Are you a programmer?

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Are you a computer programmer?
	I only know how to click on the AOL icon
	I can edit HTML or config files and have written trivial programs
	I have studied programming and can make useful but limited programs
	I am a professional programmer who can write involved, complicated programs

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EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

Some executive at some huge company thinks that right now is the last chance for anyone to become rich and that once everything gets automated by machines there will only poor people and a smaller amount of rich people and if you don't become rich right now then you and all of your descendants will likely be poor forever. Welp, gotta go try to get rich quick. Have a nice day.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2016 18:00

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 06:05

EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

Clochette posted:

What other major would a prospective programmer take?

If you want the best jobs (say, at MicroLinkedFaceGoogZon) then a CS major is probably the best prep for getting through the interview process. You can do it without, but either way you'll want a strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and operating systems, at least.

You can totally get jobs at virtually any other places without studying CS, though, afaik. I also think there seems to be a stigma against "programmers" rather than "software engineers" or "software developers", and iirc there were some salary surveys that indicated people with the latter two titles got paid more. Since you're just starting out, I'd aim for one of those kinds of jobs and think of yourself as a "prospective software engineer" rather than a "prospective programmer".

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 04:14

EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

loquacius posted:

I had this experience with my second job out of college. It was supposed to be a foot-in-the-door to game dev. Instead it was a waste of three years of my life.

My first job was as an SDET, meaning I wrote test automation, which I thought was a perfectly fine specialty for a programmer to have. I wrote my tests, I investigated when they failed, everyone agreed that it was a very important job, and everything was good, but I wanted to move back home, so I used that job to get an in at a game company in my home state that was looking into using test automation to streamline the laborious process of traditional game QA. Theoretically I would work that job for a year or two, and then after everyone else was sufficiently impressed with how much easier all their lives were thanks to the full adoption of slick automated tests developed using my fantastic tools, I would use my sterling credentials to join a game-dev team and start living my dream.

Unfortunately a couple months after I joined the company, the head of engineering left and was replaced, and the new guy didn't see the point of switching over to automated QA when our existing QA system worked just fine. So I finished writing my suite of tools, and nobody used them. I had nothing else to do with my time, and somehow when the first round of layoffs came, I still had a job. I was maybe 23 years old at the time and "working" a "job" where I did no work in exchange for tons of money sounded like a pretty sweet gig, so I stuck around. Eventually, though, I learned that gooning it up on GBS all day every day for two years eventually drives you loving stir crazy. So I tried to implement Phase 2 of my original plan.

That's about when I discovered that outside of my original company and a few others, nobody really takes test engineering seriously. The head of the first game team I talked to basically heard "some guy from QA wants to be a game dev, how novel " and wouldn't give me the time of day. I eventually cornered him in his office (my boss told me to when she heard I couldn't get a meeting with him) and he said "we're not hiring right now, but keep hitting the books and studying programming and you'll get there someday" and shooed me out two minutes later. I guess he never actually read my resume because if he had he'd have noticed that I have a Master's in computer science. I know how to loving write code. gently caress that guy.

I quickly realized that having the letters "QA" in my title and trying to be taken seriously at 99% of tech companies was basically like trying to swim in concrete shoes, so I managed to finagle an internal transfer, not to a game team, but to the "Integration" team for the company's web-services platform. "Integration" in this context means we were basically tech support for game dev teams at other companies using our web services. Not glamorous work. I didn't care, I finally had a job title of "Software Engineer" which would be my ticket out of that joint and into a job where I actually got to program things. Maybe two weeks later, there was a re-org and everyone's job title got changed to "Integration Engineer." In case you were wondering, yes, that title IS completely meaningless. And so was my job. Square one.

Took another year before I finally managed to convince someone that even though I had worked jobs where I tested things, I was in fact still qualified to do a job that I had been qualified to do straight out of college, and get an entry-level software-engineering job at age 27 or thereabouts. Everybody I went to college with has been promoted like twice by now. At least I got out.

Yikes. When I was graduating, the stance of the professors was that we should think long and hard before accepting any kind of test ing position, because many places won't take it seriously and it can be really hard to make the jump out of it.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 17:31

EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

loquacius posted:

And yeah, Git is objectively more powerful than SVN but it is opaque as hell and there's a pretty substantial learning curve before you actually get any advantage out of it

You should be able to read the git book in a couple of hours. Given all the other tools you have to learn day-to-day, this should be an easy task.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 16:27

EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

galahan posted:

Does it correlate with music, as in, learning an instrument "wrong" can cause some long-medium term harm to break bad habits?

No. If you're playing an instrument then you're relying on your muscles being in the habit of quickly doing the right things at the right time. Programming is much more slow and deliberate.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 06:49

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 06:05

EB Nulshit: Apr 12, 2014; It was more disappointing (and surprising) when I found that even most of Manhattan isn't like Times Square.

Evil_Greven posted:

I was left with the impression that, even at the senior level in an ABET-accredited CS program, a good chunk of people completing it are either incompetent or lazy. The only thing I can fathom is that these people stumble into groups where someone knows what the gently caress they're doing and are dragged along for the ride - or they are that person.

Reading stuff like this makes me like my CS program. Nobody was prepared to get through algorithms and data structures questions in, say, an Amazon interview, but we could all program and stuff like this would have been straightforward for all of us.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 17:27

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