Courses to get a career in programming?

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Salathor
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Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Salathor »

Hey all,

I'm a moderately competent self-taught programmer of Python and (in the past) java, C#, and PHP. It's been a long time, though, and although I could get my projects running on phones or computers or what have you, I never had the professionalism to finish a project. I always loved the actual puzzle-solving nature of the coding though, so one idea for FIRE is part-time remote developer.

Do you know of any courses/certifications that I could use to qualify for positions like this? I'm interested in specifically things that would help me get a job rather than things like a Udemy class on how to write python.

Thanks!

M
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by M »

I have worked as a professional software developer for over 15 years now. I mostly do c# development.

There are courses and certs you can take but imo experience still trumps everything. It can be tough to get into the field initially but once you have experience you're golden. Software developers are pretty good at figuring out if other software developers know what they're talking about during a job interview.

I started in high school. I took my fast food money and bought various 1,000+ page books for learning different programming languages. Read them all front to back, did all the exercises. I basically memorized everything in the books. I did some hobby projects for fun. This was not enough to get into the field.

After high school I enrolled at a local community college that offered software development classes. I worked full time third shift at a factory to pay for the classes. After 1 year of classes I found a local internship position for software development. I showed them my hobby projects and coursework. They hired me and paid me hardly anything for six months. After six months of working my behind off for almost no pay while going to college they were impressed and offered me an entry level full time software development job. After this experience I never had a problem finding software developer jobs.

The hardest part is just getting the initial experience. I would recommend taking any offered position, regardless of pay, and working your behind off. You will need to know multiple programming languages inside out and be able to start, finish, test, document, and provide support for multiple different projects within any two week period. Every day you are accountable for showing what you did the day before and are expected to solve any problem given to you and create any sort of software needed while also going to various meetings and explaining ber technical things to non-technical people in a very professional manner.

The pressure to accomplish and succeed is relentless and done on an hourly basis. I have watched software developers create entire applications from scratch which were then sold for millions of dollars get fired the following year just because they fell behind their peers...If you succeed though, the money can be good.

Hope this helps.

Salathor
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Salathor »

M wrote:
Sat Jul 17, 2021 7:16 am
Thank you for taking the time to reply! Sounds like I'm at about your high school/some of the JC level currently. I've read through Code Complete and a couple of language specific books, and taken classes on HTML and UNIX administration, and done some hobby work, but I definitely know I'm not qualified for paid work yet. Thanks very much for the info! It sounds like I've got a long road ahead if that's the path I choose to go down.

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Viktor K
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Viktor K »

If you can do the FCC full-stack projects, and put nice front-ends on them (e.g. real website looking), and put those on a portfolio, you should be able to get a Junior full stack job after a few months / 100 or so applications.

I would recommend copying other websites front-ends rather than relying on your own designs skills.

This how I got my job, and I’ve coached 3 others through this same process in the last year.

That’s worth around 60-70k starting salary.

EDIT: It's now called APIs and Microservices Certification, you can find it here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis ... nd-express. These projects with nice React front-ends in a portfolio can get you interviews. Then it's just a matter of time. Some refer to this as the "shotgun" approach to applying.
Last edited by Viktor K on Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

guitarplayer
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by guitarplayer »

I am interested in this also because looking for a career change and studying Maths and Stats at the moment.

@M it sounds pretty hard going, especially reading about going through 1000+ pp. books :)

Actually @Viktor K I was hoping you would answer here, because I know from your journal that you made the switch.

@M, what would be your perspective on the industry changing and a chance of getting a job with less skills nowadays? With your training, it sounds like you started in the early 2000's. I am thinking about succession of the 'IT workforce' system - I would imagine that years back it was important to have few highly skills people to set up systems, otherwise it would not be possible to get the job done at all (in construction think: you had to have workers to set the foundations, build walls etc and get that all right).

Nowadays it is perhaps that the demand for lower skilled IT labour is greater than back then (construction analogy: having people for finishing interiors like painting etc., the house will be anyway habitable)?

Salathor
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Salathor »

Viktor K wrote:
Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:43 pm
If you can do the FCC full-stack projects, and put nice front-ends on them (e.g. real website looking), and put those on a portfolio, you should be able to get a Junior full stack job after a few months / 100 or so applications.

I would recommend copying other websites front-ends rather than relying on your own designs skills.

This how I got my job, and I’ve coached 3 others through this same process in the last year.

That’s worth around 60-70k starting salary.

