Getting started the right way as a developer is tough, so I wrote you a letter I'd love to have received some ten years ago.
Getting a diploma does not mean the end of studying
Holding that shiny piece of paper you worked so hard for in your hands? Congrats!
In reality, you are just getting started. While your official studies are over, it does not mean that you do not need to learn new tricks anymore. Quite the contrary, actually: modern software evolves so fast that you need to learn new things every day to stay current. It's a good idea to come up with a daily routine of checking what's new in your field. For developers, Hackernews and Proggit are good for this. Ask what your colleagues read.
The real gems – and most satisfying lessons – lie in the comments section. When browsing Proggit, I recommend reading the comments before committing fifteen minutes to reading a nicely titled (or click-baited) article. Do this. Do this daily. Even on the weekends. You will thank yourself in a year.
Sound advice?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @11:05PM
Oh so you read Hacker News like the trendy coders, do you? You're obviously lying, because I can tell just by looking at you, you're not a coder. Real coders don't have beards, and real coders don't have white skin. I'm not even going to look at your blog to see what you you copied and pasted from somewhere, and I'm sure your GitHub profile is full of code you stole from projects you didn't work on. Get out of here, and don't come back.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 04 2016, @11:33PM
Guffaw.
But I share your skepticism, fellow -- Many like myself had a strong background in electronics before resigning ourselves to this nonsense.
(Score: 1) by nethead on Monday December 05 2016, @05:09AM
Same here, I started out in broadcast engineering before the computer stuff.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 04 2016, @11:51PM
*Scratches his beard while looking at his pale arms*
Wish I'd known twenty some odd years ago that I wasn't a real code monkey. Would have saved me a lot of time.
Oh well, at least this means I can quit playing with SN code and concentrate on my professional fisherman ambitions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @11:46PM
This seems to be suggesting that it's actually possible to learn outside of a formal setting, which we all know is absurd. None of the knowledge that you 'learn' outside of a college or university can be trusted, and you're bound to have gaps in your knowledge. Go back to college if you want to learn something new.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @10:13AM
And unfortunately, once you hit 40, even going back to college/university isn't going to help, as you can't learn new stuff fast enough to overcome the information your brain is casually tossing into the wastebin.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday December 05 2016, @12:05AM
Lucky enough to be 20 in 78, when I bought a TRS-80. Learned Basic, coded up Conway's Life, couldn't figure out why it didn't run, went to pee, came back to see a generation had passed. So I learned Z-80 assembly.
At work I was an electronic tech working on an 8080 based system. Started writing my own routines to troubleshoot problems. A co-worker and I started working on Space Invaders. Marketing found our game (at that point you could shoot aliens but they weren't dropping bombs yet), and used it at trade shows. Engineering found out about it and brought me over. They offered to bring Steve over as well but he declined.
This is when I learned 8086 assembler. They had a PDP-11 with some oddball OS (RSX-11?). Started working with bit-slice (AMD 2900 family). The compiler ran under Unix on that PDP-11, so when I need to do a build we rebooted it (there were maybe 3 of us using that PDP). Learned Unix. Company got a Vax with Unix. Learned C.
Around 85 I realized that if I ever wanted to get another job I'd need a degree. So I spent the next 8 years working full time, taking 2 classes a semester, to get a piece of paper. IMHO, huge waste of time and money except for the getting a job thing, YMMV.
All this in maybe 7 years (78-85). Those were the days.
Anyway, in this field you have to keep learning. You also have to learn what might be useful (Python, Perl) and what is BS (agile, peer programming, CASE).
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @12:16AM
what is BS (agile, peer programming, CASE).
Learning to work well with others lasts a long time. Process is not about the process but about working well with the other kindergartners. If it becomes about the process then you have failed already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @12:43AM
You can find out exactly what OS it was and get back to us :)
More seriously though, if you have any old books, documents, whitepapers, etc, check if they don't already have them and consider scanning and making a contribution!
It is really good to hear stories from some of you greybeardy types and the stuff you got to work on back when I was still in diapers.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 05 2016, @12:48AM
Wait, what? You think Agile is BS? Lot of aspects of programming change awfully fast. How better to keep up than with an Agile mindset?
For example, how to write a graphical app has changed immensely since the 1980s. In the early 80s, you targeted a platform, perhaps CGA graphics on the PC, or the Apple II graphics, or maybe a Commodore 64. Might do ports to whichever ones you didn't work with first. By the late 80s, there was VGA graphics on the PC and a plethora of graphics cards and drivers for them. The DOS operating systems of the times weren't much, very simple and limited, hardly more than loaders. And today, all that knowledge is very obsolete and useless. We moved from direct manipulation of graphics hardware to libraries such as xlib, which is now also obsolete. Today it is GUI libraries such as Gnome and KDE. For game graphics it is OpenGL or DirectX, or not even those, would go higher level yet with something like OGRE or OpenSceneGraph. Meantime, the OS has expanded mightily and is no longer a mere loader of binaries that can be readily brushed aside once finished loading your code.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday December 05 2016, @03:43AM
Technology-wise, this sounds extremely similar to my path, but I actually think agile development and pair programming work (or at least better than waterfall and poor programmers hiding in their offices [producing nothing).
