IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[kevm3]

I have no idea how people are learning development these days, but OO was a pretty solid learning environment. Not to mention having Visual Studio as my IDE helped break things down all the way to the machine code level (i guess its pretty unnecessary for development, but I found it good to know). Javascript is pretty cool, and I really like how open it is for people to create these structure libraries, but I prefer using C# or Java if there is a choice, especially if I'm working with other users, much easier to maintain and manage.

Which environment did you start out with?

When I started to get serious about programming, I started mingling with Python and got on codecademy and went through the little courses. I started with the Python one, but then went for the Javascript one and found I actually liked the Javascript one better. Stuck with Javascript since and along the way I've studied languages such as C#, Java, C++, and Ruby. The language I know the best after JS is Ruby. I plan on deep diving into C# or Java soon when things settle down a bit. I'd prefer to learn C#, but Java jobs seem to pay more. Right now I'm focused on learning Angular 2 and Typescript for this upcoming job interview. Typescript is remarkably similar to C#, which is understandable since it was created by the same guy who made C#.

 

[Apollo Creed]

When I started to get serious about programming, I started mingling with Python and got on codecademy and went through the little courses. I started with the Python one, but then went for the Javascript one and found I actually liked the Javascript one better. Stuck with Javascript since and along the way I've studied languages such as C#, Java, C++, and Ruby. The language I know the best after JS is Ruby. I plan on deep diving into C# or Java soon when things settle down a bit. I'd prefer to learn C#, but Java jobs seem to pay more. Right now I'm focused on learning Angular 2 and Typescript for this upcoming job interview. Typescript is remarkably similar to C#, which is understandable since it was created by the same guy who made C#.

Do you just run through the courses or you do side projects to "Fully retain" the info?

I`m half way done with the Javascript stuff in FCC and I breezed through much of it since conceptually most program languages are similar from my experience.

 

[kevm3]

Do you just run through the courses or you do side projects to "Fully retain" the info?

I`m half way done with the Javascript stuff in FCC and I breezed through much of it since conceptually most program languages are similar from my experience.

I usually read books cover to cover and work the projects and take courses as well. I like to run through books and courses until the concepts are fully ingrained into my mind and I can use everything fairly naturally without having to constantly look things up. One thing I like about taking all these different courses is that you start picking up different approaches to doing things and you learn about different features that another instructor might have overlooked.

The basics of Javascript are fairly simple, but OO in Javascript is a lot different unless you're using ES6/Typescript and a transpiler. If you've started with something like Java, C# or Python, just don't expect JS to behave like those languages to save yourself a lot of headaches.

 

[Apollo Creed]

I usually read books cover to cover and work the projects and take courses as well. I like to run through books and courses until the concepts are fully ingrained into my mind and I can use everything fairly naturally without having to constantly look things up. One thing I like about taking all these different courses is that you start picking up different approaches to doing things and you learn about different features that another instructor might have overlooked.

The basics of Javascript are fairly simple, but OO in Javascript is a lot different unless you're using ES6/Typescript and a transpiler. If you've started with something like Java, C# or Python, just don't expect JS to behave like those languages to save yourself a lot of headaches.

I did Visual Basics in College via Visual Studios lol. I`m not trying to be a programmer/developer per say, but I did feel this stuff would be good for my skill set as I want to get into the Salesforce or AWS world as a Solution Architect so this stuff (HTML,CSS, JS, etc ) are beneficial. Luckily I`m in school doing my Masters so some of my classes touch on the things I`m self studying. I may not do summer classes this yr so I`m probably going to try to get a AWS Solution Architect Cert or Sales Force Admin and maybe eventual developer. I do want some other Cloud certs too, and like I mentioned before I saw many Cloud Engineer/Architect roles asked for knowledge of Python or Ruby.

Its kind of overwhelming having all this stuff on my plate to knock out. Conceptually I pick things up very fast, I`m just worried about potential future interviews and having to do whiteboard coding or something.

 

[Rayzah]

For your first job, they're gonna play you on the salary because they can always fall back on the "you not having much experience" line. That's why I tell cats, consulting >>> being perm. You take on 6-12 month contracts and its an easy way to get experience/exposure and increase your pay by 5-20k a job. But most people aren't hustlers, they're rather have the false sense of "safety" being a "perm" employee and wait 2-4 years just to get a 2-5k raise, lmao.