EDIT: It's now called APIs and Microservices Certification, you can find it here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis ... nd-express. These projects with nice React front-ends in a portfolio can get you interviews. Then it's just a matter of time. Some refer to this as the "shotgun" approach to applying.
Great tips, I really appreciate it! I'm going to look up that FCC.org site!

tdurtsch
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by tdurtsch »

+1 to what others have said about real-world experience being one of the best ways to get better at software engineering.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is contributing to an open-source software project. There are thousands if not millions of projects on GitHub. Find one that is relevant to your interests, check out their open issues, pick one that looks doable, and submit a pull request.

As a software engineer, one thing I really appreciate is working with people who know how to work effectively as part of a team. Working on open source is a good way to get experience in this area. IMO this is AT LEAST as important as actual technical ability. Good luck!

Salathor
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Salathor »

tdurtsch wrote:
Tue Jul 20, 2021 8:20 am
+1 to what others have said about real-world experience being one of the best ways to get better at software engineering.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is contributing to an open-source software project. There are thousands if not millions of projects on GitHub. Find one that is relevant to your interests, check out their open issues, pick one that looks doable, and submit a pull request.

As a software engineer, one thing I really appreciate is working with people who know how to work effectively as part of a team. Working on open source is a good way to get experience in this area. IMO this is AT LEAST as important as actual technical ability. Good luck!
Also great advice! I used a bit of git when I was trying to learn Ruby on Rails and was...moderately able to make some things happen. I'll have to do a lot more research to get things going smoothly before I would feel comfortable contributing to a project. The RoR tutorial I was following left a lot to be desired; it was trying to teach Ruby, Rails, and Git all at the same time, and I think a little more differentiation would have been nice.

macg
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by macg »

I recommend the book "Forge Your Future with Open Source" by VM (Vicky) Brasseur if you wanted to get into open source projects, and I agree that it would be helpful...

M
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by M »

@guitarplayer

Yes - I started in the early 2000's. It was a simpler and better time back then, especially if you were very skilled. Things have changed a lot over the years in the industry...

Companies have, and continue to try to, remove cost from their IT budget in various ways. Many server admin and user support tasks were automated and simplified by software developers. User support jobs were outsourced. Companies turned to contracting companies to fulfill many lower level or specialized software development projects in order to save money and offload risk and training cost onto the software engineers themselves.

The development frameworks have also changed a lot with many companies practicing agile or devops these days. This has resulted in improved financial efficiency of developing software, basically. I live in a very low cost of living area and know software engineers who only make 30k a year who do basic tasks and software engineers who make 150k but who do complex projects and work their tale off. Either that or they have specialized knowledge that would be very expensive for the company to replace so the company basically just gives them golden handcuffs because they don't want to pay the cost of documentation or modernizing some piece of software.

Of course, while all this financial optimization has been taking place the need for software development resources has continued to increase. The net effect is that today, if you are highly skilled and excel at problem solving and work hard you can still do very well in the field. However, if you don't have the skills or drive and are a low or moderately skilled software developer you would actually be better off financially as a plumber, at least where I live, since the companies have not yet figured out how to outsource, automate, and optimize plumbing jobs...yet.

M
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by M »

I guess I should mention, another effect of this cost optimization, at least in my experience, is that the job isn't nearly as fun or rewarding these days. It has become less and less about developing software or creative problem solving and more and more about checking boxes and marketing yourself to non-technical people who are always trying to justify their job by "optimizing" yours by giving you more boxes to check and constantly checking on progress and pushing you to work harder and longer hours etc. I spend more time these days reviewing what I should do and what I just did and recording how much time I spent doing it and then selling what I did to management than actually doing anything. It is a sad state of affairs...but it pays well so I keep doing it.

guitarplayer
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by guitarplayer »

A very valuable insight @M, thanks!

Salathor
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Salathor »

Thanks for the tips on FreeCodeCamp. I've worked my way through much of the javascript algos and datastructures section and learned a lot that I didn't know about (and learned even more about what I'm going to need to practice--regexes and recursion (which I still don't understand the point of, even if I understand how to do it just well enough to pass the test)).

ducknald_don
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by ducknald_don »

Have a look at the quicksort algorithm if you want to grasp where recursion is useful.

Salathor
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Salathor »

ducknald_don wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 11:24 am
Have a look at the quicksort algorithm if you want to grasp where recursion is useful.
I will. Thanks!

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Sclass
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Sclass »

M wrote:
Sat Jul 17, 2021 7:16 am
There are courses and certs you can take but imo experience still trumps everything. It can be tough to get into the field initially but once you have experience you're golden.
+1. However there is a caveat for the OP. He has experience and he seems to already know his way around coding. But he needs to get a job.

