How to get your foot in the door

Fakman87

Hey lads,

I'm finishing a 1 year conversion hdip in software engineering next month and my issue is that I don't even have the basics of Java or OOP down to a decent level.

I have to complete a 6 month work placement before I get my diploma but I don't think I'm at a good enough standard to even work in the area. From your experience should I take a few months to cram or have you seen new graduates in your company that can't do anything?

Talisman

Why don't you create a project from scratch on Github? If you can't think of something then recreate an existing application/service.

How difficult would it be to implement a Twitter/Instagram clone? You'll encounter issues that you won't learn from a book/tutorial and in the end you will have a real application to demonstrate your coding ability.

If you can articulate the how and the why of decisions you made during the development process you will be a much more viable candidate than the regular joe who has no demonstrable coding ability.

14ned

Talisman wrote: »

If you can articulate the how and the why of decisions you made during the development process you will be a much more viable candidate than the regular joe who has no demonstrable coding ability.

As much as a candidate with some github is better than nothing, a candidate with at least a year's history of helping out with clearing the bug tracker of a major open source project like LLVM is far more valuable. In your CV, actually mention the number of bugs you replicated and verified, and the number of bugs you sent in a patch for. Mentioning the number of bugs you couldn't help with but participated in isn't a bad idea either.

If I saw a candidate with at least 100 LLVM issues participated in, and if a quick scan of the LLVM bug tracker showed that candidate was being useful and not annoying, I would be extremely interested in that candidate. One of Google's now VIG engineers originally got hired through helping out with LLVM bugs via his phone during shifts as a pizza delivery driver in a very deprived part of the US, and went from like $5/hour to a six figure salary in a single step.

Boring but valuable contributions like that really makes you stand out, all it requires is enthusiasm and a bit of cop on which 98% of fresh graduates totally lack, and hence find it hard getting hired. And companies always need people good with closing bugs on trackers, indeed that's what most junior programmers do for their first few years anyway.

Niall

Fakman87

Talisman wrote: »

Why don't you create a project from scratch on Github? If you can't think of something then recreate an existing application/service.

How difficult would it be to implement a Twitter/Instagram clone? You'll encounter issues that you won't learn from a book/tutorial and in the end you will have a real application to demonstrate your coding ability.

If you can articulate the how and the why of decisions you made during the development process you will be a much more viable candidate than the regular joe who has no demonstrable coding ability.

I'll have to do this. It's a bit beyond my skills at the moment but I'm going to start building very small projects over christmas and go from there.

Senna

Fakman87 wrote: »

I'll have to do this. It's a bit beyond my skills at the moment but I'm going to start building very small projects over christmas and go from there.

Building a twitter clone sounds very daunting, but if you seen the code behind one, its actually not that complicated at all, I say this as only having 1 year completed of a part-time dev course done, so I'm behind you in terms of knowledge.
There are even full tutorials available online and maybe starting out by following a tutorial will give you confidence to start your own.

Talisman

Senna wrote: »

Building a twitter clone sounds very daunting, but if you seen the code behind one, its actually not that complicated at all, I say this as only having 1 year completed of a part-time dev course done, so I'm behind you in terms of knowledge.
There are even full tutorials available online and maybe starting out by following a tutorial will give you confidence to start your own.

You won't learn much following a tutorial from the beginning because you won't hit the normal bumps in the road. You'll more than likely end up copying chunks of code which you won't understand.

In terms of learning you are better off trying to design and implement your own solution first. When you get stuck look for a solution online and as a last resort look at the tutorial.

If you can't write any code without following a tutorial then maybe that's an indication that coding is not for you or you just don't know the fundamentals well enough to tackle the problem.

I was recently asked "How do I declare a class?" by somebody who has just completed a Java course. Apparently they went through their course copy and pasting segments of code and writing as little as possible themselves - That's beyond f%#ked up for somebody that proclaims they want to be a developer.

Fukuyama

Talisman wrote: »

I was recently asked "How do I declare a class?" by somebody who has just completed a Java course. Apparently they went through their course copy and pasting segments of code and writing as little as possible themselves - That's beyond f%#ked up for somebody that proclaims they want to be a developer.

My first semester of a Hdip Conversion is coming to a close.

Tbh, Java is giving lots of people trouble purely because lecturers don't want anyone being left behind so they keep on spoon feeding. It's a little infuriating when you spend 10 hours over a weekend working through the main assignment (and learning a tonne) only for a solution to be more or less worked out in a lab the following week right before the assignment deadline.

Some people seem to very quickly pick up the habit of copying and pasting without understanding whats going on. A lot of my classmates don't understand what their own code does line-by-line. And this method of learning is actually fostered by colleges from what I can see.

I prefer reading docs and slowly picking my way through a program for a few hours instead of simply Googling the answer. If Stack Overflow servers went down around final assignment deadlines there'd be murder.

Graham

Fukuyama wrote: »

It's a little infuriating when you spend 10 hours over a weekend working through the main assignment (and learning a tonne) only for a solution to be more or less worked out in a lab the following week right before the assignment deadline.

Console yourself with the fact that you'll be able to hold your own in an interview.

Talisman

Fukuyama wrote: »

Tbh, Java is giving lots of people trouble purely because lecturers don't want anyone being left behind so they keep on spoon feeding. It's a little infuriating when you spend 10 hours over a weekend working through the main assignment (and learning a tonne) only for a solution to be more or less worked out in a lab the following week right before the assignment deadline.

The thing is those 10 hours weren't wasted, you actually learned something yourself. You shouldn't underestimate that. The person that shows up in the lab to be spoon fed the solution isn't likely to learn anything.

Ant695

Talisman wrote: »

The thing is those 10 hours weren't wasted, you actually learned something yourself. You shouldn't underestimate that. The person that shows up in the lab to be spoon fed the solution isn't likely to learn anything.

This is it those 10 hours will stand to you when you go for interviews where your classmates will get caught out on simple questions because they just took the easy road of copy/pasting to get through the class.

Fukuyama

Talisman wrote: »

The thing is those 10 hours weren't wasted, you actually learned something yourself. You shouldn't underestimate that. The person that shows up in the lab to be spoon fed the solution isn't likely to learn anything.

You're quite right.

I suppose my main issues is just that this is a government funded Springboard course. The idea behind these courses is to up the number of IT grads in Ireland to fill a skills gap. Seems like a lot of box checking is being done and learning is optional.

I'm very happy to be on the course and I'm definitely learning a lot. However, the grades themselves seem quite hollow. Two people with a 2.1 could be worlds apart when it comes to actual ability.