Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[null]

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Nah, lol, the dap was because I appreciate the discussion. I think its important as developers to talk about things that influence what we do




As to the rest, i know what you mean. Sure, you can say its nonsense in the incorrect project, but thats anything. If the opposing soccer team won't press us, why would we follow the same tactics as when a team pressed us? Scrum is just a part of how an Agile based project is run. It can feel useless when there's nothing to talk about (in those cases the meetings should be 5 minutes). Tasks are completed and no blockers. But when there are blockers or there is new information, its the time that brings it up, which is in my opinion, more valuable than the meetings where nothing is discussed is unvaluable.

I have been on projects with non-techie development managers which were in no way suited to Scrum and guess what? They insisted on daily scrum meetings with everyone present. And everyone talking.



Managers tend to see scrum as part of their standard tech stack. I.e. just as they would say "we are a Java+Linux company" they would also say "we use scrum". And just as Java would be the default language for new projects, agile+scrum would be the order of the day for practically all projects.

And don't get me started on the buzz word mania, the control freakery, the quasi-religious devotion, the charts, the supercilious titles "... Master" ...

If you don't agree it is because you "don't understand".



It is the second worst thing in all of IT ...

after the all-time world champ of IT gone wrong ... Javascript

 

[Regular Developer]

Yea, you're right, lol. Non-techies love them some buzzwords. Its the same thing with the data field. The number of companies that hired "data scientists" so they could implement machine learning, without having either a data engineer or even a data warehouse baffles me.

But yea, at some point you kind of have to throw your weight around as a developer. I learned that the hard way. I don't let anybody scope out how long tasks will take to complete, unless its another developer with experience. I also prefer to work on projects where my voice matters and with people that A) know what their doing and B) are invested in the completion of the project. Because I've been on daily standups with 15 people and its really annoying, especially when the meeting is before 10am.

 

[null]

While we are on the topic: "mergesort". If you have to write some form of merge sort should you bother to merge in place or would it be good enough to copy everything into new storage before the merge? Any comments about the merging in place action itself ...?

 

[Top Left]

I left my job as a teacher, learning the basics atm while working full time in oil field job (safety, pretty relaxed).
Any tips?! How far can I get with 2-3hrs daily study sessions? 6 months to be job ready, or I’m underestimating the load?

 

[Regular Developer]

While we are on the topic: "mergesort". If you have to write some form of merge sort should you bother to merge in place or would it be good enough to copy everything into new storage before the merge? Any comments about the merging in place action itself ...?

oof. I definitely fallback to stackoverflow for questions like this. I would imagine you'd want to copy to storage before you merged. At least in the cases of functional programming

 

[Dr. Acula]

Yeah I'm hearing there are frequent meetings and other dreadful bs from the business world that's creeping into it. It's not something that I'm looking forward to once I'm job ready.

If they say they do Agile or Scrum or any other new business buzzwords, you will have to be collaborative. But some groups are more adamant and follow those "principles" more than others. Some teams may do daily stand-up meetings that will last 15-30 minutes while another may have them twice a week and they are just quick check-ins reporting what you're doing and they're over in 5 minutes. It can vary.

I will say though, I find a collaborative work environment, even in software development, more productive than a non-collaborative one. In fact, individual "I can solve any and every problem and don't need to work with others" types are not usually good for a team....

 

[Dr. Acula]

I left my job as a teacher, learning the basics atm while working full time in oil field job (safety, pretty relaxed).
Any tips?! How far can I get with 2-3hrs daily study sessions? 6 months to be job ready, or I’m underestimating the load?

Depends what type of job you're looking to land. Are you looking to do just UX/UI design? Are you looking to be a back-end dev? Front-end? or more engineering focus like embedded design?
Depending on your goal, the amount of time and work to achieve it in that time frame will differ.

 

[Top Left]

Depends what type of job you're looking to land. Are you looking to do just UX/UI design? Are you looking to be a back-end dev? Front-end? or more engineering focus like embedded design?
Depending on your goal, the amount of time and work to achieve it in that time frame will differ.

My end goal would be to work in crypto, and become a blockchain developer. I’ve been dabbling in crypto for a few years and have had decent amount of success. Found out that there’s a huge demand for competent programmers in that field.

I’m a complete beginner, so what I was thinking to do, and started to do was study the absolute basics of web development. Currently just finished learning html, moving on to css, then planning to learn JavaScript and python, and become a competent fullstack developer. After a year or two in that field working, I’d simultaneously learn solidity and/or rust, then develop random personal projects in whatever ecosystem I choose to work in, whether ethereum, avalanche or Solana.

Am I going about it the long way? Am I trying to chew on more than I can? I appreciate all the advice I can get. God willing I’ll be able to reach my final goal

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

I left my job as a teacher, learning the basics atm while working full time in oil field job (safety, pretty relaxed).
Any tips?! How far can I get with 2-3hrs daily study sessions? 6 months to be job ready, or I’m underestimating the load?

What are you trying to learn? I don't think that you can expect to be job ready in any field in 6 months if you only do 2-3 hours a day.

