Do You Have A Programming Job?

[dwblas]

The one thing that has not been mentioned is people skills. You have to generate some code that will give people what they want. Sometimes they don't know what that is themselves beyond, "print something if this wasn't done corectly". You have to come up with a definition for "correctly" (which will have a different definition for each department involved), as well as what to print and who gets it. And that's a very simple example. For the most part, the non-programmers whom you work with have no idea how good the code is. They judge you by results alone. Oh, I graduated with a minor in computer science.

[dchurch24]

dwblas is absolutely spot on.

At one place I used to work (that shall remain nameless!), I would receive a 'spec' (which was often not more than a sheet of paper with more signatures on it than information about what was needed).

One such requests was: "Make a Credit Control system" (honestly, that was it. It was signed off by about 5 people too!)

I would write the code, knowing that I was really writing a prototype.

Give them the *finished* product for 'testing' and then sit back and wait for the whines.

They would moan that it didn't do this or that (things that were never asked for), which I would note down.

By this point I would have a fair idea of what they wanted, and would second guess some of the future feature requests, and start again from scratch.

That way, not only did they get what they wanted, but I would avoid any programming or design faults that I may have made in the first version, resulting in a solid, reliable application.

It took a little longer, but everyone was happy most of the time with this approach.

I agree that you do have to try to extract from people what it is they want, when they often don't really know. That's not a critism of them, it's just an observation.

[pmasiar]

games production, rendering engines and the like). Anyone got a job in that field?

Some time ago I had a colleague who worked for a game company in Silicon Valley. A dream job you say? Not exactly, he left to work for small company doing database programming for industry, like so many others, and with insane commute to boot (leave job by 3:00 or work till 8:00, past traffic). Why? Hours and pressure were insane, and pay low: so many newly minted CompSci graduates wanted to work there that company was able to churn through them without problems.

You get paid well only to do boring job (results are interesting for others) - unless you are running your own startup of course.

[bfhicks]

I have been working for a large engineering firm for ~1.5 years. I graduated with a CS degree with a minor in math.

For my company, I've been working strictly on Reasearch & Development programs. We have many, many, many programs, both small and large.

For the one post about graphics programming, I have done a lot of programming involving image processing. Matlab is my greatest friend as far as implementing an algorithm (we use many PDE's - partial differential equations). As far as my actual job goes, it involves a good bit of reading white papers on various algorithms and methods to solve problems, and then applying them later. All the code is first done (most of the time) in matlab, and then implemented in C++. We deal with image processing and registration of them to the earth, and to do this we use a local API that's around ~4 million lines of code that was all developed within the company.

Like I mentioned before, C++ is the primary language, although we we make use of perl & python as a supplement. One of the biggest obstacles for developing all this software is maintaining cross-platform compatibility. My primary development area consists of a sun machine and windows box, and we have linux box's (32 & 64bit) to allow us to compile and build on all the machines.

The biggest thing I think that helps with my job is feeling comfortable with unix-based systems and C++. We make judicious use of Makefiles to build our baselines which on a sun, take 7hrs, 64bit multi-core linux only about 1hr, though. Also, a knowledge of version control systems and code-management can help greatly also, which is why I encourage everyone to at least know about open-source projects, as this is a great intro into version control and multiple contributors to a common baseline (I was completely new to this once I started and it didn't take too long to figure everything out but prior knowledge will always help).

Finally (sheesh a long post I hate those), the thing you have to decide is if you like being a code junky, or if you want to move up into design or requirements analysis. I have friends that are very very happy just writing code and developing the software, and playing a minor role in the design, but want no part of the business development part of it. I enjoy coding, and working on state of the art technology.

Advice: if you are going to attend college, try to work and get a co-op or internship as this proves to be useful when it comes time to find a job -- if you choose not to attend college, I would suggest improving your knowledge of programming and various languages. Study design patterns and refactoring. There are many books that can help.

Current languages I work with (on a daily basis):
python, perl, c++

[Caduceus]

Thank you very much for your input, pmasair and bfhicks. I'm not 100% sure what I want to do at university, I've still got two more years of college (I live in the UK - education system is a bit different). I've kinda narrowed my career choice to two things, either software engineering or games programming, and I'm taking a year in idustry (maybe at a games company. If i choose Graphics Science at uni) would the year in industry give my enough software engineering knowledge to pursue a career in the field, or would I be stuck in graphics, doing CGI or the like? (saying that, the reality might be different - databases as pmasair said.)

