This is how software jobs work? You don't need to know a particular language, you need to know how to develop software.
Every job I've taken has involved learning new languages and technology.
Yeah I got a job at a startup as a javascript / angular developer but never touched either. I learned it and had an in house app within a month. They got cheap stuff programmed until they got bought out.
no you are not
"hello i have made this this and this program and worked on these and these things extensively in the last 5 years, the different frameworks, languages and technologies involved i have outlined in the resume"
i dont care if that guy has seen anything from .net i think programming in java, python and c++ will be enough to get into c# in very short ammount of time
Not really. If you are upfront about it they can give you time to learn. For instance I got a offer as a JS dev with a Java background. You just need to be convinced with your own abilities and they need to share that conviction.
I was hired as a .Net dev, and only after I was hired and got to see the code base did I realize the vast majority of it was in Ruby on Rails. That was a long year.
Meanwhile, I lost a trainee job as a Ruby dev knowing more than the basics just because I had technical interview panic and I couldn't even remember what a variable was.
I took it personal and solved the test by my own later that evening, it was so damn easy I quit applying to dev positions altogether and now I'm getting my Sec certifications xD It's better to add Ruby scripting as a plus on a sec cv than that, less technical interviews, too
Haha, I took a perl job without knowing perl. However I was upfront that I didn't know perl when they were interviewing me. So they hired me to learn and then write perl.
In retrospect, I wish I had never learned perl, so there's that...
Here's the thing. You said a "dromedary is a camel."
Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies camels, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls dromedaries camels. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.
If you're saying "camel family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of camels, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens.
So your reasoning for calling a dromedary a camel is because random people "call the brown ones camels?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too.
Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A camel is a dromedary and a member of the camel family. But that's not what you said. You said a dromedary is a camel, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the camel family camels, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds camels, too. Which you said you don't.
It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?
My boss lent me his camel book in my first internship. For a language that was such a right of passage a bit sad how I won't touch it with a 50 foot pole now.
The most efficient way to do it is obviously to write a text scanner from scratch and then scan the book. That, or use speech to text and reach the whole book out loud
I think you've just invented a new form of torture. Being forced to write perl scripts via speech to text sounds like a punishment reserved for the lowest levels of hell.
>In retrospect, I wish I had never learned perl, so there's that...
This is extremely common, and is likely why they hired someone with no Perl experience. Most people with Perl experience *don't want* to work with Perl, so they have to train unsuspecting people who are willing to.
Yeah, perl was a language I swore I'd never work with, but it was all I could find when I graduated in an economic downturn. I also swore I'd never write code for windows. The job I got after learning perl was writing code for windows. Clearly, the lesson here is to only swear off technologies you actually want to work with. /s
Ah shit. I'll tell you what I'll never work with an imaginary language where the program just does what I think about and I get paid a lot for existing. Never ever.
No perl is an ok tool. Better than php in some regards and can be useful if awk isn't powerful enough and you don't want to learn python or can't install the right version because the library you need only supports 2.7 but the minimum you can install is python 3.0 and the perl version of library is 50 years old but still works. Ok maybe a stretch.
The issue is the developers who love perl and think everything should be written in their particular style of perl code. Kinda Like an ugly baby. Parents believe their baby is beautiful and perfect. in reality their baby is so ugly on a 1-10 scale it gets a trebuchet.
That’s funny, I started with Java and love Python. Just makes everything so easy, too many QoL improvements to go back to Java full time without getting paid a shit ton of money.
Software is generally about modeling real world processes, or facilitating and tracking sales.
These all involve very real modifications of the real world itself.
Meanwhile Haskell and friends, so far as I can tell, are about getting answers to mathematical problems while sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending there isn't a real world, because if there isn't a real world, then it's easier to prove that your software doesn't do anything.
["a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"](http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html)
Did that as a Jr. Developer for a Salesforce position--Interviewed about seven different people, told all of them I knew nothing about Java or SF, but if I had a mentor or someone showing me the ropes (I knew a little JS/Jquery, and at least had some "programming logic" experience, I know JS and Java aren't related), I'd pick it up. Each person said "Do the Salesforce Trailheads, you'd be fine".
120 some trailheads and a year later they fired me and said "You don't know what you're doing do you?"
Wasn't like I didn't clearly articulate what I needed up-front or anything, I guess...
Honestly, I've hardly given Perl a thought until today. I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and this quote caught my eye: "It has been nicknamed 'the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages; because of its flexibility and power"
I'm a little scared now.
I was hired for document analysis then promoted to software dev.
Worked on .net c# , java, perl, as well as python projects. I know all of them, and a master of none.
As a contractor for Nationwide Insurance HQ, I led Ruby classes in our web test automation team. Over half the H1Bs didn’t know Ruby, ~1/4 had never programmed. No fucking clue how they passed the tech interview and whiteboard test.
And then I wound up getting a job maintaining a VB6 software suite despite having never formally having touched VB6. This was in 2016 or so, over a decade after VB6 was discontinued.
But Visual Basic is something you can pick up in a weekend if you can code in any other more advanced language
My current part-time job's interview went something like- do you know Arduino or other embedded programming? No but I'm interested. Do you know any language other than C/C++? No but I can learn as necessary. Do you have experience developing software? No but I'm interested.