You aint lying, people that aren't in IT always look at you like when you tell them you switch jobs once or twice a year, they really don't understand that being comfortable in a position doesn't gain you anything...

Whats your thoughts on the whole W2 Contract vs 1099?

1099 allows you to spend your money how you want, you can lets say you make 75k well on a w-2 the IRS wants 15-17k of that of which with a good tax preparer you can get it down to 10k or 7k.. Well on a 1099 you can take that extra 15-17k and invest in something like property you can come away with only giving them back like 5k, that 10k you used to invest will turn you profit as opposed to letting them gain a whole lot more interest on your money and you still living check to check..

But ofcourse w-2 is easier to manage and you can budget around what you actually bring home and can see a nice little bonus every year around tax time.

 

[Data-Hawk]

I'm going to have to disagree with that notion of a C# developer being able to pick up javascript faster than vice versa. A solid developer would be able to pick up both with relatively similar speed. C# is a bigger language, but Javascript is very unconventional and the current JS environment is very unstable. The basics of Javascript are simple, but there are a ton of JS quirks that take a time to learn and when you get into all of the functional and asynchronous programming, things start ramping up in complexity. Couple that with not knowing ahead of times which features you can use do to different browsers not supporting this or that feature can make things headache inducing.

What I've seen is that a lot of Java developers and the such actually hate working with JS and on the front-end because it is so drastically different from what they are accustomed to and having to deal with several browsers with that may or may not support this or that language feature and then having to deal with several different screen sizes.

From my personal experience, I've found the basics of Javascript a lot easier to learn since you don't have to deal with types and all of these other keywords, but after that, I find C# and Java easier to understand past the basics since things are more clearly defined and knowing ahead of time what types are accepted by a function makes it a lot easier to understand what code is doing.
Thank God for things like ES6 and Typescript and transpilers, because they eliminate a ton of annoyance that you have to deal with in the JS language.

CSS is even something that I find difficult to work with. Knowing the rules of CSS and being able to slam together a few rules is easy, but making a full-fledged site with it is fairly headache inducing if you aren't using a framework like bootstrap, especially if you're going for a responsive website.

I guess it depends on what area you live in, but 65k seems low for a full-stack developer with 2 years of experience. For example, here are a couple of listings I've come across:
Python Developers needed - Austin - $80-120k job - Roc Search - Austin, TX

Ruby on Rails Developer - Downtown Austin - $75-85k job - Roc Search - Austin, TX

Bruh, I hate to break it to you, but unless you have some groundbreaking projects in your GitHub, you can almost forget about getting those jobs with zero experience and no Computer Science degree.When you have zero experience and just starting out, we see whats called " I know it all types", because they worked on home project by themselves, they think they are ready to command 80K+ out the gate. Naw it don't work like that. When working on home projects, you don't deal with

* Use Cases / Business rules / requirements / UML Charts
* Code reviews and somebody rejecting your code or you justifying why you did it this way, hows the performance? how many xxxxx ms did your code take?
* Deadlines, which sometimes will make you throw out best practices just to get something up and running.
* Dealing with business analyst
* Dealing with offshore teams
* Working in teams


Going to C# and Java. Yeah the syntax is easy to pick up, but the true OOP principles and building large programs are a different story. Why is Inheritance bad in most situations( Coupled vs loosely coupled code ) , should we go with Composition or Interfaces? When can we use structs over classes for performance reasons because of the garbage collector? Lambdas vs Linq(which they have entire books on Linq by itself ) Do you really know how to use Visual Studios profiler to optimize your code?

The reason why a developer who uses a Development language like C#/Java/C++ is more than likely going to be a better programmer than a Javascript developer and be able to pick up that language faster than vice versus is because that person writes programs/face challenges that no company in there right mind is going to use Javascript or any scripting language for. You don't build real-time software( Games , Operating systems , medical software and some business software ) in Javascript. shyt Unity 3D stop supporting Javascript because most developers went with C#. Scripting languages were meant to accomplish small tasks, people started pushing them beyond what they were meant for because of ease of use. Lets not even get into all scripting languages being implemented in C/C++...lol

All those problems you listed with Javascript, happens with all programming languages. You just have to deal with the language long enough to come across them.But there's a reason why everybody goes to a development language to build large programs and don't even think about scripting languages.

