Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[Secure Da Bag]

What yall think about quantum computing? would love to be up on a tech before a good percentage of the population.

If I was smart enough to do that, I'd be doing that. That is the tech of the future. The R&D budget must be crazy.

 

[Mirin4rmfar]

like in the early days of computing there is less separation between maths, electronics, computer science and now additionally advanced physics



there's lots of work to be done with quantum algorithms. especially fast quantum proof security algorithms.

Shor's algorithm - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

google has a team.

DWAVE too (iirc)

what do you think about quantum computing?

One of my friends who is always up on new tech, introduce me to it. He is making crazy bank being up early on cloud computing etc. That is his primary focus going forward. I am looking it too. First in line probably means more money when demand get high.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

It took 20 years before classic computers became a thing and commercial. Another 10 years to get allow "regular people" to become mainstream programmers.

So by 2050, I expect this to be more commercial, but not mainstream like it is now.

 

[Mike809]

So my current internship that started back in early June, and was supposed to end by August 14th , got extended until October 28th ( coworkers tried to get me a full time offer , but the director said he couldn't due to the economy at that moment lol).


The first phase was me mostly working on typescript and react , which I had a good experience and was able to finish my intern project.

For the 2nd phase , which started August 14th , I was to work only with Java, which is what my team works with . I also wasn't assigned a project this time, and would just be given tickets to work on like everybody else.

Honestly , I thought this 2nd phase would go even better than the 1st phase since I'm more familiar with Java but it's been the opposite.

I actually dread going to work now, because I just can't seem to understand the codebase and this company beginnings was as a start-up back in 2013 and a lot of the time-crunch code is still around.

Such as constructors with 20 arguments and files with 500 lines of code.

Right now , I'm working with Google protobuf and building expressions of off that.

But this company can't seem to spare the manpower to guide entry-level developers like myself. No pair-programing or anything similar.

For the past week and a half , at startup, I just been saying "still working on the same ticket " .

I probably won't be getting a return offer by the end of October unless September turns out to be perfect , and even though I like my coworkers, I don't know if I would like to continue working here.

I'll probably start applying for new roles in September, and now that I have almost 6 months of experience, it should be easier.

 

[null]

So my current internship that started back in early June, and was supposed to end by August 14th , got extended until October 28th ( coworkers tried to get me a full time offer , but the director said he couldn't due to the economy at that moment lol).

The first phase was me mostly working on typescript and react , which I had a good experience and was able to finish my intern project.

For the 2nd phase , which started August 14th , I was to work only with Java, which is what my team works with . I also wasn't assigned a project this time, and would just be given tickets to work on like everybody else.

Honestly , I thought this 2nd phase would go even better than the 1st phase since I'm more familiar with Java but it's been the opposite.

I actually dread going to work now, because I just can't seem to understand the codebase and this company beginnings was as a start-up back in 2013 and a lot of the time-crunch code is still around.

Such as constructors with 20 arguments and files with 500 lines of code.

500 lines of code is not that huge.

Right now , I'm working with Google protobuf and building expressions of off that.

But this company can't seem to spare the manpower to guide entry-level developers like myself. No pair-programing or anything similar.

Keep on pushing. The design will start to make sense eventually.

Do you have a full independent test envioronment where you can play around without affecting anyone else? If you do, you need to camp up and live there. Spend as much time as possible playing around, so as to understand. Evenings, nights, weekends ....

For the past week and a half , at startup, I just been saying "still working on the same ticket " .

If you have any specific issues ask someone. But choose those moments and topics carefully .. don't keep pestering.

Is there anything coli brehs can help with?

What kind of app is it?

I probably won't be getting a return offer by the end of October unless September turns out to be perfect , and even though I like my coworkers, I don't know if I would like to continue working here.

I'll probably start applying for new roles in September, and now that I have almost 6 months of experience, it should be easier.

This is your Training Day coli breh Learn those programming skreets

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

Do you have a full independent test envioronment where you can play around without affecting anyone else? If you do, you need to camp up and live there. Spend as much time as possible playing around, so as to understand. Evenings, nights, weekends ....

Don't give the company free work

 

[Secure Da Bag]

Don't give the company free work

In your 1st job, you kinda have to. By your 3rd job, you better not be.

 

[IIVI]

So my current internship that started back in early June, and was supposed to end by August 14th , got extended until October 28th ( coworkers tried to get me a full time offer , but the director said he couldn't due to the economy at that moment lol).


The first phase was me mostly working on typescript and react , which I had a good experience and was able to finish my intern project.