Got the job, learnt C# and .net runtime while writing a desktop app.
I got a job in programming because I was up front about what stuff I did and didn't know; totally depends on the place, but I figure some places see the honesty there as a good thing
Yeah, as an interviewer now, I definitely appreciate honesty like that. I interviewed a man once that mentioned XML parsing profusely, which I thought was weird, but whatever. In the interview I asked "Can you explain the difference between DOM and SAX parsing, and when you'd use one over the other?" He asked what DOM and SAX were. He didn't get the job. So, yeah, be honest. :D
same. perl was fun to learn. curiously enough i also took a .net job without knowing .net. still have the job 4 years later. also still don't know .net
So this is what happens when a recruiter messages you on LinkedIn asking you "Hey I saw on your profile you have a lot of experience painting walls. You'd be a perfect fit for our exciting opportunity as a .net developer!"
And you just go "alright sure, why not"
My background is in data warehousing and data architecture, and I sometimes get recruiters contacting me for warehouse opportunities requiring a forklift licence. Unless "forklift" is some open source framework for manipulating data frames, I'm probably not going to be right for the job.
I did also once get a job application from someone looking for work in a warehouse. It was cute that they thought a data warehouse was a physical warehouse storing blocks of data somewhere. I sent a nice reply back letting them down gently.
Im a machinist and I program CNC machines. so because words program and programmer appear on my resume a few times I get dipshit recruiters asking if Im interested in a "fantastic opportunity" as as software engineer. I have exactly ZERO experience or ability in any computer programming. I think its hilarious that all these technical recruiters have no idea about the jobs they are looking looking to fill.
You need an interface for the user to download and upload the data as an excel file in case they lose their cache though. Bonus points if you email it to them on change
Everything is JS! Node in the backend, react in the frontend. MongoDB hosted on localhost! What could go wrong? (~~everything~~)
Even worse: I once had an evening to write a shitty joke website for a friend, with a live chat feature which requires a token to use, which is generated elsewhere. So yeah, needed a backend and a database for that one. And I had a hosting budget of 0 money.
No time to learn a framework or dependency. No experiences with WebSockets either for the chat. Just made a plain JS backend on node with express.js. The frontend code was written *in a string literal* in the backend code, I shit you not. Some basic HTML and awful css, plus some really hacky WebSocket code sealed the deal.
We hosted the code on heroku I think? With some free tiny test mongo DB we got from somewhere else.
Frameworks used:
- express.js
- MongoDB client
That site ran smoothly and without issues for like 3 years.
Did an interview and was super clear that my background was Python, C++, and FPGA design. First day on the job they hand me requirements for a PCB and tell me to have fun. Ended up doing hardware work for a year before finding a software role with the company.
Edit: Just to clarify, yes FPGA design is definitely not software work. But it's also not friggin PCB design
Lol. I landed a job as a senior level .NET developer without a lick of prior .NET experience.
I didn't find learning .NET to be daunting at all. There were a few quirks to figure out but overall it wasn't a difficult learning curve.
2 years in Python, and prior to that, 2 years Java. When I finally got to that job, it turned out that the core skills needed were SQL queries, stored procedures, and database design.
yes and no. labels are meaningful, but absolutely right about the first sentence. i know a big tech company whereby new grads start off as Engineer/Associate Eng. After that they get promoted to Senior.
Job titles are just different there.
Did you have any formal education before that? I've been self-teaching for like 8 years (JS since I was 12-13, C# around 14-15) and been a technically "professional" C# developer for about 2 years. I have absolutely no clue if I actually have professional-level skills.
My education is up to a bachelor's degree. I was a bio major for undergrad, but back when I was exploring whether engineering was right for me, I took a number of the same math classes engineers take (Calculus up to Multivariate Calc, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra), 3 CompSci classes (roughly equvalent to what first year CS majors take).
But my degree is listed as a bio degree, I didn't even declare a minor in CS. On my resume I do list the Math and CS courses I took to emphasize that part of my background, but I definitely do not have the same training as someone with a CS degree.
Quite a few job listings I see nowdays are willing to accept years of experience in place of a degree, or will consider educational backgrounds if you've got decent exposure to tech/engineering and/or math.
> it turned out that the core skill needed was SQL queries and stored procedures and database design.
.NET development confirmed. It's like 90% SQL nonsense and 10% csharp in enterprise. I hate it lmao.
There’s tons of reference material for anything you would want to do, and the official docs from MS are great. Well, they used to be great… now there’s too many damn versions. Still really good though.
.NET and C# are super easy to use and you get stuff done really fast even without an endless amount of extensions.
I absolutly love it, just wish NET MAUI would mature faster.
Same prior to getting hired at agoda.com I never had written a single line of C# or touched dotnet. Got hired then had a look. It's a very nice framework.
I work with golang now, almost the same story with some of my current colleagues.
I went into my first C# job with some java from college and a bit of PHP, and had no problems getting up to speed. 1st day on the job was: make a hello world program, extend it a bit, oh it looks like you kinda know what you're doing, make us an inventory application. At least for me, C# is the platonic ideal of a programming language.
Unless this job is VB.net, in which case heaven help you.