[skeeterbug]

What is it like to have a job programming?
Like others have said, it depends where you work. My first job was through an internship at a manufacturing company. We had a little cubicle farm for the interns, classic office space stuff. My current job is with a small software startup. Be prepared to fill many roles if you go the startup route (I do sys admin, network admin, support, along with my real title, which is lead dev).

Do you enjoy it?
For the most part yes. I am valued where I work and not just a number. My boss is German and loves beer, so every once in a while we have a beer & movie Friday! However multi-tasking all day long really stresses me out, to the point where I almost never want to work on side projects when I get home (something I used to enjoy doing).

Do you want out?
No

What's the basic layout of your day at work?
We are really laid back here. I get my *** out of bed around 8:30, sometimes closer to 9. I get in to work anywhere between 9 and 9:30. The dress for the development team is casual, so I am always in jeans and a t-shirt or polo shirt. I check my email, get myself a Dr. Pepper, open my rss reader, log in to Trac to see what people have committed, and open my IM's to shoot the **** with the other devs. If the customer has encountered any errors, I will get an email about it from our system before they can even contact support. I almost always have issues resolved when the customer contacts us. Code can/will break, so we need to provide the best support possible. Thats how you can stand out against the bigger companies.

Do you do freelance programming on the side?
Not really. I did write guildreport.com as my own side project. I wouldn't mind doing some more projects, however.

Some additional information. When you first start out you might be overwhelmed by an 8 hour day. Don't worry, you will generally never have to sit down and program for 8 hours straight. I try to push for several hours of real coding, the rest can be research and communication.

*EDIT*
I have been programming professionally for 5 years now.

[n2stc]

What is it like to have a job programming? Do you enjoy it? Do you want out? What's the basic layout of your day at work? Do you do freelance programming on the side?

I am 50. I have mixed programming in with other testing tasks for the last 25 years or so. DOS, FORTRAN, BASIC, LINUX, HPBASIC, HTBASIC, Visual BASIC, VEE and LabView. I am 98% self taught. I am now called Senior Embedded Software Engineer with a large Aerospace corp. It's great! I write programs to control test equipment for auto testing of our products. I like LabView best. I say go for it.

[apoth]

What is it like to have a job programming?

Not bad, easy money if you've got the right sort of brain for it. Don't expect to be able to talk to anyone outside of work about it though, either because it's too geeky or even covered by an NDA/Official Secrets Act.

Do you enjoy it?

Mostly. Code's fine, people and deadlines aren't always so much fun.

Do you want out?

No, not from programming, I have previously from specific jobs and maybe one day I'd like to move into managing programmers in some respect, having other people implement my ideas.

What's the basic layout of your day at work?

Turn up between 8-10am, maybe the odd meeting about progress/design. Code, listen to music, have a laugh, maybe go to the pub for lunch, usually leave around 4:30pm, I'm currently working for a startup (well, up to 50ish people now) on new projects so the workload isn't very even and there's still occasionally late nights (no later than 10pm though really).

Do you do freelance programming on the side?

No. It's too difficult to find the work, what work there is just isn't paid anything like as well as my day job (though it's taken a couple of years to get to a decent salary). That said, I do have a few friends with small businesses that I've written websites or custom applications for, but only for a nominal fee really to just help them out.

I've got a CS degree. Currently working in IP TV, previously in health care.

[ihavenoname]

I am much like some of you thining of going into programming. I am currently a freshmen (1st year) in collage. I was thinking of switching into computer science. My main concern is finding a good job. By "good job" I mean a nice stable salary and a job that isn't annoying.

I'm not asking people to reveal their salaries or anything, but on average how much do programmers make? Also could you please tell us a little about the job search/stability. Do programmers often have to continually switch jobs (many of the post here seem to convey that). Also, do you tend to have to move to certain areas to get a job. I really don't like moving often.

[Akre]

Do not worry. If your are on CS studies it will happen or this will not happen. What i mean studies will show you if this is right job for you. If you like this or not. The place where I live it is normall for students to work during studies so You will know if this is right job for you.

And I like programmers as team, they tend to be more abstract, ironic and not se self centered.
They joke all the time, atmospehere is often great - and becouse of abstract nature of programming the jokes tend to be abstract. Something as dilbert actually

And my company allow me to use linux on my desktop as IDE is eclipse and we are using java mostly.