I found it hard to convince the rag tag bunch of interview committees that I could actually do the technical side. This was because I was primarily schooled as a scientist and self taught in assembly, C++ and Python while doing specific projects. Coding was only a small part of the design.

Answering dumb interview questions made me realize people for the most part cannot ascertain whether you have the skill to get the job done. Even the job they need you for. They default to textbook questions. Some literally pulled a CS textbook off the shelf and asked me a homework question about an algo for Viterbi codecs. I was actually asked the same question twice at Broadcom and Google. I kicked myself for not memorizing the answer the first time I missed it. Instead I responded “wtf is wrong with you dude, why are you asking me something off Wikipedia? Don’t you guys use Google here?” I didn’t get the job. :lol:

What I think a lot of these MacJob programmers needed to see was some kind of pedigree. Coursework would have made them feel more comfortable. Being self taught opened me up to a lot of cross examination that came straight out of a textbook - which may have been motivated by my obvious lack of textbook Ed.

The good news was the smarter teams knew of my prior products and had seen my personal projects portfolio I posted online. Now we have GitHub to do that. Your project, collaboration, diplomatic branching and version control skills can all be seen in one place. I strongly suggest if you want a job as a self taught programmer you should do a project and post it up. Picking up collaborators is an even bigger plus.

Disclaimers. I just hit my ten year ER anniversary so I’ve been out of the game a long time. I’m not a true programmer, I’m an embedded systems/DSP engineer. I write tiny programs.

Now as a burned out washed up retiree I can say that I was mistaken in always trying to land a job. It has become painfully obvious after the fact that the return on invested work is too low as an employee in big tech. Heck, the shareholders have the best deal. The employees are slowly robbed of their human capital. I know it’s a necessary evil to get employment early in your career. Try not to do it too long. A little bit of courage, creativity and ownership go a long way. Jobs rarely give that combo. For another thread.

ducknald_don
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by ducknald_don »

That's pretty much why I started my own business. I had an unusual career path and it definitely held me back. I know several other self employed programmers that had a similar experience.

The funny thing is companies that wouldn't give me a second glance as an employee are happy to buy my products.

M
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by M »

Sclass wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:14 pm

Now as a burned out washed up retiree I can say that I was mistaken in always trying to land a job. It has become painfully obvious after the fact that the return on invested work is too low as an employee in big tech. Heck, the shareholders have the best deal. The employees are slowly robbed of their human capital. I know it’s a necessary evil to get employment early in your career. Try not to do it too long. A little bit of courage, creativity and ownership go a long way. Jobs rarely give that combo. For another thread.
+1

This hits a little too close to home, lol. A blue collar worker once thought I was overpaid because all I do is sit in a chair all day in an air conditioned office and make six figures, according to him. After explaining to him that the company consisitently makes 100 million+ every year off the software me and a few other engineers created, year after year, he got real quiet.

Like most employees, the company is probably making way more off of you than what you cost the company. The ratio of profit per employee tends to be even higher for software companies since once the software is created it can be resold over and over for pennies usually. These days this is usually setup as a subscription model aka SAAS. It is mind boggling how much money some small software companies make with the right products. The shareholders/owners are definitely winning...

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Sclass
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Sclass »

Yeah I like the sound of that. The sooner you find out how to own your human capital the more of it you’ll keep unless you get lucky and land a job at a tech unicorn before it’s a unicorn.

It took me a decade of big ol’ boring tech to realize I was being ripped off. Way too much stress. Way too much doing things in the most inefficient way just because someone said so. I’m primarily a tech investor now for food and shelter and it beats ass on showing up at the salt mine. I realize fully that my returns are being fulfilled by younger versions of me busting their tails making useful products and not being compensated fairly for it. Well it is fair because they set their terms on sign up.

Wow that is OT. Eh, that’s the fun of this forum. The young guys should hear about the other side. Rarely do we hear about the long trajectory of a career in big tech. The first job at megacorp always looks stellar in the beginning. It has to be managed properly or the opportunity gets pissed away.

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Sclass
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Re: Courses to get a career in programming?

Post by Sclass »

M wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:27 pm
+1
This hits a little too close to home, lol. A blue collar worker once thought I was overpaid because all I do is sit in a chair all day in an air conditioned office and make six figures, according to him.
This brings tears to my eyes. I had the manufacturing techs tell me to my face that they were more important than me. They called me egghead and said they were making what we sold and that’s where the company’s money came from. The reality was I created their job, the product we made and the tools they used to assemble it. What a bunch of effing ingrates. And I was only paid double what they got.

After taxes it was even worse. It felt like communism when all the dust cleared.

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