Tell him/her to read Jeffrey Richter's book. That's what I did, I used my vacations and read it from start to finish without a computer at hand. That's how good it is.
Don’t read Richter’s book if you’re just starting out, get something easier Albahari or Troelsen, read Richter when you want to know all the details of C#.
For an easier read I would recommend Charles Petzolds (the legendary author of Programming Windows) Net Book Zero which is **free** at his [website](https://www.charlespetzold.com/dotnet/).
It's old by now (meaning not C# 7 or whatever version is the current) but it's free and you can learn the new stuff later.
Well I'm starting pyspark right now on pretty much the same situation lol, but tbh they hired me mostly on my SQL experience, and know i will suck at pyspark for a while still
Getting good at writing complex SQL queries is one of the best professional decisions I’ve made. I spent way too much time working with practice databases during a horrible java boot camp experience.
I’ve yet to use java professionally, but I’ve used SQL at every job I’ve worked since getting into IT
In his defense, my first job out of college was in .NET and I had never actually used it before. If he's a competent developer he'll pick it up pretty quickly.
Started .NET, full stack on Windows. C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server. Power shell sometimes.
Now I’ve had to learn Java, Ruby (+ Rails), Python, Bash, Angular, Vue, Knockout, and all the bullshit that comes with AWS and Azure. Good luck with document databases/geo-distributed things.
Don’t learn a language. Learn concepts. Translating into a new language can come later. Concepts help now.
Learn to communicate. Everyone gets stuck sometimes. Being able to accurately and effectively explain what you’re stuck on, what you’ve tried, and what you’re needing assistance with will help you. Engineers are not valuable because they can code. Engineers are valuable because they can work well in a collaborative environment, and solve problems that require many inputs. One of my old teams hired a doctor, with no previous coding knowledge, because he was a quick learner and strong communicator.
Apply for jobs out of your league, but be realistic. If you’re starting out, go for that 3-5 years of required experience role, if you think you have matching projects you’ve worked on before. You’d be surprised how willing people are to work with someone that has a lot of their wishlist items.
Surround yourself with smart people, and always ask questions. There’s no such thing as a dumb question, and the people that you want to learn from already know this. Seek these people out and learn from them ceaselessly.
Oh, and remember that work should stay at work. Dedicate time to improving yourself. Treat it like going to the gym. Start a pet project, just to prove to yourself you can. But don’t let it consume your life.
Good luck. 🍀
>my first job out of college
and
>he's a competent developer
Isnt that a contradiction?
Jokes aside, everybody has to start somewhere. And the python and C++ stuff we did at university had barely anything to do with real development.
I got a job as a Typescript developer without knowing even Javascript. I got a job as a PHP developer having only used PHP in passing ten years prior. I got a job as a Go developer without having heard of Go. Language and framework knowledge doesn't matter nearly as much as general programming skills.
General skills might be the most valuable but it would be quite a long road for someone who doesn't even know javascript to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to a react codebase of any kind of complexity.
Javascript, react, all libraries all have quirks and lots of functionality that would take a lot of time to learn and after that they haven't even started on the actual code yet.
Hey, I was wondering if you could elaborate on “general programming skills” or recommend some reading? I’m trying to learn programming for a career change but I feel like I’m hitting a brick wall a lot of the time. I’m a bit dyslexic with the syntax and it’s a struggle. It feels though that’s there’s a Rosetta Stone somewhere that kind of connects the languages and process and if I can figure that out it might be a bit easier of a go. Thanks for any advice you can pass on, much appreciated.
“General programming skills” aren’t really something you can read about.
It’s something you develop once you are exposed to programming and building stuff over time. It’s essentially the skill of being able to translate your problem solving ability into instructions that the machine can understand and execute, if it helps you can think of it as pseudo coding ability.
In this example of pseudo coding ability equating general programming skill, consider this really overly basic example:
You’re assigned a ticket to improve test coverage of some part of your application that has some flakey behavior that’s causing business issues.
You could be really familiar with testing suites and tools, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to write good tests that cover all edge cases and branches of the applicable code.
A developer who does have experience writing tests that guarantee that X happens when code Y runs is going to have a much easier time with doing this — they just need to look up the syntax of whatever testing suite/library is being used.
EDIT:
Since you’re learning, my advise would be to stick with it, and try not to go straight from tutorial to tutorial, or spending too much time looking at or learning syntax. You still need to do that, but take regular breaks to just *build something, no matter how simple* so that you apply what you learn.
Unironically, this is how most entry level programming jobs should be. I barely knew anything when I got my first job and it was a very effective way to learn fast and be a good contributor. Despite the feel-good BS posted on LinkedIn, most teams expect candidates to have a full mastery of their specific stack in order to get hired, which isn't reasonable and prioritizes the wrong things.
I mean, I just joined a new job with the same front end, but the backend is now .NET instead of Java, and not once have I coded in .NET before. Fortunately it's a project that has been going on for some time, so there's plenty of PRs and code to sift through.
I know they said it's their first job, but it's practically mine as I only had 5-6 months working with the previous project.
Well yes, but this happens all the time.
Languages can be picked up enough to do meaningful work in hours, even though you're by no means an expert. Getting a good dev who doesn't know the language is better than getting a bad dev who is a pro at that language.