For the 2nd phase , which started August 14th , I was to work only with Java, which is what my team works with . I also wasn't assigned a project this time, and would just be given tickets to work on like everybody else.

Honestly , I thought this 2nd phase would go even better than the 1st phase since I'm more familiar with Java but it's been the opposite.

I actually dread going to work now, because I just can't seem to understand the codebase and this company beginnings was as a start-up back in 2013 and a lot of the time-crunch code is still around.

Such as constructors with 20 arguments and files with 500 lines of code.

Right now , I'm working with Google protobuf and building expressions of off that.

But this company can't seem to spare the manpower to guide entry-level developers like myself. No pair-programing or anything similar.

For the past week and a half , at startup, I just been saying "still working on the same ticket " .

I probably won't be getting a return offer by the end of October unless September turns out to be perfect , and even though I like my coworkers, I don't know if I would like to continue working here.

I'll probably start applying for new roles in September, and now that I have almost 6 months of experience, it should be easier.

Similar position at my last company.

One of the best pieces of advice I got when working with big codebases is take things small and console log/debug/test one function at a time so you can try to understand the surrounding code (both what it calls out to and what's calling it). Write some test cases if you can.

Depending on the size of the codebase, you probably won't be understanding the whole thing until a few years and even then, probably not. So don't put too much pressure on yourself, it's been what 2 weeks? For most people it takes about a year to feel more comfortable with the codebase. Additionally, notice I said "more comfortable" and not "comfortable". Probably like 99% of the professional software engineers out there don't understand their entire company's codebase - especially if it's an ultra monolith.

Spoiler: Additionally, welcome to the working world of legacy codebases.

Some of these stories are outright and insane (in a seriously scary way), some highlights from that thread:

There's currently one senior dev who understands the system for 15,000 doctors in Canada. There's lots of people to install and support it, but understanding the 1.5 million line code base... it's down to one - Yay corporate mergers!

These comments are hilarious and true. Despite everyone here thinking their job is on par with neurosurgeons, we generally do shytty work that leads to shytty products.

Most of the really low-level software that your phone runs is probably completely lacking unit tests, probably doesn't have code coverage metrics, and if you're lucky it's tested by a CI that just about barely works on a good day that may or may not support a limited subset of real hardware.

Almost everything is just wrappers on top of wrappers on top of open source projects.

Every .net shop is trying to rewrite their 20+ year old legacy application that is the backbone of the company, but can’t get it right.

AWS is held together with duct tape and glue. Literally no time spent on refactor/cleanup because we are overworked and there's always a new feature or bug to get to.

Missiles and satellites basically work on a 10-20 year old copy-pasted code, along with all the previous bugs. No one wants to dive in to fix the code or write a new one, and there's always one retired guy you can invite to see the code but he doesn't give any answers.

If it works, it's a miracle.

No matter what, your data will never be safe

These comments are erasing my imposter syndrome. I love you all.

Spoiler: Some outright sad non-software engineering issues/secrets too.

Industrial Automation

The automation industry (think factory hardware, robotics, software, motors, manufacturing tech) is anti innovation despite all marketing efforts to the contrary. There's a few large players who, upon discovering a new innovative technology that threatens one of their existing revenue sources, will either acquire and bury the tech or sue the company (usually a startup without a ton of cash) into the ground on baseless claims until they run out of money to pay the legal fees.

Sometimes they'll sue them first just to swoop in right before bankruptcy to acquire them at a bargain. They pay the number crunchers who figure out the cheapest path towards killing these companies a lot of money.

The amount of mind blowing, innovative, productive, useful, exciting, groundbreaking tech I've seen buried jaded me and caused me to quit the field entirely.

As a startup, you're fighting against two things. The first is the baseless claims of patent infringement. The big automation company will accuse the startup of infringing on a variety of their patents even though the company actually does not. But, it's up to the startup to prove in court that they don't infringe on any of the patents. Then, there's situations in which startup is infringing on intellectual property of the big automation company, but it's over trivial design details that nobody in their right mind would expect to be patented.

I'll give you an example. When I was at the big automation company they had a regular meeting in which they celebrated all the patents that their engineers had filed with the US patent office. I remember some of these meetings thinking, "That's the dumbest patent I've ever seen in my life." One I specifically remember had to do with the layout of capacitors. The engineer had decided to lay them out in a staggered formation. It was just for capacitors. But they had patented the layout claiming some sort of optimal thermal dissipation compared to alternative layouts. That patent was followed by a few other patents, basically patenting all of the other common sense capacitor layouts someone would think of. So basically this company now has granted patents that allow it to sue anybody who happens to lay their capacitors out in one of any of four to five possible common sense layouts. The folks at the US patent office for some reason aren't savvy enough to understand the nuances of what's going on. So the company keeps doing this for literally decades.

