Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all! We have been experiencing an issue on site where threads have been missing the latest postings. The platform host Vanilla are working on this issue. A workaround that has been used by some is to navigate back from 1 to 10+ pages to re-sync the thread and this will then show the latest posts. Thanks, Mike.
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
What skills to improve to get into software development?
-
26-06-2009 4:50pm#1
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
Jayzus college didn't prepare me for sh*t
What kind of retarded course leaves out this stuff if it's industry standard ?! I learned nothing about SQL/databases, servers, or any of that. Learned very basic web design (html, css, javascript).
Essentially all I learned from college was java and C++
Ridiculous0 -
-
Jayzus college didn't prepare me for sh*t What kind of retarded course leaves out this stuff if it's industry standard ?! I learned nothing about SQL/databases, servers, or any of that. Learned very basic web design (html, css, javascript).
Essentially all I learned from college was java and C++
Ridiculous
A lot of courses tbh.0 -
-
True when all is said and done, a good programmer shouldn't be fazed learning something new, especially if this is going to be a career. Some exposure to the techs listed above will be an advantage, but there is no reason you can't sit down on the web or with a book and set up some simple projects. It's all free
0 -
-
-
Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,104 Mod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 59277
Thanks IRLConor, I liked that post. It's good to see when people programming for a while have learned what they know adn what they expect from us.
I may be confused at the moment if you handed me paper and said bang out the fibonacci sequence there Tar but at least I'd make an an attempt at an array and a for loop or something and bang something out.
Something definitely needing work as i am a bit too dependent on help from the net while programming.
First chapter in this is 85 pages and I think even the first chapter is something I will spend a lot of time on. Gotta know the basics.I've just done the first couple of chapters and it's pretty handy so far (but then again I'm only doing the Java Associate course so it's significantly easier than the full programmer course). Gonna try and get through it in about 5/6 weeks if possible and then try the exam. If I pass I'll move straight onto the SCJP course
Sure yesterday I hadn't coded in more than a year and was happy to just be able to write something like:import java.util.Scanner; public class printmyname { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("What is your first and second name?"); Scanner name = new Scanner(System.in); String inFirst = name.next(); String inSecond = name.next(); System.out.println("Welcome " + inFirst + " " + inSecond ); } }:pac:0 -
-
Advertisement
-
Tar.Aldarion wrote: »Thanks IRLConor, I liked that post. It's good to see when people programming for a while have learned what they know adn what they expect from us.
You're welcome. I've only been programming full-time professionally for about 5 years now. On and off (and through school & college) I've been coding for both myself and others for about 11 years or so, so I'm hardly an authority on hiring programmers.
Back when I was contracting I did some interviewing for clients in the US. I found that giving a trivial programming problem to each candidate was a quick way of weeding out the people who were not up to scratch. My usual routine was:- Trivial coding problem.
- Present them with a problem which is equivalent to building a system or subsystem that they were being hired to work on and get them to design it (high-level) from scratch on a whiteboard. Play devil's advocate (gently!) and see how they deal with criticism of their thinking.
- Get them to talk about a previous project they did (college, work, wherever). Try to judge how much they enjoy coding and how invested they become in projects they love (or how demotivated they get by projects they hate).
It was rare that someone impressed me on the second two steps after failing the first (even when I did the steps in a different order to try and eliminate bias) and I don't think anyone ever redeemed themselves on the third step.Tar.Aldarion wrote: »I may be confused at the moment if you handed me paper and said bang out the fibonacci sequence there Tar but at least I'd make an an attempt at an array and a for loop or something and bang something out.
Something definitely needing work as i am a bit too dependent on help from the net while programming.
You'd be very surprised how many people fail at simple tests like that. Sometimes it's interview pressure, sometimes they're rusty (particularly if they haven't been working for a while) but sometimes it's because deep down they can't code.
Bear in mind also, that when I was asking those kind of questions I didn't really care if they missed a curly or semicolon or something. I was really just watching to see how they handled it. The best people just hammered it out as fast as they could write it. The adequate people thought about it, wrote it out, made a few bugs, spotted most of them and got there in the end. The vast majority just wrote gibberish on the paper that bore no resemblance to an attempt at a solution.
Some more discussion of the phenomenon is available here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html
Here are two exercises that I'd recommend for budding programmers looking for a job:- Find a chunk of code you have written and ask yourself the following questions:
- Would I be happy using this as a show piece in an interview?
- If so, why?
- If not, why not?
- Can you find any bugs? (No matter how obscure!)
- If you were to add a feature, what would it be?
- If the code didn't run fast enough, how would you go about speeding it up?
- Would I be happy using this as a show piece in an interview?
- While you're job hunting, spend at least an hour a day coding, designing or debugging. If you have a pet project, work on that. If you find an open source project that interests you, work on that. If you don't have either of those, look for programming competition questions and grind through a few of those. No matter what, you need to get some practice in. Also, it's a good litmus test. If you don't look forward to that hour a day you're probably going to hate a career as a software developer.