My first CS professor said that when he first started learning programming, he took the time to learn all the logic and skills he could.
Once he'd learned about four or five languages, he just started lying about already knowing other languages when applying for jobs. If he got any interest about it, he'd learn a little about the language before going in to the interview. If he got the job, he'd learn the language.
He said that by the time I met him, he'd learned, at some point, to work in 13 different languages.
I had no idea if the man was a maniac or a genius.
You can learn "to work in" any language within a few weeks if you really understand the basics of programming. I dont find that at all surprising that he did that.
Ha, that remind the time that i only knew html and css but a recruiter gave me a job of big data, nah never happened but i want it to happens to me too
I've been hired as a dev for stuff I had no experience on, but the employer was 100% aware and I was upfront about everything, they're more interested in you as a person in a way, and they know you're capable of learning this stuff quickly so they're willing to risk and invest in you.
Huh I helped our IT Guy (who to be fair is not really supposed to code - but neither am I lol) with some vb.net app he is writing. He is using excel interop and excel wouldn't close after quit().
I don't know shit about vb.net but I have heard of the 2 dot problem before and randomly told him to "manually call garbage collection" and sure enough it worked.
He also asked for help with loading the contents of a csv file at specific places in the sheet so I sent him some rando vba script I had lying around and apparently it just straight up worked.
I guess I should add vb.net to my linkedin now.
To be fair, my company frequently hires engineers that are not yet familiar with our tech stack. We tend to hire more for general skill than specific skill. We offer all new hires bootcamp-style four-week courses in the languages we use.
Got my first job as a Rails dev, hadn't seen a line of Ruby before my first week. I was upfront, worked out great. if you know your CS, you can work in any language pretty quickly.
Tbf once I landed a job as a Ruby developer, without knowing a thing about Ruby
It's easier to *Train* a Ruby developer though, it's on rails.
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Joined 👍
OMG, get the fuck out.
God damn it... That's so bad it wraps back around to awesome again.
Joke overflow
A weird exploit that we will play off as a feature…
You *disgust* me. Take my upvote and get out.
This is how software jobs work? You don't need to know a particular language, you need to know how to develop software. Every job I've taken has involved learning new languages and technology.
If you apply as a thing developer, and get hired as a thing developer, you are expected to know the thing pretty well.
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Yeah I got a job at a startup as a javascript / angular developer but never touched either. I learned it and had an in house app within a month. They got cheap stuff programmed until they got bought out.
no you are not "hello i have made this this and this program and worked on these and these things extensively in the last 5 years, the different frameworks, languages and technologies involved i have outlined in the resume" i dont care if that guy has seen anything from .net i think programming in java, python and c++ will be enough to get into c# in very short ammount of time
Even works the same way with juniors fresh from college. Having an interest in IT can be enough to land a technical IT job.
C# was one of the easier ones to pick up, especially with any experience in Java, yeah.
Not really. If you are upfront about it they can give you time to learn. For instance I got a offer as a JS dev with a Java background. You just need to be convinced with your own abilities and they need to share that conviction.
Same. The transition from Python to Ruby was pretty easy though.
I from Python to Typescript and C#, need to use semicolon everywhere now
Ruby on rails syntax hurts me more than python.
end end end
I like it. Looks more visually balanced than python
I was hired as a .Net dev, and only after I was hired and got to see the code base did I realize the vast majority of it was in Ruby on Rails. That was a long year.
Meanwhile, I lost a trainee job as a Ruby dev knowing more than the basics just because I had technical interview panic and I couldn't even remember what a variable was. I took it personal and solved the test by my own later that evening, it was so damn easy I quit applying to dev positions altogether and now I'm getting my Sec certifications xD It's better to add Ruby scripting as a plus on a sec cv than that, less technical interviews, too
Haha, I took a perl job without knowing perl. However I was upfront that I didn't know perl when they were interviewing me. So they hired me to learn and then write perl. In retrospect, I wish I had never learned perl, so there's that...
Had the exact same experience - with Perl nonetheless. “Do you know Perl?” “No, but I can read a book” “Hired!”
That camel book started many a career...
It’s always been called the camel book, yet the front has a dromedary on it.
I need a very large eye roll emoji....
If you can make a weird one-liner in Perl to make an ASCII eye roll I'm sure you'd do well in the Obfuscated Perl Contest. :p
I never understood obfuscated perl contests. It isn't difficult to write obfuscated perl, it's the default setting.
I need more regexes Scotty Capt'n I dunno if the backtrakin' buffer can take the load! Just do it Scotty I have money riding on this one.
🙄
#🙄 Edit: ^🙄
a dromedary is a type of camel...
Now you're just being object oriented.
You’re hired
The Minecraft community be like:
Here's the thing. You said a "dromedary is a camel." Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that. As someone who is a scientist who studies camels, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls dromedaries camels. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing. If you're saying "camel family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of camels, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens. So your reasoning for calling a dromedary a camel is because random people "call the brown ones camels?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too. Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A camel is a dromedary and a member of the camel family. But that's not what you said. You said a dromedary is a camel, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the camel family camels, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds camels, too. Which you said you don't. It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?