But anyway. All i'm saying is, take what you can get when starting out. Yes you will be butt raped, Yes they should be paying you more, Yes they probably have way too many requirements. But you don't take the first job for the pay, you take it for the experience and then go after what you deserve.

 

[Apollo Creed]

You aint lying, people that aren't in IT always look at you like when you tell them you switch jobs once or twice a year, they really don't understand that being comfortable in a position doesn't gain you anything...


1099 allows you to spend your money how you want, you can lets say you make 75k well on a w-2 the IRS wants 15-17k of that of which with a good tax preparer you can get it down to 10k or 7k.. Well on a 1099 you can take that extra 15-17k and invest in something like property you can come away with only giving them back like 5k, that 10k you used to invest will turn you profit as opposed to letting them gain a whole lot more interest on your money and you still living check to check..

But ofcourse w-2 is easier to manage and you can budget around what you actually bring home and can see a nice little bonus every year around tax time.

Pardon my ignorance.

So with 1099, you can move your money to investments to avoid taxes being that you are "lowering" your actual income? Or are you saying you "dictate" your income because you can consider some of the money you bring in to be for "business expenses" thus you avoid taxes on it? This isn't something I plan on doing at this very moment, but def in the near future.

 

[Apollo Creed]

Bruh, I hate to break it to you, but unless you have some groundbreaking projects in your GitHub, you can almost forget about getting those jobs with zero experience and no Computer Science degree.When you have zero experience and just starting out, we see whats called " I know it all types", because they worked on home project by themselves, they think they are ready to command 80K+ out the gate. Naw it don't work like that. When working on home projects, you don't deal with

* Use Cases / Business rules / requirements / UML Charts
* Code reviews and somebody rejecting your code or you justifying why you did it this way, hows the performance? how many xxxxx ms did your code take?
* Deadlines, which sometimes will make you throw out best practices just to get something up and running.
* Dealing with business analyst
* Dealing with offshore teams
* Working in teams


Going to C# and Java. Yeah the syntax is easy to pick up, but the true OOP principles and building large programs are a different story. Why is Inheritance bad in most situations( Coupled vs loosely coupled code ) , should we go with Composition or Interfaces? When can we use structs over classes for performance reasons because of the garbage collector? Lambdas vs Linq(which they have entire books on Linq by itself ) Do you really know how to use Visual Studios profiler to optimize your code?

The reason why a developer who uses a Development language like C#/Java/C++ is more than likely going to be a better programmer than a Javascript developer and be able to pick up that language faster than vice versus is because that person writes programs/face challenges that no company in there right mind is going to use Javascript or any scripting language for. You don't build real-time software( Games , Operating systems , medical software and some business software ) in Javascript. shyt Unity 3D stop supporting Javascript because most developers went with C#. Scripting languages were meant to accomplish small tasks, people started pushing them beyond what they were meant for because of ease of use. Lets not even get into all scripting languages being implemented in C/C++...lol

All those problems you listed with Javascript, happens with all programming languages. You just have to deal with the language long enough to come across them.But there's a reason why everybody goes to a development language to build large programs and don't even think about scripting languages.

But anyway. All i'm saying is, take what you can get when starting out. Yes you will be butt raped, Yes they should be paying you more, Yes they probably have way too many requirements. But you don't take the first job for the pay, you take it for the experience and then go after what you deserve.

Tell me about it, I took my first gig as a BA in 2012, and was getting paid pennies, but the experience was priceless, and last yr I got a new gig, so in a little over 3 yrs I got a 65% salary increase.

 

[Data-Hawk]

Tell me about it, I took my first gig as a BA in 2012, and was getting paid pennies, but the experience was priceless, and last yr I got a new gig, so in a little over 3 yrs I got a 65% salary increase.