Oh, and read. Now's your chance to read all the technical books that you won't have time to cover when you're working. If people would find it helpful I can go through my bookshelf later and recommend some good books.0 -
-
-
Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,104 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59277
Interesting reading: I tried that fizzbuzz thing. and it took me a few minutes to figure out what to do. Moreso remembering the syntax than anything.
Some more discussion of the phenomenon is available here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.htmlpublic class print { public static void main(String args[]) { for (int i=1; i<=100; i++) { if (i % 3 == 0 && i % 5 ==0) { System.out.println( "fizzbuzz"); } else if (i%3 == 0 ) { System.out.println( "fizz"); } else if (i%5 == 0) { System.out.println( "buzz"); } else { System.out.println(i); } } } }In an interview people might be scared and freeze up. My problem atm and I suppose with other graduates that are not good programmers yet is getting out a trivial answer like this in a small time and then maybe being asked to write it one or two different types of ways and why is this one efficient as opposed to 'this other method'. Although I do recognise efficiency such as O(n), O(n^2) somewhat from years ago. And anything much more complex than this, forget about it for now.
I would like to see what kind of titles you have on the shelf too.Here are two exercises that I'd recommend for budding programmers looking for a job:- Find a chunk of code you have written and ask yourself the following questions:
- Would I be happy using this as a show piece in an interview?
- If so, why?
- If not, why not?
- Can you find any bugs? (No matter how obscure!)
- If you were to add a feature, what would it be?
- If the code didn't run fast enough, how would you go about speeding it up?
- Would I be happy using this as a show piece in an interview?
- While you're job hunting, spend at least an hour a day coding, designing or debugging. If you have a pet project, work on that. If you find an open source project that interests you, work on that. If you don't have either of those, look for programming competition questions and grind through a few of those. No matter what, you need to get some practice in. Also, it's a good litmus test. If you don't look forward to that hour a day you're probably going to hate a career as a software developer.
That is good advice above, I don't know if I could find bugs apart from no ";" etc and as for show pieces of code, will take time to get that yet. Certainly when I was writing a simple loop program earlier I could not tell why my gibberish output was what it was when I had coded it wrong.
Programming noob alert. Practice is the best suggestion above, most people's problems with programming is practice I think.0 - Find a chunk of code you have written and ask yourself the following questions:
-
-
-
-
-
As promised, some picks from my bookshelf (in no particular order):
- The Pragmatic Programmer - It's pretty much a collection of good advice to programmers who are trying to improve themselves professionally. Most of the advice is stuff you'll learn sooner or later but it's worth seeing it written down and in an easily readable form.
- Programming Pearls - A collection of small, but tricky problems and really nice worked solutions for them. I find reading it makes me want to open an editor and start cranking out the code.
- Design Patterns (a.k.a. "the Gang of Four book") - A lot of object-oriented problems seem to reoccur over and over again so it's worth being able to spot those and know some high-level solutions for them. You get more out of this book if you read it, work for a year and come back and read it again. On reading it the 2nd and subsequent times, I've found myself saying "Ah, that's what I was doing when I implemented X". It's also useful as a Rosetta Stone for communicating with senior developers who are full of themselves. :pac:
- The Mythical Man Month - This is a pretty old collection of essays, but if you look past the antiquated bits you'll find a lot of wisdom. It's more a book on project management than software development but it's well worth a read. File under "learn from the mistakes of others".
- Joel on Software - I don't actually own a copy of this, I borrowed it from a friend. All the essays that make up the book are available on http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ so there's no need to buy the book unless you feel like supporting the author. It's a mixed bag of stuff but it's the collection of thoughts of a successful programmer so it's worth picking through to find the stuff which will help you improve.
The following are also useful references to have to dip in and out of as needed:- Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools (a.k.a. "The Dragon Book") - You will probably never be involved in writing a true compiler but sometimes implementing a domain-specific language is the best solution to a problem. Even if you never do that, compiler techniques include a good few string processing algorithms that are worth knowing.
- The Art of Computer Programming (a.k.a. "Knuth") - Acres of dense, almost impenetrable algorithms on the most basic stuff ever. Useful to have, but expensive to acquire. "There's a solution in Knuth" is true for many, many programming problems.
- Mastering Regular Expressions - Learn regular expressions. They're a great tool for making string processing easier. This book is a fantastic resource even well after you've learned how to construct complex regular expressions. I don't have a copy at the moment (it was part of my company library) and I'm strongly considering buying one.
Civilian_Target wrote: »On an aside: IRLConor What is your thinking on people getting demotivated by jobs they hate? I usually see this as an upshot, if they have a record that indicates they finish projects.
I don't know quite what you're getting at but I'll have a stab.
In my experience there are three "usual suspects" which cause a programmer to be demotivated:- The codebase is rubbish quality and getting anything done is a mammoth task.
- The co-workers are incompetent or unpleasant.
- The management doesn't know how to handle programmers.