Well, actually, I'm not a fan of Perl or even Python that much either. I prefer Go, Rust, and even Java/Groovy. If you have a hate for Java's requirement of template code, you should seriously check out Groovy.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @05:05AM
agile development and pair programming work (or at least better than waterfall and poor programmers hiding in their offices [producing nothing).
You're totally right. Snorting coke off a hooker's ass is more productive. Programming doesn't ever require quiet contemplation or abstract thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @08:51AM
Arrrggghhhhh!! You complete and utter BASTARD
I could have gone at least another 5 or 10.years without being reminded of CASE tools. *sob*
Why. Just why. Did you have to bring it up?
I am going to go sit under my desk and not think about balancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:39AM
Have some XML Web Services with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @12:35AM
You mean we have to keep studying IT, computer science, and math/science on our own time, even after we've landed a decent job?
C'mon.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday December 05 2016, @03:32AM
At least your making a decent living, teachers are expected to pay to do that for an embarrassingly small amount of money.
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday December 05 2016, @07:11AM
Oh, Francis! How am I supposed to be able to mod you down for such a statement as this:
At least your making a decent living, teachers are expected to pay to do that for an embarrassingly small amount of money.
Are you trying to suck up? But in the interest of education, it is "you're", as in "you are making a decent living". This is not a possessive. And I assume you meant that teachers are expected to do this, not "pay to do that", because if you had to pay to be a teacher, and buy supplies for your students, give them hard copies they are to lazy to download the e-text of because they are completely illiterate, not just internet illiterate, then I imagine, but I don't know, I could just be riffing on Franciscan ignorance here, there would be no teachers, at all. Since there are, I can only assume you did not mean what you wrote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @11:47AM
...they are to lazy to download...
Pointing out grammatical errors is a precarious endeavor. Hence I do it anonymously.
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday December 05 2016, @06:30PM
Subtle are the ways of the Grammar Notsee!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @10:11PM
Somebody made a typo on the internet. How will the world continue to spin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @12:37AM
Learn Hindi...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 05 2016, @03:08AM
Is that an interpreted or compiled language?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @04:49AM
Interpreted unless you know something about human babies that I don't....
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @03:33AM
Disclaimer: It's pretty good.
Heil Trump 2020!
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Monday December 05 2016, @08:11AM
TFA harps about mentors, but I don’t think I ever really had one. I had taught myself 6502 machine language at the age of 11 from photocopied scraps of C-64 reference manuals. After I got an IBM-compatible PC in the late eighties, I taught myself x86 assembly language from Peter Norton’s books and for a long time his Pink Shirt Book was the most well-thumbed reference on my desk. I later learned C from a copy of the new K&R book and a few other references, using Turbo C. And then I got into electronics engineering college and then I got seriously started with Linux and it has dominated my destiny ever since. I taught myself Perl using the Camel Book and online references, and similarly learned Ruby from the Dave Thomas book and other online references. I didn’t really have much of a mentor at all in those days: my father had gotten me the hardware and the software and he taught me the rudiments, but I very rapidly surpassed him in skill.
The closest I ever had to mentors came fairly late in the game, first with a bunch of upperclassmen I had in my college days, and then a guy who was something like CTO of the first company which hired me (whom I later effectively replaced in that capacity in the successor company which followed). But I didn’t really complete tasks together with them or had them really teach me that much (hints and suggestions here and there at most) or critique my work, especially with the latter one. He was my boss. The college upperclassmen were closer to being my peers and friends than ‘mentors’ as the exchange of knowledge went both ways.
I can see how having had one might have helped, but think I got along just fine without one.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @09:19AM
He harps about mentors because millennial socialites are totally incapable of working alone. Everything must be a social activity. If you don't code socially, you're simply not a coder. It's like social drinking. You don't want to be the sad loser gulping sixpacks of beer in the basement, and you don't want to be the basement dwelling hacker who's not a real coder because real coding is a social activity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @09:07AM
Modern software development progresses very slowly. Oh sure, there's tons of pop-up libraries in the web development sphere, but there's nothing ground-breaking new. A lot o f things have de-evolved like the ability to pause your entire computer and see the state of everything running within (Lisp machines) and parallel computing (1000s of processors instead of a few). Plan 9 could even 'transfer' hardware resources from one computer to another. No one even tries multi-threaded GUIs anymore (yes its possible and yes users could do stupid things like clicking save and cancel at the same time. That doesn't make the designs unworkable). New languages are still following all the old mistakes (like supporting nulls) instead of improving. Current languages are all slowly gaining the exact same feature sets instead of trying new things. Concepts like reactive web design are complete bullshit because the browser were designed to do exactly that, except people have been trying to force HTML into pixel perfect designs instead of letting the browser handle it. They're reinventing the browser within a browser. Most of what's "new" are poor implementations of old concepts from the 50-70s. You'd be far better off learning from history than trying to reinvent it. Even the first software development conference laid out basically all the concepts of Agile long before the Agile Manifesto was a thing. But you'd never know that unless you picked up a book to read it. The software industry is filled with ignorant idiots self-proclaiming themselves as awesome revolutionaries. Stuff happened before the Internet was invented and a lot of that isn't easy to find online.