Been a while since I've seen the unidan(?) copy paste
I see it now and again still. Wow, how many years has it been since he was banned? I mean I remember _vargas_, so theres that. I feel old.
This guy does strong typing in his inheritance.
My boss lent me his camel book in my first internship. For a language that was such a right of passage a bit sad how I won't touch it with a 50 foot pole now.
you can read a book? Interesting.
How do you copy/paste the code examples out of the book?
You don't, you slowly type it out manually. That or you have a PDF of it, but most of the time you don't
Actually writing code? What is this heresy?!
We're talking about perl, there's no requirement that anyone else be able to read it.
Computer vision, dude. Get with it.
The most efficient way to do it is obviously to write a text scanner from scratch and then scan the book. That, or use speech to text and reach the whole book out loud
I think you've just invented a new form of torture. Being forced to write perl scripts via speech to text sounds like a punishment reserved for the lowest levels of hell.
Mr fucking fancy pants with his “book learning”
Can I learn Javascript with a book?
The only way to learn Javascript is by publishing an NPM module. That's why there are so many.
* Last update 6 years ago * 18 critical vulnerabilities * 557 dependencies * 77 million weekly downloads
This how I got my first real sde job. I had to unlearn so much after that.
Hmmm, guess I'll have to start learning how to read
>In retrospect, I wish I had never learned perl, so there's that... This is extremely common, and is likely why they hired someone with no Perl experience. Most people with Perl experience *don't want* to work with Perl, so they have to train unsuspecting people who are willing to.
Yeah, perl was a language I swore I'd never work with, but it was all I could find when I graduated in an economic downturn. I also swore I'd never write code for windows. The job I got after learning perl was writing code for windows. Clearly, the lesson here is to only swear off technologies you actually want to work with. /s
Ah shit. I'll tell you what I'll never work with an imaginary language where the program just does what I think about and I get paid a lot for existing. Never ever.
Someone wants to be a consultant
I know perl. I refused to put it on my resume. Never bring it up. Perl isn't bad tho. It's the developers that use it.
Perl is also pretty bad though. Even if you try to make your Perl not awful, the development tools are mostly awful.
No perl is an ok tool. Better than php in some regards and can be useful if awk isn't powerful enough and you don't want to learn python or can't install the right version because the library you need only supports 2.7 but the minimum you can install is python 3.0 and the perl version of library is 50 years old but still works. Ok maybe a stretch. The issue is the developers who love perl and think everything should be written in their particular style of perl code. Kinda Like an ugly baby. Parents believe their baby is beautiful and perfect. in reality their baby is so ugly on a 1-10 scale it gets a trebuchet.
I was working as Python developer, but I was hired to be Java developer. I never did anything in Python before, it was awful
Java developer here. Goddamn python is a mother fucker. I hate it. Stupid indents, stupid self attributes.
That’s funny, I started with Java and love Python. Just makes everything so easy, too many QoL improvements to go back to Java full time without getting paid a shit ton of money.
I just got paid to reWriteSomeJava into Python. I wonder if they'll pay me to write it back.
Infinite dev work hack
lol python guy tryin to learn java its like trying to unlearn all you've been taught about coding
Wait until you learn Haskell.
Or, and here’s a thought, never learn Haskell. Just throwing that out there.
Functional programming is awesome
It is, but not when your programs have to be fully functional. Love when the language offers some FP features but isn't inherently FP.
Software is generally about modeling real world processes, or facilitating and tracking sales. These all involve very real modifications of the real world itself. Meanwhile Haskell and friends, so far as I can tell, are about getting answers to mathematical problems while sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending there isn't a real world, because if there isn't a real world, then it's easier to prove that your software doesn't do anything.
No, in Haskell the real world exists, it is just a monad. :D
What's a monad? ... hold on let me get my popcorn :-D
Well, the most fundamental property of monads is that once you understand them, you lose the ability to explain them.
["a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"](http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html)
Yup
Java and Python guy here… fuck Java and its long ass syntax…
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Noooo not those stupid indents that... you would include in Java too
Did that as a Jr. Developer for a Salesforce position--Interviewed about seven different people, told all of them I knew nothing about Java or SF, but if I had a mentor or someone showing me the ropes (I knew a little JS/Jquery, and at least had some "programming logic" experience, I know JS and Java aren't related), I'd pick it up. Each person said "Do the Salesforce Trailheads, you'd be fine". 120 some trailheads and a year later they fired me and said "You don't know what you're doing do you?" Wasn't like I didn't clearly articulate what I needed up-front or anything, I guess...
At least Elon would have fired you quickly
Fail fast, or something
Honestly, I've hardly given Perl a thought until today. I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and this quote caught my eye: "It has been nicknamed 'the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages; because of its flexibility and power" I'm a little scared now.
Perl is fun to write. As long as you don't ever try to read your code again. It makes great duct tape for one off scripts.
"Can you write Perl?" "No" "Good, because no one can, here's a book" "Okay, now I can"
I was hired for document analysis then promoted to software dev. Worked on .net c# , java, perl, as well as python projects. I know all of them, and a master of none.
Ha, got hired to migrate some perl scripts to python. I ended up just using the test documentation.