If you find yourself demotivated either fix the problem or work hard at an exit strategy. Don't let it fester, it probably won't improve on its own.Civilian_Target wrote: »Back on topic
My experience is that companies don't hire fresh grads straight out of college except in big boom times when prices are artifically high.
Most people, me included, after college have to do some combination of:
- Masters or other individual project where you deliver a piece of real software that works, performs some useful function, and uses existing libraries and technologies.
- Open source contribution, sufficiently large that you either made a substantial project branch, or that we can see how many commits you made by googling your name.
- Working a couple of badly paid jobs at the start to get experience in the technologies you need to get a better job.
I was lucky enough to have option 4: start a company with a few friends and go contracting. Don't discount independent contracting as an option for picking up money and experience. It's not always easy being your own boss, but it's highly rewarding.0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Tar.Aldarion wrote: »I want all these books but no way i could buy them! Felt bad enough just getting the SCJP book.
Suppose that and maybe one more book will do for now. The net is great and all but I like books more.
Books are expensive.
I built mine up over time and more than a few of them came home in a suitcase from cheaper countries.
I'm willing to consider lending some of mine. If anyone's interested, drop me a PM and we can negotiate. 0 -
Advertisement
-
Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,104 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59277
Thay are reallly expensive in some cases. Law books were bad too in college I recall.
I love the sound of your programming pearls one, that's why I want to do programming. I love problems and then eventually getting it right and looking at something I wrote do something. Unfortunately I don't get to that last bit! 0 -
-
-
I tend to horde books that should really see a new home, I've nearly 20 years worth, and I don't know why - I can't see myself using the DESQView API, or writing my own 32bit OS :eek:.
I discovered a seller on ebay in the states that sells "older" versions of books, for instance Pro WPF in .Net 3.0. Some of these cost US$4 to buy and US$10 to ship, and books can be slow to arrive - but I've got some great deals there. A girl in work (yes we have a girl programmer) signed up to an online book site which looks really good. We were going to try and get work to pay for a corporate subscription but they're a right bunch of bankers and it would have been like getting blood from a stone.
and just to add to the every growing list
Agile Software Development 2nd Edition - Alistair Cockburn
Rapid Development - Steve McConnell
D.0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
File it under CPD and check the used section in amazon, special offers, etc, etc.Tar.Aldarion wrote: »Thay are reallly expensive in some cases.
And I'd add to the list (which is quite excellent already):- Knuth. Yes, mentioned already. Yes, it is that good.
- A Pattern Language. The original that the gang of four book is based on. Not computer specific, but good design reading nonetheless.
- Unit Test Frameworks. Possibly not the best book on the subject, I haven't read them all, but forget that and get any book on the subject. If there's one thing I'd add to the current undergrad curriculum as a basic, that's probably it. Well. After remedial English, perhaps.
- Tufte. If you do any sort of presentation of information, either for program output or for an actual stand-up-and-talk presentation to other people (and you will end up doing both, regularly), you really should read Tufte at least once. There are four books which nearly count as art, they're so well made, and there's a website. The man invents new kinds of graphs. It's rather hard to top that as a recommendation (I know it doesn't sound like much, but think about it for a minute).
There are others, like Refactoring that are on my work wish list (I like to keep two wish lists on amazon.com, one for fun reading and one for work/cpd stuff) but I've not read them yet so I can just pass on the recommendations of others. Which isn't as much use as you'd think.
Also, follow blog posts. Joel's okay, but I find he gets a bit under my fingernails and I disagree with a lot of what he says (the whole cult-of-the-rockstar-programmer gets tiring after about four minutes), so I track others (Google Reader, or any other RSS reader for that matter, is your friend, especially if you have something like an iPhone or netbook and take the train every day to work). Coding Horror, the Daily WTF, Beautiful Code, ReadWriteWeb, various Planet feeds (Planet PHP, Planet PHP.ie, Planet Python, Planet ILUG, Planet MySQL, Planet Postgresql, whatever is relevant to the area you're going into), DZone, and (good grief) Zed Shaw, all of these I've found decent at one stage or another, your reading list tends to evolve and change over time as you move from job to job or even project to project (and as the authors do the same thing). Think of it as a cheap way to go to a programmer's meet, but with everyone thinking about what they say, being able to enter and leave the conversation at will without missing anything, and not having to sit in a dark pub with flat guinness while wearing socks and sandals.
(That last part is in jest, for the humour-deprived. I've never gone to one of these meetups, but that's because every time I tried, a client's machine exploded or something else caught fire. I think they're actually a pretty brilliant idea for both CPD and networking - IT in Ireland seems to be a pretty incestuous little industry from what I've seen of it).
Also, read code. Find a good open source project, checkout its repository, and browse through the code. (And when you're ready, if it has a peer review thing going on, fix stuff or add stuff and submit patches - both the writing and the subsequent code review are fairly useful things to do, not to mention a nice little ego boost when your patch is submitted. It can make a whole monday afternoon that little bit brighter).0 -
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
Advertisement