LOL...First IT Job.........$12.75/hr. I was making more doing warehouse jobs. But luckily back then I browsed alot of Cert forums and people kept saying "Do it for the experience", "You are going to get fukked over on your first job". So I just kept saying to myself, get a couple months of experience and starting looking for another job. shyt back then I was so hungry I applied to Geek Squad. I just needed something with Computers..lol

 

[Apollo Creed]

LOL...First IT Job.........$12.75/hr. I was making more doing warehouse jobs. But luckily back then I browsed alot of Cert forums and people kept saying "Do it for the experience", "You are going to get fukked over on your first job". So I just kept saying to myself, get a couple months of experience and starting looking for another job. shyt back then I was so hungry I applied to Geek Squad. I just needed something with Computers..lol

Yea, my next move I`m trying to change tax brackets again lol. I have the Business Knowledge down back, just trying to gain more technical experience.

 

[Rayzah]

Pardon my ignorance.

So with 1099, you can move your money to investments to avoid taxes being that you are "lowering" your actual income? Or are you saying you "dictate" your income because you can consider some of the money you bring in to be for "business expenses" thus you avoid taxes on it? This isn't something I plan on doing at this very moment, but def in the near future.

Im saying since you get to write off business expenses anyway its better to keep your money all year and pay as little as possible to the IRS later after you have used it for something to make you some more money instead of letting the IRS make money off you all year.. But yea pouring money into a business lowers the amount you are taxed

 

[kevm3]

Bruh, I hate to break it to you, but unless you have some groundbreaking projects in your GitHub, you can almost forget about getting those jobs with zero experience and no Computer Science degree.When you have zero experience and just starting out, we see whats called " I know it all types", because they worked on home project by themselves, they think they are ready to command 80K+ out the gate. Naw it don't work like that. When working on home projects, you don't deal with

* Use Cases / Business rules / requirements / UML Charts
* Code reviews and somebody rejecting your code or you justifying why you did it this way, hows the performance? how many xxxxx ms did your code take?
* Deadlines, which sometimes will make you throw out best practices just to get something up and running.
* Dealing with business analyst
* Dealing with offshore teams
* Working in teams


Going to C# and Java. Yeah the syntax is easy to pick up, but the true OOP principles and building large programs are a different story. Why is Inheritance bad in most situations( Coupled vs loosely coupled code ) , should we go with Composition or Interfaces? When can we use structs over classes for performance reasons because of the garbage collector? Lambdas vs Linq(which they have entire books on Linq by itself ) Do you really know how to use Visual Studios profiler to optimize your code?

The reason why a developer who uses a Development language like C#/Java/C++ is more than likely going to be a better programmer than a Javascript developer and be able to pick up that language faster than vice versus is because that person writes programs/face challenges that no company in there right mind is going to use Javascript or any scripting language for. You don't build real-time software( Games , Operating systems , medical software and some business software ) in Javascript. shyt Unity 3D stop supporting Javascript because most developers went with C#. Scripting languages were meant to accomplish small tasks, people started pushing them beyond what they were meant for because of ease of use. Lets not even get into all scripting languages being implemented in C/C++...lol

All those problems you listed with Javascript, happens with all programming languages. You just have to deal with the language long enough to come across them.But there's a reason why everybody goes to a development language to build large programs and don't even think about scripting languages.

But anyway. All i'm saying is, take what you can get when starting out. Yes you will be butt raped, Yes they should be paying you more, Yes they probably have way too many requirements. But you don't take the first job for the pay, you take it for the experience and then go after what you deserve.

I'm not expecting to get those jobs without any experience. I'm saying that some of those listings were low for full stack development, especially for 2 years of experience. If you've got 2 years of experience and a solid github/apps deployed on heroku, with your inbox will be flooded with offers if you live in one of the tech hubs. Having 2 years of experience at a solid company and getting offered $60,000 is a lowball offer. I don't believe $55-60,000 is excessive for entry level, especially if you have a solid portfolio.

All of the things about avoiding deep inheritance chains, dependency injection, etc apply to modern Javascript development. Increasingly more complex apps are being built with it, rivaling many desktop apps. You have your 3d games (webGL), emulators, paint programs, etc. JS development today isn't like JS of 5 or 10 years ago. It has become significantly more complex. One of the main avenues where Node.js excels is for realtime apps.

