazing amount of cheap hardware available these days if you want to tinker at that level (jeez, a Raspberry Pi Zero is just $5!), free software (the development tools and libraries available in a typical Linux distro's repository would've cost thousands of dollars back in the day), and reams of free information available on the internet. If you're motivated to learn this stuff the resources are there.

whm1974 wrote:

Software Development(010C)

I really want to get into programming...

Waco wrote:

I'm a bit out of touch - do dev degrees include assembly, C, or anything low-level these days?

just brew it! wrote:

Don't get stuck in the mindset that you're limited to what is being taught in the curriculum at your school. Taking formal classes is just one piece of the puzzle.

free software (the development tools and libraries available in a typical Linux distro's repository would've cost thousands of dollars back in the day), and reams of free information available on the internet.

whm1974 wrote:

OK some of the impressions I'm getting from this thread is that a lot of schools don't teach C and Assembly or at least they not are required courses to take. I'm under the impression that an understanding of both makes for better developers. I'm also of the thought that knowing both C and C++ will allow one to write for any platform.

I feel that knowing both C and C++ will help my career since my longer term goal is game development.

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:

You have to understand the point isn't to teach you tools (C, C++, Python, etc.), but to teach you the concepts. Really, the language isn't important.

whm1974 wrote:

I just installed Mono and Mono Basic in Manjaro.

How well can I write cross platform applications with C# and Visual Basic for both Windows and Linux?

Waco wrote:

If you don't mind me asking, what school was this? It's rare to find CS programs within the Engineering schools. Clemson used to do this although I feel the focus is much more on the "trendy" languages these days without a whole lot of "what is the computer actually doing" type of thought. I find that anyone with a Computer Engineering degree tends to have the skill set I'm looking for, but any CS majors from schools that have curriculum like this are interesting.

Thanks for the anecdote!

Waco wrote:

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:

You have to understand the point isn't to teach you tools (C, C++, Python, etc.), but to teach you the concepts. Really, the language isn't important.

I would agree, except that many concepts aren't taught at all if you're using high-level languages. Sure, assembly isn't super useful, but the mindset that comes from learning it is. Memory management is foreign to most programmers - especially when it comes to actually optimizing code to be efficient.

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:

I'm not disagreeing with you. Knowing the low level stuff is enlightening, but that's super far down the road at this point. To use a painting analogy. whm1974 is at finger painting level right now. After years of intense study, whm1974 could possibly copy a Rembrandt, but that's going to take a while to get to there.

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

I just installed Mono and Mono Basic in Manjaro.

.NET Core is available on Linux, so that can be used instead of Mono.

How well can I write cross platform applications with C# and Visual Basic for both Windows and Linux?

That's something I've been asking myself lately about C# now that .NET Core is available on Linux. It's an interesting enough question that I seriously pondering spending sometime learning C# to explore this. It also helps that my area is C# heavy while I'm Linux heavy, and converting C# apps to Linux is an intriguing business opportunity.

just brew it! wrote:

There's been a free version of Visual Studio for quite a few years.

whm1974 wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

There's been a free version of Visual Studio for quite a few years.

Until now, I didn't know this.