Advice For Programmers Right Out of School 469
ari1981 writes "I recently graduated from school with a CS degree, and several of my classes were very theoretical in nature. There was some programming, but it seems not as much as in other schools. I'm currently working at a company where I'm doing primarily c/c++ app development on unix. But as I read slashdot, and other tech sites / articles, and realize for some of the software being written nowadays, I would have absolutely NO IDEA how to even begin writing it. I remember first time I saw them, I thought console emulators were really cool. After my education, I have no idea how someone would begin writing one. With the work I'm doing now, it doesn't seem I'm going to be using (or creating) any of the really cool technology I hear about. How did everyone here begin learning / teaching themselves about different aspects of programming, that they initially had no clue about? How did you improve? Programming on your own? Through work?"
Jack of All Trades, or Master of One (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, this is a different path than some would take. I've seen people who work on, for example, file systems, and they have done nothing but work on file systems their whole careers. I'm sure the same would be true of people who work on other software projects, like word processors, spreadsheets, web browsers, and such. Often times I envy them the depth of their knowledge in their particular fields, but wonder if they would flounder if moved out of their element.
To each his own. I guess that's a choice you make at some point - be the jack-of-all-trades, or the master of one. It all depends on your own tastes, and what you perceive as your job security down the road.
I've learned C and C++, perl, shell scripts, and all the bits of tools here and there that I've needed through the years, and have bought books along the way to learn about other topics I've been curious about (Qt, GTK, Windows Game Programming, and more). One of the best things to come down the pike these last 10 years or so, in my opinion, has been Linux and the whole open source movement. Why? Because once and for all, if you want to know how works, you can simply crack open the source code and see for your self! In short, it's the best self-study tool available to you, and you can learn about ANYTHING you want.
It's a craft after all (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason for this gradual approach is that there are multiple elements of craft: materials, patterns, tools and workplace practices. It takes at least ten years in any reasonably sophisticated craft for all these elements to fall into place.
You could, right out of your vo-tech class, attempt a piece of fine furniture all on your own. And with enough determination, you would succeed. But you would not succeed fast enough to make a living at it. You'd waste a lot of material with trial and error. You'd waste a lot of time with the wrong tools, or unknowingly fritter it away because of a poorly organized workspace. All of your attention would be consumed by small problems of a single project, where a master craftsman may have several projects in various stages of completion.
Speed, organization and economy are what set the master craftsman apart from the journeyman. You don't need mastery to do something original; but having it makes originality much more practical.
Software is a somewhat different animal than carpentry. You may even have an idea that nobody has ever had before, one that is simple, yet original, that with journeyman skills you can bring to fruition. But you still have a decade or more of hard work ahead to achive your full potential.
So -- separate out the meta problem from the problems at hand. If you have an idea for creating a console emulator -- that's a problem at hand, that even as a beginner you can make some progress upon. If, however, the problem is to become the kind of programmer that can create a console emulator, that's not a problem to be addressed by sitting down and writing one. It's one to be addressed by contributing to an existing project, under the guidance of somebody more experienced.
Get a job in an advanced development team (Score:5, Interesting)
Every website has different naming conventions for their code. Some have you use the IDE's designer a lot, some not at all. The resulting software is such a patchwork of Internet examples it makes me puke. And worst of all, the developer think's he's the stuff because he figured it all out without any professional training.
The best thing I ever did was to work for a couple large companies that did cutting edge software development. They had a team of real engineers with many many years of experience. They understood the value of Best Practices. They had documented development standards. They forced us developers to follow the conventions. The software I write now is very much what I learned then. I own my own software dev company now and I absolutely love writing software. People who work with my code are thrilled by the consistant patterns and well-thought-out design.
The best software is designed well by experienced engineer-minded professionals. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you can learn much of value from Google. Google is only a basic starting point. People who cut their teeth on Google end up being self-taught hackers (as in, ugly, hacked up code). And it shows. Want to be a great developer? Work under highly-skilled and experienced professionals.
Re:Write new code (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially here: http://thedailywtf.com/ [thedailywtf.com]
Learning what not to do can be as valuable as learning what you should do. The comments can be useful too, the problems get picked apart pretty extensively and can be quite educational. If anything you ever write never ends up on a site like that, you can't be that bad off.
Re:Get a job in an advanced development team (Score:3, Interesting)
What I mean is this. The people and environment you learned in/from is quite possibly ideal. However, just because you've got a room full of smart people that think things through doesn't necessarily mean that they will always come out with the best solutions. They will come out with great solutions, but will likely all have common patterns (a good thing to some extent).
The only way to possibly improve that environment is to bring in some people that think completely differently than your core group of engineers and have them justify their thinking. Have a diverse group of people will create unique solutions and viewpoints...most likely the "innovative" ones.
This isn't intended to contradict what you said. It is just a reminder that having diversity of thought is a Good Thing.