One of my previous jobs (major gaming company): folks did not give a single care about bad or unreadable code. It's a game so launching with bugs wasn't going to kill anybody, which means for the most part they knew they weren't going to be held legally liable anyways for a game with horrible bugs. Yeah, that codebase and all their microservices were a wreck.

 

[Neo. The Only. The One.]

I know this ain't the thread for this, but shoot, Imma ask. What's up with the women in tech? Y'all brehs ever tried to holla at somebody? Maybe somebody you work with, or met through a tech event, or on Linkedin.

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

I know this ain't the thread for this, but shoot, Imma ask. What's up with the women in tech? Y'all brehs ever tried to holla at somebody? Maybe somebody you work with, or met through a tech event, or on Linkedin.

I read a signal wrong a few years ago . She didn't try to #MeToo me or any shyt like that though. I also didn't do some stupid shyt like putting my dikk on her shoulder either . She talmbout what you do in your free time, I thought she was interested . But she was referring to work .

It's probably real hit and miss though depending on your preferences. If you don't PAWG or PAAG, or are concerned about your Coli optics then look elsewhere.

 

[Neo. The Only. The One.]

I read a signal wrong a few years ago . She didn't try to #MeToo me or any shyt like that though. I also didn't do some stupid shyt like putting my dikk on her shoulder either . She talmbout what you do in your free time, I thought she was interested . But she was referring to work .

It's probably real hit and miss though depending on your preferences. If you don't PAWG or PAAG, or are concerned about your Coli optics then look elsewhere.

I neither PAWG nor PAAG. Sistas only. But there's some real cuties in tech, my guy

And they do be saying things that are hard to interpret. And I'm not tryna be that guy, but if she asks me what I'm doing after work or in my free time, Imma think she's interested too.

Who has "free time" at work? Who asks what you're doing in your "free time" at work??

It's kinda hard to gauge.

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

I neither PAWG nor PAAG. Sistas only. But there's some real cuties in tech, my guy

And they do be saying things that are hard to interpret. And I'm not tryna be that guy, but if she asks me what I'm doing after work or in my free time, Imma think she's interested too.

Who has "free time" at work? Who asks what you're doing in your "free time" at work??

It's kinda hard to gauge.

That's what I'm saying . Granted we were entry level at the time and the workload was lighter, but that wasn't even the subject at the time.

And my god there are. We had a white chick with a fat ass, cute smile, #Catset, and she was into cars (like legit working on them).

I think the best bet for a black woman in industry will be someone tech adjacent, so like a project manager or something. That's where I've seen most of them, however the overwhelming majority of them were wifed up, and they were relatively young.

 

[Software]

I neither PAWG nor PAAG. Sistas only. But there's some real cuties in tech, my guy

And they do be saying things that are hard to interpret. And I'm not tryna be that guy, but if she asks me what I'm doing after work or in my free time, Imma think she's interested too.

Who has "free time" at work? Who asks what you're doing in your "free time" at work??

It's kinda hard to gauge.

It's tough. If you like black women only and you're looking for an engineer that's a 7 or above and ISN'T wifed already. It's gonna be tough. There's a bit more black women in other roles liek product owner, or scrum master tho. Still not a bunch.
I will say one thing about having a black women in tech as your significant other. It is very nice having someone who you can talk to who understands both your work and life difficulties.

 

[Neo. The Only. The One.]

That's what I'm saying . Granted we were entry level at the time and the workload was lighter, but that wasn't even the subject at the time.

And my god there are. We had a white chick with a fat ass, cute smile, #Catset, and she was into cars (like legit working on them).

I think the best bet for a black woman in industry will be someone tech adjacent, so like a project manager or something. That's where I've seen most of them, however the overwhelming majority of them were wifed up, and they were relatively young.

Yeah man, and then I'm a sapiosexual (attracted to intelligence) so seeing a cutie break down data structures and algorithms makes me



But I don't want to get out of line with any of them either because they be so hard to guage.

They are either all business, no small talk, or they're extremely friendly.

 

[Software]

Almost 6 months into my new job. Said I'd give myself a year here. So interviews again in 6 months time to start preparing early this time.

I wonder how much better id get doing an hour of leet code a day from now until then?