 

[Top Left]

What are you trying to learn? I don't think that you can expect to be job ready in any field in 6 months if you only do 2-3 hours a day.

End goal is to be a blockchain developer, I know nothing atm but html, working towards becoming a full stack dev, then planning to transition to blockchain development. Am I going about it the wrong way?

I’m limited to few hrs a day due to full time work, on weekends/days off i put on 5-8hrs in.

 

[null]

If they say they do Agile or Scrum or any other new business buzzwords, you will have to be collaborative. But some groups are more adamant and follow those "principles" more than others. Some teams may do daily stand-up meetings that will last 15-30 minutes while another may have them twice a week and they are just quick check-ins reporting what you're doing and they're over in 5 minutes. It can vary.

I will say though, I find a collaborative work environment, even in software development, more productive than a non-collaborative one. In fact, individual "I can solve any and every problem and don't need to work with others" types are not usually good for a team....

Javascript / Web-GUI developer?

 

[Spatial Paradox]

Yea I agree. Bad managers will always make for a bad experience on a project, because they don't know what they're doing. My experience with project management at my current company vs past companies is greatly different. Like, you either get the managers that are too p*ssy to stand up for the development team or you get the ones that try to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of the developers (o man, this brings me back to the dumbest project I've ever worked on, lol). My current company is pretty good with the project management, so I try to only work on projects where we have some control over it rather than the client.

tangent: Good discussion. I don't get to have these convos at all these days

To the bolded, I'd add that it's definitely possible to have both of these qualities in the same manager, which means a special kind of working hell. When your engineering manager not-so-subtly implies you should be working over the weekends and holidays to finish a project that literally can't progress further because another team needs to finish their work first, instead of enjoying that time off with your friends and family

I couldn't run from my last job fast enough in part because of this. But as much as my time there sucked, it did at least teach me a lot of red flags to look for in future companies.

 

[Dr. Acula]

Javascript / Web-GUI developer?

They have me wearing many hats at the moment lol. That is one of them.

 

[Dr. Acula]

My end goal would be to work in crypto, and become a blockchain developer. I’ve been dabbling in crypto for a few years and have had decent amount of success. Found out that there’s a huge demand for competent programmers in that field.

I’m a complete beginner, so what I was thinking to do, and started to do was study the absolute basics of web development. Currently just finished learning html, moving on to css, then planning to learn JavaScript and python, and become a competent fullstack developer. After a year or two in that field working, I’d simultaneously learn solidity and/or rust, then develop random personal projects in whatever ecosystem I choose to work in, whether ethereum, avalanche or Solana.

Am I going about it the long way? Am I trying to chew on more than I can? I appreciate all the advice I can get. God willing I’ll be able to reach my final goal

I don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't waste my time on Rust just yet. That is if your goal is a job. It's supposed to be a replacement of C++, but it doesn't have the baked in history of C++ and it won't be replacing it on a widescale yet. I would, personally, replace it with c++. Though if you're specifically interested in Crypto, I couldn't tell you about that field and maybe Rust is in high demand there. If that is the case, ignore this advice.

I would start the personal projects on the side now to go along with your learning. The best way to learn is always by doing. You can watch a million youtube videos and do a bunch of courses, but you'll find when it comes to actual application of that knowledge, you'll never will be as comfortable with it as you would by doing it from the start. Because a lot of it is kind of like muscle memory. The more you use the tools available to you, the more you will start to incorporate it into your day to day problem solving and developing. It's not until you actually put it into practice, do you truly start to learn.

Like for the HTML, in addition to exercises or examples you do to go along with a course or tutorial, start building a website using just HTML. Like something cool that is just for yourself so you can use the skills you learn. Then when you start to get more knowledge in CSS, Javascript, and then eventually python, start using it to build upon what you already created to improve it and make it more complex.

 

[Top Left]

I don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't waste my time on Rust just yet. That is if your goal is a job. It's supposed to be a replacement of C++, but it doesn't have the baked in history of C++ and it won't be replacing it on a widescale yet. I would, personally, replace it with c++. Though if you're specifically interested in Crypto, I couldn't tell you about that field and maybe Rust is in high demand there. If that is the case, ignore this advice.

I would start the personal projects on the side now to go along with your learning. The best way to learn is always by doing. You can watch a million youtube videos and do a bunch of courses, but you'll find when it comes to actual application of that knowledge, you'll never will be as comfortable with it as you would by doing it from the start. Because a lot of it is kind of like muscle memory. The more you use the tools available to you, the more you will start to incorporate it into your day to day problem solving and developing. It's not until you actually put it into practice, do you truly start to learn.

Like for the HTML, in addition to exercises or examples you do to go along with a course or tutorial, start building a website using just HTML. Like something cool that is just for yourself so you can use the skills you learn. Then when you start to get more knowledge in CSS, Javascript, and then eventually python, start using it to build upon what you already created to improve it and make it more complex.

Appreciate the advice brother! That’s what I’ll be doing, gotta be proficient in the basics first. I’ll keep you guys updated with my progress. I’m aiming to have at least several mini projects/websites done by December inshallah