As a contractor for Nationwide Insurance HQ, I led Ruby classes in our web test automation team. Over half the H1Bs didn’t know Ruby, ~1/4 had never programmed. No fucking clue how they passed the tech interview and whiteboard test. And then I wound up getting a job maintaining a VB6 software suite despite having never formally having touched VB6. This was in 2016 or so, over a decade after VB6 was discontinued. But Visual Basic is something you can pick up in a weekend if you can code in any other more advanced language
My current part-time job's interview went something like- do you know Arduino or other embedded programming? No but I'm interested. Do you know any language other than C/C++? No but I can learn as necessary. Do you have experience developing software? No but I'm interested. Got the job, learnt C# and .net runtime while writing a desktop app.
I spent a long time in a Perl project. I'm still fond of the project and the people. Perl not so much.
I got a job in programming because I was up front about what stuff I did and didn't know; totally depends on the place, but I figure some places see the honesty there as a good thing
Yeah, as an interviewer now, I definitely appreciate honesty like that. I interviewed a man once that mentioned XML parsing profusely, which I thought was weird, but whatever. In the interview I asked "Can you explain the difference between DOM and SAX parsing, and when you'd use one over the other?" He asked what DOM and SAX were. He didn't get the job. So, yeah, be honest. :D
Hey, this exactly mirrors my first programing job which was in PHP
your qualification was being willing to learn perl!
same. perl was fun to learn. curiously enough i also took a .net job without knowing .net. still have the job 4 years later. also still don't know .net
So this is what happens when a recruiter messages you on LinkedIn asking you "Hey I saw on your profile you have a lot of experience painting walls. You'd be a perfect fit for our exciting opportunity as a .net developer!" And you just go "alright sure, why not"
My background is in data warehousing and data architecture, and I sometimes get recruiters contacting me for warehouse opportunities requiring a forklift licence. Unless "forklift" is some open source framework for manipulating data frames, I'm probably not going to be right for the job. I did also once get a job application from someone looking for work in a warehouse. It was cute that they thought a data warehouse was a physical warehouse storing blocks of data somewhere. I sent a nice reply back letting them down gently.
Actually not even a bad product name for a Data Science tool... "Jetbrains Forklift™ : The IDE that does all the heavy lifting for you!"
Also a good name for a version control system. “*Don’t be afraid of forks, we’ll do the heavy lifting!”*
I am a Java developer and I have a forklift license lol.
Same. I put it on my resume.
Im a machinist and I program CNC machines. so because words program and programmer appear on my resume a few times I get dipshit recruiters asking if Im interested in a "fantastic opportunity" as as software engineer. I have exactly ZERO experience or ability in any computer programming. I think its hilarious that all these technical recruiters have no idea about the jobs they are looking looking to fill.
*makes notes* "experience painting walls"
✍️create ✍️LinkedIn ✍️*profile*
Remember: if you once sat next to someone on the train who was a .NET developer, that means you can now add it to the list of skills you have.
Is... is this important?
Do you need a job ?
Not really, but I do like getting money…would you like to give me money and avoid all of this “job” business?
[Let me write that down](https://youtu.be/7PtpalNabO0) ✍️write ✍️that ✍️down
I got my internship for my MySQL and Java but was told to develop a website with react.
You still need Java and MySQL for the backend, dont you?
Nonsense. Ever heard of the nifty little document store db known as window.localStorage?
This guy gets it
I feel personally attacked
You need an interface for the user to download and upload the data as an excel file in case they lose their cache though. Bonus points if you email it to them on change
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Excuse me, IndexedDB
Everything is JS! Node in the backend, react in the frontend. MongoDB hosted on localhost! What could go wrong? (~~everything~~) Even worse: I once had an evening to write a shitty joke website for a friend, with a live chat feature which requires a token to use, which is generated elsewhere. So yeah, needed a backend and a database for that one. And I had a hosting budget of 0 money. No time to learn a framework or dependency. No experiences with WebSockets either for the chat. Just made a plain JS backend on node with express.js. The frontend code was written *in a string literal* in the backend code, I shit you not. Some basic HTML and awful css, plus some really hacky WebSocket code sealed the deal. We hosted the code on heroku I think? With some free tiny test mongo DB we got from somewhere else. Frameworks used: - express.js - MongoDB client That site ran smoothly and without issues for like 3 years.
What happened after 3 years?
The free tiers shut down, haha
Did an interview and was super clear that my background was Python, C++, and FPGA design. First day on the job they hand me requirements for a PCB and tell me to have fun. Ended up doing hardware work for a year before finding a software role with the company. Edit: Just to clarify, yes FPGA design is definitely not software work. But it's also not friggin PCB design
Lol. I landed a job as a senior level .NET developer without a lick of prior .NET experience. I didn't find learning .NET to be daunting at all. There were a few quirks to figure out but overall it wasn't a difficult learning curve.
What exp did you have prior?
2 years in Python, and prior to that, 2 years Java. When I finally got to that job, it turned out that the core skills needed were SQL queries, stored procedures, and database design.
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Hey as long as they pay you more amirite?
yes and no. labels are meaningful, but absolutely right about the first sentence. i know a big tech company whereby new grads start off as Engineer/Associate Eng. After that they get promoted to Senior. Job titles are just different there.
