General Advice

bastille

Hi guys, I'm sure this has probably been asked already but i'm just wondering what your best advice to new developers would be?

Any advice in general relating to area's such as:
-Career Development
-Work/Social Life Balance
-Best Decisions / Regrets

And so on

DefinitelyMarc

If I could go back to my first year of college I'd:

- Buy a copy of Head First Java and POUR over it every waking second. That book really did for me what college couldn't and Java has always been a big part of my career. I'm quite good at it now, but could have gotten here sooner if I'd known that book existed.
- Get at least one Android app into the play store over the summers I had off. I have one now, but I could have moved onto something else if I did this earlier.
- Start blogging earlier. It's just enjoyable.
- Download as many soft skills/personal development/self help audiobooks (How to win friends and influence people, the war of art, Rich Dad Poor Dad, etc) using the college internet as I could. You learn so much from them and they don't take any time out of your day since you can listen to them on the way to college/work, on the bus, etc.
- Work for a company internship for MONEY before going into my first real job. I would use this to finance a decent phone for the Android apps.
- Still go out every weekend to the pub. I have no regrets on the awesome times I had without a care in the world.
- Start working out sooner. I go to the gym three times a week now. During my masters I was going five days a week and I love it now as much as I did back then.

In general, just taking a more active role in my career/education. Back when I was much younger, I was under the belief that college was responsible for educating me. That it was always someone elses job, or that I was already "that good". Now I realise the folly of this line of thinking...

Also, welcome to boards!

Jim2007

bastille wrote: »

Hi guys, I'm sure this has probably been asked already but i'm just wondering what your best advice to new developers would be?

Any advice in general relating to area's such as:
-Career Development
-Work/Social Life Balance
-Best Decisions / Regrets

And so on

Learn about investing and saving, plan to be in a position to retire at 50 if you feel like it. No matter what tech does, by the time you're fifty you'll want to cut back and go do other things that interest you.

bastille

Currently on an internship for 9 months, so I have at least got that part right!

I must admit that I haven't read any books relating to software yet, but it is something I will look into now!

I find myself going through periods of absolutely loving Software, to having no motivation to do anything what so ever! But im sure that will change over the coming years.

DefinitelyMarc

bastille wrote: »

Currently on an internship for 9 months, so I have at least got that part right!

I must admit that I haven't read any books relating to software yet, but it is something I will look into now!

I find myself going through periods of absolutely loving Software, to having no motivation to do anything what so ever! But im sure that will change over the coming years.

That sounds kinda like burnout. Try having some side projects to keep the tech you use varied, and make an effort to have times in the evening where you aren't looking at a screen. Mix things up.

bastille

I actually bought a Pi and set it up as a webserver to host side projects, I made one and that whole process I actually found to be hugely enjoyable.

Currently Im using the same languages everyday on placement, so I think i'll try to move onto different ones for any side projects I attempt. I guess it's just the initial effort of grasping the basic's of a new language that can add to the burned out mentality.

But once I pickup some new languages I'm sure i'll be reinvigorated to code a lot more again.

14ned

bastille wrote: »

Currently Im using the same languages everyday on placement, so I think i'll try to move onto different ones for any side projects I attempt. I guess it's just the initial effort of grasping the basic's of a new language that can add to the burned out mentality.

But once I pickup some new languages I'm sure i'll be reinvigorated to code a lot more again.

After twenty years of doing this for money, I find that in the end it is a day job. Well over half of the time is not fun, it's tedious, but it pays the bills. The remainder can be fun, but usually isn't. On a long term contract I aim for a minimum of 10% fun, 90% drudgery, if it drops below 10% fun I start looking for a new contract. To date I've not stayed at the same employer more than 18 months, but that's why contracting suits me over becoming a permie.

Niall

bastille

After following some of your comments in other threads and in relation to this particular comment.

Was your level of fun greater than 10% for the years you spent working outside of Ireland?

14ned

bastille wrote: »

After following some of your comments in other threads and in relation to this particular comment.

Was your level of fun greater than 10% for the years you spent working outside of Ireland?

At work god no, the work was very tedious, huge milspec documents of verbose nonsense. If you've ever seen a NATO engineering spec document, you will shudder in memory with me. They make EU commission documents look terse and to the point. There was also an enormous amount of compliance work, so basically filling in forms. I actually spent very little time writing code, and much more filling in forms on how I would write the code before I wrote it (which you then ignore anyway, because when you actually write it it's different, then you must fill in more forms to state why you deviated etc etc).

But the thirty hour week plus a bottle of wine at lunch helped a lot. Less time there or being sozzled means it's easier to deal with. Oh, and people smoked at their computers in those days, and at that time I smoked, so that was a big bonus, plus of course the never ending all day sunshine every day and great night life.

Plus I have to say I did like the Continental European engineering culture a great deal over the Anglo-Saxon one. In the latter there's always this feeling of being under a thumb somehow, there is a mildly coercive work environment and far too much fire fighting and lurching from crisis to crisis. In the former, it's much more collaborative and trusting, and they actually seriously think about planning past the next quarter and enact measures to avoid crises. It leads to much more productive engineering, given the tiny amount of time we actually did real work, we got an enormous amount done and it was all of very high quality (relative to other gigs I've worked).

Obviously, my sampling size was very limited and my information very stale. Everything I just said was personal experience only gathered more than fifteen years ago.

Niall