Re:digg around (Score:3, Interesting)
findProject [] = []
findProject (p:ps)
| not ((checkProj p)=="suitable") = findProject ps
| otherwise = p
-- now just implement the trivial function checkProj::Project->String and off you go:
findProject sourceforge
Wrong priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
It sounds to me like you are looking for a solution without identifying the problem. Because there are so many programmers like this, ones who feel compelled to create something for the sake of creating something, for their own ego or amusement, in lieu of any real world application, the industry is filled with crappy technology that doesn't serve any significant purpose. So let me be the first to discourage you path before you even start and add another dingleberry to the crop of mediocre technology that's out there that will fail.
No disrespect, but you're going about it wrong. If you want to program a console emulator, hook up with the teams online involved in that. Oh you want to create your own? This kind of thinking won't get you anywhere. The real cool technology is what you learn from other people through experience both in coding and (most importantly) through an *understanding of the application and the market you're addressing*. So what you need to do before anything else is not whine about how you haven't created the next Halo, and figure out what field, in addition to programming, in which you're an authority, and what void in that field can you develop something that addresses a real need or solves a problem, and then and only then, should you be asking people how to develop such technology.
The best software in the market will have always been created by people identifying a niche, a need, a problem, and then designing software to address it. Not the other way around.
Re:Write new code (Score:3, Interesting)
You've gotta be careful with that approach. I've seen some very poorly-coded OSS projects, and they tend to be the smaller ones. Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's well-coded!
Rather, it may be more helpful to look at large OSS projects, but one where you can concentrate only on a smaller module. Something like Apache, Subversion, the Linux kernel, etc. These projects tend to have much better coding guidelines in place, and their development lists are very active with good discussions on best practices, refactoring methods, etc.
The smaller projects are more often run by just a single person or two, which means that they aren't as diligent in discussing changes beforehand and following well-established development practices.
Fresh out of a technical college (Score:2, Interesting)
I recently just graduated from a technical school 2 years ago completing my Computer Engineering Technology diploma and finished my Bachelor of Applied Information Systems Technology degree. You're probably going to look at me as nothing and say that my papers are clichéd compared to your CS degrees, but I can say I am glad I went this route instead of going the CS route.
There are two key differences with a university program vs a techincal program. Universities focus more towards theory rather than hands on approach. While technical programs focus more on real life situations any developer would be faced with. Universities would be focused on what is the purpose of using things like linked-lists or algorithm's for searches and how to make it better and ignore how to apply the syntax to actual applications. When I was doing labs, I never learned anything from scratch, they had the walls full of library posters so we knew which libraries to use and they gave us small sample programs to start us off.
Just recently I sat in a technet session in a room of 50+ people and the M$ guy asked the entire room "Who has a CS degree?" and no one put up their hand which was surprising. But one important fact is that you ALWAYS have to dedicate yourself to learning, especially in IT. I am always learning new things to keep myself up-to-date with the market so I always have opportunities for myself. I graduated with mostly C++, VB.NET, C#.NET and SQL knowledge, but at my occupation I am a COBOL developer and I am currently learning from books and online courses.
I would say that if you want to become a researcher or theorist, go with the university route, but if you want a job right off the bat, go for the technical route but be faced with updating yourself with courses every couple of years. It is likely for a person with 2+ years experience with anything in IT to get more priority over a CS grad when it comes to getting hired. No matter what, you can't avoid the fact that you always have to teach yourself and learn on your own. The professors are there to set you in the right direction and you have to love what you are doing.
Some advices (Score:2, Interesting)
Its very easy for a programmer to bias toward "cool" things. With some experience thinking on the problem you solve you will start to get the pleasure of doing things in harmony with the objectives of the whole system.
Do not try to learn too much: programming is such a field that one need to learn ones own way. Try to be open to new things, intuition will grow with years of experience.
Programming is highly intellectual work and is often rooted in deep insights to larger extent than on logical reasoning.
In other words, try gather your own wisdom. Perhaps, its greater asset for programmers than remembering numerous patterns and idioms.
Re:From the Ground Up? (Score:3, Interesting)
The first time I ever saw a "Hello, World" program was in the 1980s.
I wonder when they originated.
Re:Fresh out of a technical college (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Its all about your libraries (Score:3, Interesting)
As for C++ pointers being a "hassle" to call new and remembering to call delete on, all you have to do is use the auto_ptr provided by the Standard Template Library, which is 100% compatible with any C++ compiler that supports the Standard (GNU's ISO99 C++ support is fantastic), or use the safe pointers in the Boost Library. They'll know by themselves when to delete without you ever having to mess with it--and you can rest assured that if the program throws an exception and exits a function abnormally there's no pointer mess leftover because they'll call the deconstructor automatically in the stack unwind. The fact is, there are features in C++ that most people either don't use because they don't bother to learn them, or simply have never heard of. Vectors, strings, hash maps, associative arrays, linked lists, safe pointers, throw-catch exception handling, etc. Yeah the code can get a little harder to read, but that's the programmer's fault rather than the language.
My advice to the OP would be that the best experience comes from the workplace. You'll be given assignments for things that seem impossible to you and that you'd never be able to do. And sometimes you can't do them. But when you're faced with a challenge like that you'll find yourself being forced to become an expert on the subject very rapidly. And experience and confidence like that are hard to come by easily or as quickly in an academic environment.
"Never" is harsh language (Score:3, Interesting)
Without goto, how would you do the following?