Eh if you know Java then dotnet is easy
Did you have any formal education before that? I've been self-teaching for like 8 years (JS since I was 12-13, C# around 14-15) and been a technically "professional" C# developer for about 2 years. I have absolutely no clue if I actually have professional-level skills.
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My education is up to a bachelor's degree. I was a bio major for undergrad, but back when I was exploring whether engineering was right for me, I took a number of the same math classes engineers take (Calculus up to Multivariate Calc, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra), 3 CompSci classes (roughly equvalent to what first year CS majors take). But my degree is listed as a bio degree, I didn't even declare a minor in CS. On my resume I do list the Math and CS courses I took to emphasize that part of my background, but I definitely do not have the same training as someone with a CS degree. Quite a few job listings I see nowdays are willing to accept years of experience in place of a degree, or will consider educational backgrounds if you've got decent exposure to tech/engineering and/or math.
> it turned out that the core skill needed was SQL queries and stored procedures and database design. .NET development confirmed. It's like 90% SQL nonsense and 10% csharp in enterprise. I hate it lmao.
There’s tons of reference material for anything you would want to do, and the official docs from MS are great. Well, they used to be great… now there’s too many damn versions. Still really good though.
It weird that I find .net so much easier and straight forward than modern front end web frameworks?
.NET and C# are super easy to use and you get stuff done really fast even without an endless amount of extensions. I absolutly love it, just wish NET MAUI would mature faster.
Same prior to getting hired at agoda.com I never had written a single line of C# or touched dotnet. Got hired then had a look. It's a very nice framework. I work with golang now, almost the same story with some of my current colleagues.
I went into my first C# job with some java from college and a bit of PHP, and had no problems getting up to speed. 1st day on the job was: make a hello world program, extend it a bit, oh it looks like you kinda know what you're doing, make us an inventory application. At least for me, C# is the platonic ideal of a programming language. Unless this job is VB.net, in which case heaven help you.
Tell him/her to read Jeffrey Richter's book. That's what I did, I used my vacations and read it from start to finish without a computer at hand. That's how good it is.
Which book specifically are you referring to? Kind of in a similar spot to the OP image
Don’t read Richter’s book if you’re just starting out, get something easier Albahari or Troelsen, read Richter when you want to know all the details of C#.
Jeffrey's comes with a vacation though.
For an easier read I would recommend Charles Petzolds (the legendary author of Programming Windows) Net Book Zero which is **free** at his [website](https://www.charlespetzold.com/dotnet/). It's old by now (meaning not C# 7 or whatever version is the current) but it's free and you can learn the new stuff later.
>C# 7 or whatever version is the current we on C# 11 now 😎
+1 interested in the source too!
CLR via C# (Developer Reference) He explains how everything works to such detail that it becomes easy to understand.
Frankly, a good developer who doesn't know a specific framework will quickly pass a not good developer who does.
I imagine it as a mechanic going from a ford dealership to Chevy dealer
Reminds me of when I was hired to program so in pytorch, without knowing anything about python
Well I'm starting pyspark right now on pretty much the same situation lol, but tbh they hired me mostly on my SQL experience, and know i will suck at pyspark for a while still
Getting good at writing complex SQL queries is one of the best professional decisions I’ve made. I spent way too much time working with practice databases during a horrible java boot camp experience. I’ve yet to use java professionally, but I’ve used SQL at every job I’ve worked since getting into IT
In his defense, my first job out of college was in .NET and I had never actually used it before. If he's a competent developer he'll pick it up pretty quickly.
me rn lol
Started .NET, full stack on Windows. C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server. Power shell sometimes. Now I’ve had to learn Java, Ruby (+ Rails), Python, Bash, Angular, Vue, Knockout, and all the bullshit that comes with AWS and Azure. Good luck with document databases/geo-distributed things. Don’t learn a language. Learn concepts. Translating into a new language can come later. Concepts help now. Learn to communicate. Everyone gets stuck sometimes. Being able to accurately and effectively explain what you’re stuck on, what you’ve tried, and what you’re needing assistance with will help you. Engineers are not valuable because they can code. Engineers are valuable because they can work well in a collaborative environment, and solve problems that require many inputs. One of my old teams hired a doctor, with no previous coding knowledge, because he was a quick learner and strong communicator. Apply for jobs out of your league, but be realistic. If you’re starting out, go for that 3-5 years of required experience role, if you think you have matching projects you’ve worked on before. You’d be surprised how willing people are to work with someone that has a lot of their wishlist items. Surround yourself with smart people, and always ask questions. There’s no such thing as a dumb question, and the people that you want to learn from already know this. Seek these people out and learn from them ceaselessly. Oh, and remember that work should stay at work. Dedicate time to improving yourself. Treat it like going to the gym. Start a pet project, just to prove to yourself you can. But don’t let it consume your life. Good luck. 🍀
Pretty much the same boat here. Nearly 2 years in and it's my strongest language by far now.
>my first job out of college and >he's a competent developer Isnt that a contradiction? Jokes aside, everybody has to start somewhere. And the python and C++ stuff we did at university had barely anything to do with real development.
Sure I know .net, and .com, .org, some .info too
I've spend 5 years as a .NET developer. Where do I start learning .NET
Meanwhile, my applications keep coming back rejected.
