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View Full Version : Advice on my programming career choices - please!



puddinlover
April 30th, 2009, 01:08 PM
I'm really hoping to get feedback from programmers about my current situation with my programming career. I made a lengthy blog post today so if you have a few minutes I would really appreciate it if you took the time to read it and give me some feedback. (blog in my sig)

puddinlover
April 30th, 2009, 11:43 PM
I had a large response on my thread "what was your first programming book" but non here :( Unless you course you guys are posting in the blog comments which is great that way other programmers in my shoes seeing that blog post can read your advice too! Regardless thank you to all that have read and given me feedback.

soltanis
May 1st, 2009, 05:06 AM
If you're serious, you should go to a 4 year college and earn a degree in CS. You're in Penn; so Penn State should be a definite option for you, and maybe you could try your hand at some private schools, if you can get the financing.

The reasoning here is that to get hired, you need to indicate that you actually know the stuff you're talking about, and a good way to start (not finish) doing that is by getting a B.S. in Computer Science. Theory, you'll find, is just as important as practical application in the field of computers.

While you're in college, I would suggest you try to get yourself involved in an open-source project, ideally as a major contributor. Companies like experience, and the best way to get experience (and be able to point to it for later reference) is to have your code be incorporated into such a project. This sort of thing demonstrates that you're serious about programming, and that you have the skill, communications ability, and know-how to work in a large project with other developers.

After that, you could apply for work, or you may decide to get a graduate degree and put off working for a little longer. Either way, if you can prove that you are the best man for the job, demonstrate your long-standing skill, you will be successful -- so long as you are persistent.

PS. Don't worry too much about your math scores. Mine were terrible too (I suppose so is my programming, though ;))
PPS. Programming is my hobby, but not my career aim. There are a lot of career programmers hanging around on this and other forums, if you can find one, they can give you much more definite advice.

Sinkingships7
May 1st, 2009, 06:49 AM
Wow OP. We're in almost EXACTLY the same boat. I'm also 18 and about to finish high school in June. June 3rd, to be exact. However, I've already weighed my options and made a decision. I decided to go straight into a four-year bachelors degree program in computer science. I'm already enrolled. It has to be done eventually, why wait?

I'm passionate and I wanna start. Plus I hate pushing carts at minimum wage. -_-

cabalas
May 2nd, 2009, 02:42 AM
If I was you I would go for the B.S. in Computer science. The theory part of the course is important! Many people dismiss the theory as they don't see how it helps them in the real world this is generally wrong it helps a lot in figuring out how to approach problems and why one particular approach is better even if it doesn't seem that way.

I noticed in your blog post you mentioning about your maths skills not being as good as what you would like, don't worry about that too much as you'll probably have to do a couple of math papers which will bring you up to speed and depending what classes you take you probably won't have to use them too much.

My four biggest pieces of advice that I can give you are:


Go for internships, part time programming jobs or contribute to foss projects, this will help develop your skills a lot and will look good on a CV.
Learn things on your own outside of class, universities don't teach you everything, the biggest thing they generally teach is how to learn properly on your own.
Try to generalise your studies don't focus to much on one particular field, it can make it difficult to get a job, and just because you like the field now doesn't mean you will 5 years down the track.
Don't worry about languages, syntax is easy concepts are the hard part.


As I'm not an American nor have I ever been to the USA so I can't comment on which tertiary institute would be best.

Just to put my post into perspective I am currently employed as a software developer have had the job close to a couple of years now (started off part time). I have both a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Science.

Luggy
May 2nd, 2009, 05:03 AM
I read your blog post and being a programmer I can offer a little bit of advice in terms of what you should look forward to in a career.

- It is way more fun to work in a shop that does new things every few weeks or so. Working for months on end on the same application gets old.

- Working for a smaller company will probably get you doing lots of different tasks. If you work for a small shop you will be writing the user manual along with the code... and also putting the coffee on.

- A broad set of talents is very important. From your blog you sound like you have a lot of interest in the web programming side. Spend some time learning compiled languages like C and C++. Also playing around with microprocessors can never hurt.

- Learn C++. Learn it forward, learn it backwards and make sure you understand pointers! From your blog you haven't done that yet and really every programmer should know pointers.
Q: Why is this operation taking so much time and eating up so much memory?
A: Well are you copying the giant block of data a million times or are you just passing the reference to where it is located?

Really those last two points were a little off topic, but I'm trying to stress that right now, while you are in school it's a good idea to get a broad range of skills.

You can get an idea of where you want to work, but really you don't know where you are going to end up once you are done school. You might end up chasing a skirt across the country (or to another one) and end up working in a field completely different then what you are currently thinking of.

Programming as a career choice can be very rewarding. You can build elegant master pieces but you can also creating abortions and you will probably create a few of the later before you create the first.

Don't get discouraged, just leave your ego at the door and always try and do better.

nathang1392
May 2nd, 2009, 05:08 AM
im a sophomore. i wanted to be a programmer and took some classes. i think it would be unbearable on the daily basis. it turned from career choice to hobby very quickly. =[ i couldnt hang.

mmix
May 2nd, 2009, 09:35 AM
Ask your question to the stackoverflow ppl.

http://stackoverflow.com/

StunnerAlpha
May 2nd, 2009, 12:59 PM
I skimmed over a bit of your blog. I am currently a junior undergrad. I was decent in math at highschool went to college and treated it just like highschool especially the first quarter, I was hooked on Warcraft 3(NOT WoW) and would play that most of the time. Needless to say I wasted my days away on that game and my grades definitely reflected it. I went into college as undeclared in the college of life sciences since I was being pressured by the folks to be a doctor or to go into the medicine field. I ended up naturally taking CS courses, and although very difficult to me since the only prior experience I had to that sort of thing was a mediocre HTML class in highschool, I kept going. Turned out I was taking the lower level calculus courses for the enitre year... I had terrible grades in all of them (D range), spoke to some advisors which did not have a clear recommendation for me(in general advisors in college really suck, they are only there to point you to other people or in another direction, really pathectic if you ask me) so I just ended up taking the engineer level calculus right from the beginning. I got myself unhooked off Warcraft and concentrated more on studies my sophmore year and did decent enough to meet prereqs for the courses I needed.

Point is, college courses are killer and college(unless you are going to a junior college) is a whole 2 levels above highschool and you can't take it easy. I did and I really regret it. I was decent at math in highschool but to be honest even if you aren't too hot at it you can definitely get by. Here are some pointers:
1) Go to lecture, read the book, take notes, do all of these or any combination, whatever works, I would recommend not slacking and have going to lecture on the top of your todo list. I have an extremely hard time focusing on what the prof says most of the time, but it does tend to help, I usually end up reading the book as well since I almost never pay attention in class...
2) Get to know people, having friends in the class is extrememly helpful, especially when it comes to studyiing for tests
3) MOST IMPORTANTLY go to Office Hours! Getting personal extra help really helps but more importantly get the professor to know you by name, I know I have definitely scraped by with a C- or been bumped up a grade in a couple classes just by the professor knowing who I was and how much effort I was putting into the course.

Hope that helps and good luck... sorry if anything I wrote up there is incoherent or vauge, it is currently 5AM for me... off to bed now...

txcrackers
May 2nd, 2009, 07:30 PM
Don't expect to find a cushy, high-paid, interesting, fun, yet challenging job when you're done with your studies. If you're lucky, you'll only be maintaining a 5-year old MS Access "application" - or even better, help-desk duty. It's very rare for someone with a newly minted degree to be able to leap into the middle of the large/fun stuff - the only time that happens is if you're a super-genius with at least a Master's degree.