Paypal actually moved from Java on the backend to NodeJS:
Node.js at PayPal | PayPal Engineering Blog

Microsoft made JS a first class language in VS mainly because they see the huge potential in it. One of the main reasons for the prevalence of JS is that you can 'write once and deploy everywhere' due to every OS having a browser. You can even build native mobile apps using things like PhoneGap, Cordova or React Native.

Here's command and conquer created in Javascript:
Command and Conquer - HTML5
3d games in Javascript
Babylon.js demos & documentation

C# is the focus of unity because most people find C# a superior language to work with, which I can't argue against. With that said, RPGMaker switched from ruby to JS and you can even embed your games right into the browser. JS isn't the most elegant language, but it isn't the simple script kiddy language that it had it's reputation for. As of now, it's the only way to access the front-end and apps being built in JS are getting as complex as apps in any other language. It may not be the most optimal language for huge apps, but people are making them, and it's also one of the reasons for Typescript, which is pretty much JS with types and a few other features.

RPGMaker game in the browser
Areath: The Shadow's Edge

 

[Data-Hawk]

I'm not expecting to get those jobs without any experience. I'm saying that some of those listings were low for full stack development, especially for 2 years of experience. If you've got 2 years of experience and a solid github/apps deployed on heroku, with your inbox will be flooded with offers if you live in one of the tech hubs. Having 2 years of experience at a solid company and getting offered $60,000 is a lowball offer. I don't believe $55-60,000 is excessive for entry level, especially if you have a solid portfolio.

All of the things about avoiding deep inheritance chains, dependency injection, etc apply to modern Javascript development. Increasingly more complex apps are being built with it, rivaling many desktop apps. You have your 3d games (webGL), emulators, paint programs, etc. JS development today isn't like JS of 5 or 10 years ago. It has become significantly more complex. One of the main avenues where Node.js excels is for realtime apps.

Paypal actually moved from Java on the backend to NodeJS:
Node.js at PayPal | PayPal Engineering Blog

Microsoft made JS a first class language in VS mainly because they see the huge potential in it. One of the main reasons for the prevalence of JS is that you can 'write once and deploy everywhere' due to every OS having a browser. You can even build native mobile apps using things like PhoneGap, Cordova or React Native.

Here's command and conquer created in Javascript:
Command and Conquer - HTML5
3d games in Javascript
Babylon.js demos & documentation

C# is the focus of unity because most people find C# a superior language to work with, which I can't argue against. With that said, RPGMaker switched from ruby to JS and you can even embed your games right into the browser. JS isn't the most elegant language, but it isn't the simple script kiddy language that it had it's reputation for. As of now, it's the only way to access the front-end and apps being built in JS are getting as complex as apps in any other language. It may not be the most optimal language for huge apps, but people are making them, and it's also one of the reasons for Typescript, which is pretty much JS with types and a few other features.

RPGMaker game in the browser
Areath: The Shadow's Edge

O ok. At first I thought you were on some " I need 80K" out the gate stuff.. Lol for the language stuff. I've been programming for 19 years now. In those 19 years I have never seen a language debate end nicely. All languages have there place. We can just leave it at that.. Lol

 

[kevm3]

O ok. At first I thought you were on some " I need 80K" out the gate stuff.. Lol for the language stuff. I've been programming for 19 years now. In those 19 years I have never seen a language debate end nicely. All languages have there place. We can just leave it at that.. Lol

That's one thing I've seen on the web. No matter what language, there's a lot of programmers out there that thinks it sucks and that some other language is better. You can easily learn the basics of a new language in the time you'd waste by reading programmers argue which is the best language.

 

[Data-Hawk]

That's one thing I've seen on the web. No matter what language, there's a lot of programmers out there that thinks it sucks and that some other language is better. You can easily learn the basics of a new language in the time you'd waste by reading programmers argue which is the best language.

It's the " it works for me " that all programmers are guilty of. For example at work I'm working on a framework in C# for automation All of our current frameworks are in vbscript , they are fighting me tooth and nail to not move away from vbscript because they are comfortable in it. It's literally all they know. Even though the industry is moving to Development languages for it.They are scared of C# learning curve or really any new language for that matter. I'm sure there are hardcore C programmers who don't want to move to any OOP language because C was the king in the 90's. A favorite language is like your kid.. Lol