Inhouse Coding Trap

jumblejim

Hello,

I'm a newbie here and I have a question that I would love you all to offer an opinion on and maybe some advice.

I'm a Software developer working in Ireland and I've noticed while moving from one job to another that you run the risk of getting sucked into or even forced to redirect your career and knowledge and invest a lot of time learning inhouse code which can not be used elsewhere and means little or nothing when going for other jobs. You usually get a vacant look on the interviewers face when you mention that you coded the "Biz rule on the XYZ coding system". means nothing to them.

Why would it I suppose, its merely a specialized text format being consumed by the "Real" code underneath (often with horrible syntax). If you know Java/Spring MVC etc well it can take you to many different jobs (worldwide), whereas being proficient in "proprietary code" after 5 years seems to mean nothing to the outside world. Don't get me wrong I understand that there is sometimes a need to know the inhouse stuff so as to you know the bigger picture when you set about coding in Java / C++ for that company and their product. But what if you never get to code in Java and get pigeonholed into their system and language.

While some could try argue that Java is proprietary in a way at least you can buy books, look up forums etc to learn, whereas there are little or usually no books explaining the dev for an inhouse coding engine. Frustrating :mad:

My main area of knowledge is Java/SQL/Spring and I feel I am good at it and this is the path I'd like to continue down, I enjoy it, but I've found that some employers lead you to believe you will be doing what was discussed in the interview/job advert and that you will be expanding your java or C++ or SQL knowledge further. However you often quickly find out 1-2 months down the track that this is not their intention for you at all.

Often the case is that coders have created this higher level "biz rules" engine of some sort and that is really what they would like you to learn and be used for. If you are happy with that and getting paid well etc and not into sticking to your passion then that's fine, but what if you want to continue with the stuff you've always found interesting.

Anyone have any experience of this or care to shed some light on the problem. Or even suggest a way we can find out ahead of time before applying for certain companies what is the practice.

Thank you for your time reading this. I hope we can have some good discussion which will enlighten me.

jgh_

I'm trying to understand exactly what it is you're getting at. All knowledge you gain is valuable, even if it's a bad experience. In terms of framing what you do at company XYZ in interviews, try not to focus on minutiae like business rule ABC or DEF, instead try to frame it as in why you did particular notable things, and what you achieved by doing those things. I.E. you changed process Z from old way to new way in order to remove a performance bottleneck, and it improved performance by xxx% because now it is parallelized or whatever.

Hopefully that addresses your question somewhat

jumblejim

Refer to this note at the following url for deeper understanding of what I mean and for further discussion.


http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90139/are-there-drawbacks-to-taking-a-job-where-i-will-be-using-a-unique-programming-l





Some have the view that it doesn't matter once you have a job, while others like the 'open sources-ness' of programming languages and the knowledge plug-ability they provide.


For example some see downsides: such as,

• working in a "custom environment" can mean limited tools/support which can be infuriating when you get stuck on a problem.
• The language they use may be poorly designed, leading to you picking up bad habits early on and write hacky code to create workarounds.
• HR baffoons will not recognize your experience. (This is OK. A company that leans on HR to make technical hires is not the kind you typically want to work for. After a couple years, most of the great jobs come through connections anyway.)

The question is, if a person is building knowledge and a career in Java, will they benefit from putting that on pause and going to learn an inhouse language. For example, if you want to better understand the principles of OO and how java implements those principles will a company's unique scripting language that has custom syntax help build on Java knowledge?.

jgh_

OK rephrasing it helped, now I see what you're getting at

I think it's never a bad idea to learn a new language. Perhaps what you should do is find out more about this language, how it is similar or different to java, and whether it's even something you're interested in learning.

Certainly from my perspective the biggest drawback would be the total lack of outside libraries that may make the mundane things in life easier, whereas with a custom language unless it has support for binding libraries from other languages (i.e. if it's built on the JVM, are you able to use Java libraries? If it's built on .NET, well you should be able to use .NET libs, if it's built on LLVM, can you use C libraries?) pretty much everything would have to be built by hand..which would be horrible.

You would definitely gain some perspective by using this new language, which might be good for learning more about computer science, computer programming, and yourself. You might discover that "Hey, I don't want to do Java anymore because this place has me working on embedded stuff and this language is similar to C and I really love it" or you know whatever. It would definitely be a good opportunity for introspection with respect to your career and educational goals (not to mean going back to school, but in the sense that by being a programmer you are taking the challenge of being a life learner or drown) and to see how and why they chose to do their own language.

I don't think whether the language being poorly designed or the most perfectly designed tool for the job would weigh heavily on my decision if I were in your shoes. Lots and lots of people use poorly designed languages all the time and make careers out of it. What's more important is probably why they are doing things a particular way, how those processes are different from Java, and why they're better/worse make life easier/harder.

Maybe try to learn more about the language if possible before making your choice. See if it's something that even interests you.

I know the HR folks won't give you any Java points for having some random in-house language on your resume, but I'm sure any interviewers would be impressed by an analysis of it vs. their language of choice, why you liked it, what you thought could be different, etc. I hope this post wasn't gobledigoup. I haven't actually had the opportunity to work with a custom in-house language before, so this is all speculation from me.

Colonel Panic

I haven't worked with an in-house specific language, but have developed in a language that's completely and utterly tied to a certain platform and to be honest, I found it a waste of my time. The language and framework themselves, as well as the tools or lack thereof made it an incredibly frustrating experience.

This was something from a pretty large company.

For smaller companies, I've seen languages that are basically just scripts by another name parsed by a C or sometimes, shockingly, a PHP interpreter of some kind. These were often developed by a rockstar who was a textbook follower of "Not invented here" and as such, was also a nightmare. These were freelance jobs which I chose not to be involved in.

So, I'm not saying it's always like that, but there are two personal experiences for you.

Speaking rationally, it can be a career dead end, even if realistically, making the assumption that the in house language is decent, you can apply your skills and grow as a developer. BUT, it will put you at a disadvantage when looking for work elsewhere and you're missing experience in a particular language or framework.

jumblejim

Thanks for your responses, I am 100% sure I will not benefit from this inhouse language(unless I stay put), there is extremely limited documentation and zero support. And in the long run I will be pigeonholed into a proprietary language. I would have no problem with it if I still continued to get some Java exposure, like a 60/40 split or something, but that doesn't seem possible.

So my CV is back out again, I suppose the difficult task is how I can find an Irish company that needs someone to 'really' code and make changes to their SpringMVC / JSP / JEE etc platforms. There has to be companies who have systems that are in need of being further developed or maintained in Java and I am interested in doing just that.

Or are real Java jobs like this a myth now in Ireland, is there a trend to do the lower level dev outside of Ireland and merely administrate a bought in system?

Ludo

This happened to me in one job I took a good few years ago. I quit the week before my 6 months probation was up so only had to give a months notice. I didn't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. They misled me when describing the job so I left them to find someone else at short notice. I surprised I lasted the 6 months to be honest.
Can't see how I would have found this out before starting really as they flat out lied about the job. While I was there one person quit after 4 hours which I found funny

I am not quite sure why you seem to be implying this is an Irish problem though? This can happen anywhere.