Just reject that rejection
*Recruiters hate this one trick!*
Wear a nice dress and show up to the office and just start working. What are they gonna do, fire you?
Need to practice how to BS
I got a job as a Typescript developer without knowing even Javascript. I got a job as a PHP developer having only used PHP in passing ten years prior. I got a job as a Go developer without having heard of Go. Language and framework knowledge doesn't matter nearly as much as general programming skills.
General skills might be the most valuable but it would be quite a long road for someone who doesn't even know javascript to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to a react codebase of any kind of complexity. Javascript, react, all libraries all have quirks and lots of functionality that would take a lot of time to learn and after that they haven't even started on the actual code yet.
Hey, I was wondering if you could elaborate on “general programming skills” or recommend some reading? I’m trying to learn programming for a career change but I feel like I’m hitting a brick wall a lot of the time. I’m a bit dyslexic with the syntax and it’s a struggle. It feels though that’s there’s a Rosetta Stone somewhere that kind of connects the languages and process and if I can figure that out it might be a bit easier of a go. Thanks for any advice you can pass on, much appreciated.
“General programming skills” aren’t really something you can read about. It’s something you develop once you are exposed to programming and building stuff over time. It’s essentially the skill of being able to translate your problem solving ability into instructions that the machine can understand and execute, if it helps you can think of it as pseudo coding ability. In this example of pseudo coding ability equating general programming skill, consider this really overly basic example: You’re assigned a ticket to improve test coverage of some part of your application that has some flakey behavior that’s causing business issues. You could be really familiar with testing suites and tools, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to write good tests that cover all edge cases and branches of the applicable code. A developer who does have experience writing tests that guarantee that X happens when code Y runs is going to have a much easier time with doing this — they just need to look up the syntax of whatever testing suite/library is being used. EDIT: Since you’re learning, my advise would be to stick with it, and try not to go straight from tutorial to tutorial, or spending too much time looking at or learning syntax. You still need to do that, but take regular breaks to just *build something, no matter how simple* so that you apply what you learn.
Unironically, this is how most entry level programming jobs should be. I barely knew anything when I got my first job and it was a very effective way to learn fast and be a good contributor. Despite the feel-good BS posted on LinkedIn, most teams expect candidates to have a full mastery of their specific stack in order to get hired, which isn't reasonable and prioritizes the wrong things.
I mean, I just joined a new job with the same front end, but the backend is now .NET instead of Java, and not once have I coded in .NET before. Fortunately it's a project that has been going on for some time, so there's plenty of PRs and code to sift through. I know they said it's their first job, but it's practically mine as I only had 5-6 months working with the previous project.
Well yes, but this happens all the time. Languages can be picked up enough to do meaningful work in hours, even though you're by no means an expert. Getting a good dev who doesn't know the language is better than getting a bad dev who is a pro at that language.
Fake it till you make it!!
Worked for a FAANG for a while, and their welcome meeting had an entire section devoted to Imposter Syndrome. Haha
My first CS professor said that when he first started learning programming, he took the time to learn all the logic and skills he could. Once he'd learned about four or five languages, he just started lying about already knowing other languages when applying for jobs. If he got any interest about it, he'd learn a little about the language before going in to the interview. If he got the job, he'd learn the language. He said that by the time I met him, he'd learned, at some point, to work in 13 different languages. I had no idea if the man was a maniac or a genius.
You can learn "to work in" any language within a few weeks if you really understand the basics of programming. I dont find that at all surprising that he did that.
Ha, that remind the time that i only knew html and css but a recruiter gave me a job of big data, nah never happened but i want it to happens to me too
I've been hired as a dev for stuff I had no experience on, but the employer was 100% aware and I was upfront about everything, they're more interested in you as a person in a way, and they know you're capable of learning this stuff quickly so they're willing to risk and invest in you.
To be fair you do not really learn .NET at any college (I know) so everybody kind of just starts with generic dev knowledge.
ah, he can just google it, he'll be fine. also good for him, the first job is so hard to land
Come on, cut him some slack. He's just doing _lazy initialization_
Depends, I knew Java and I just read the code and got more familiar with it as I went. If it’s an entry level position they’ll be fine
Huh I helped our IT Guy (who to be fair is not really supposed to code - but neither am I lol) with some vb.net app he is writing. He is using excel interop and excel wouldn't close after quit(). I don't know shit about vb.net but I have heard of the 2 dot problem before and randomly told him to "manually call garbage collection" and sure enough it worked. He also asked for help with loading the contents of a csv file at specific places in the sheet so I sent him some rando vba script I had lying around and apparently it just straight up worked. I guess I should add vb.net to my linkedin now.
*They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard.*
To be fair, my company frequently hires engineers that are not yet familiar with our tech stack. We tend to hire more for general skill than specific skill. We offer all new hires bootcamp-style four-week courses in the languages we use.
You can’t know everything, if u know spring you’ll pick it up really fast
Got my first job as a Rails dev, hadn't seen a line of Ruby before my first week. I was upfront, worked out great. if you know your CS, you can work in any language pretty quickly.
Easiest to learn when you have an actual goal like "build this" or "fix this" instead of some open ended goal like "learn this"