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• I need some career guidance, please.

  - by user18956

  Hi, I have been a teacher of guitar and music theory for the last ten years or so, and I have decided to get out of it and pursue something involving computers, but I am very confused about it all. I have no training related to programming besides a knowledge of xhtml and css - which I realize are not even programming languages. My problem is that I know I want to do something with either making video games, computer/online applications, or some other programming job, but I haven't a clue how to begin. I picked up a book from the Head First series entitled, Head First Programming that uses Python to teach programming concepts, but after that, I don't really know what is a good direction for me in terms of balancing career satisfaction with job availability and acceptable pay. I am not looking for a huge salary, I just want to be able to survive doing something I love, and which challenges me. I don't know even a single person involved in a related field, so I am in need of guidance. The first thing I would like to know is whether pursuing a career as a programmer for video games is a realistic option. I love video games, and play them all the time, and I have always wanted to make them. If this is an option, what would be the recommended course of action? What is a good language or technology to get involved in for the job market now? I have read that PHP/MySQL is a good place to find a job for some. Can I find a job without school, or do I need to got o college? Also, will the Python I learn in this book translate into any other language I need to learn? If it is anything like music, then I am sure it will, but I don't know much about programming - yet. And last, yet perhaps most important, is thirty years old too old to take such a radical redirection in careers? Thank you for any help you can offer. I really need it.

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• How long can you be out of the MS market before it affects your career [closed]

  - by dave

  I've been working with .Net since it first came out and have done my best to use the latest and greatest things from Redmond. That being said, I've been working for the past year in the Python/Unix/Web world. In order to keep myself relevant in the MS world, I've been working part-time on a WPF project but I do not know how much longer that work will continue. So my question is: If I were to move totally to the Unix/Python/Web world, how long could I stay there before it starts getting hard to get another MS job? I am trying not to burn bridges in my career as I've found MS jobs pay better and tend to be more plentiful. PS: I like my Python job since it is something new and I get to work from home. It has provided a different view on coding that I've found useful. EDIT: I was out of the MS market for 12 months before attempting to get another MS job. No-one said "Gee you've been gone a while" but I did get a conspicuous lack of responses to job applications. My feeling is that the head-hunters do not bother to look beyond your last job. In the end, I got employment via my own network rather than the pimps. So, to answer my question: "not long, especially if you trust your career to head hunters."

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• Master in Computer Networking Versus a Master in Management Information System

  - by kako13

  Hi, I will get a BS in Computer Science in May/2010. I want to do a master but a have to choose between Computer Networking or Management Information System. My plans would be to work in the area of networking. Any suggestion?

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• Advice for Future Programmers?

  - by Nate Zaugg

  I have a buddy that is going to be giving some presentations to high-schoolers. Specifically he asked: What would you be looking for if they approached you about work? Perhaps you are in that age group right now. What do you want to know? Perhaps you are just a few years into the workforce. What do you wish someone had told you but never did? Perhaps you have children, relatives or friends in or soon to be in that age group. What are you worried they don't know about? I'm sure there are other perspectives and questions I'm not even thinking about. I'd like to hear what you have to say about it. Here was my list: Don't be afraid to try! Don't let the perception that something is too difficult stop you from experimenting. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but an un-inquisitive person is mostly useless. Stolen from Einstein: You don't really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother. It's never enough to be smart, you also have to work well with others. Before you can be really smart, you must learn how to learn. There will always be someone smarter than you are -- Become their buddy! Get to know great minds and learn all you can. Some knowledge can only be expressed this way. Communication, Communication, Communication! Projects rarely fail because of technical reasons and the difference between good programmers and outstanding programmers is how well they communicate. A good work ethic never goes unnoticed. Know when to ask for help and when to figure something out for yourself.

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• How do I explain this to potential employers?

  - by ReferencelessBob

  Backstory: TL;DR: I've gained a lot of experience working for 5 years at one startup company, but it eventually failed. The company is gone and the owner MIA. When I left sixth-form college I didn't want to start a degree straight away, so when I met this guy who knew a guy who was setting up a publishing company and needed a 'Techie' I thought why not. It was a very small operation, he sent mailings to schools, waited for orders to start arriving, then ordered a short run of the textbooks to be printed, stuck them in an envelope posted them out. I was initially going to help him set up a computerized system for recording orders and payments, printing labels, really basic stuff and I threw it together in Access in a couple of weeks. He also wanted to start taking orders online, so I set up a website and a paypal business account. While I was doing this, I was also helping to do the day-to-day running of things, taking phone orders, posting products, banking cheques, ordering textbooks, designing mailings, filing end of year accounts, hiring extra staff, putting stamps on envelopes. I learned so much about things I didn't even know I needed to learn about. Things were pretty good, when I started we sold about £10,000 worth of textbooks and by my 4th year there we sold £250,000 worth of text books. Things were looking good, but we had a problem. Our best selling product had peaked and sales started to fall sharply, we introduced add on products through the website to boost sales which helped for a while, but we had simply saturated the market. Our plan was to enter the US with our star product and follow the same, slightly modified, plan as before. We setup a 1-866 number and had the calls forwarded to our UK offices. We contracted a fulfillment company, shipped over a few thousand textbooks, had a mailing printed and mailed, then sat by the phones and waited. Needless to say, it didn't work. We tried a few other things, at home and in the US, but nothing helped. We expanded in the good times, moving into bigger offices, taking on staff to do administrative and dispatch work, but now cashflow was becoming a problem and things got tougher. We did the only thing we could and scaled things right back, the offices went, the admin staff went, I stopped taking a wage and started working from home. Nothing helped. The business was wound up about about 2 years ago. In the end it turned out that the owner had built up considerable debt at the start of business and had not paid them off during good years, which left him in a difficult position when cashflow had started to dry up. I haven't been able to contact the owner since I found out. It took me a while to get back on my feet after that, but I'm now at University and doing a Computer Science degree. How do I show the experience I have without having to get into all the gory details of what happened?

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• What's it like being a financial programmer?

  - by Mike

  As a student who's done an internship at a Silicon Valley company(non-financial), I'm curious to know what it's like working for a financial company doing software development. I'd expect the hours to be longer, and the pay to be higher. Specifically, I have the following questions: What's the work/life balance really like? Are you expected to work 80 hours a week most weeks? For those who have worked in non-financial software engineering jobs, how does being a financial software engineer compare in terms of work/life balance? How much does it pay? I'm curious as to starting(i.e. just got a BS) pay, as well as "top out" pay. (I'd prefer concrete numbers - ballpark is fine). Also, bonuses would be useful information. What jobs do financial programmers typically have? Are most just general software engineers, or do people typically have very specialized(i.e. AI or systems) backgrounds? Also, do most programmers have PhDs? Are programmers typically required to be at work, or are financial companies generally flexible about letting programmers work from home? When at work, do programmers have to dress formally? What are the technology environments like? Are finance companies using state-of-the-art hardware and software, or are they generally more conservative in upgrading their equipment? What programming languages are typically used? If VBA(shudder) is used, is it a large part of a finance company's workflow? If you could turn back the clock, would you still be a financial programmer? I'm going to keep this post open a little bit longer to get some more responses.

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• Technology path for ASP.Net C# SQL server programmars ?

  - by isthatacode

  I am working on ASP.Net 3.5, C# , SQL Server 2005 and would like to enhance my skills to technology which is in high demand at present and atleast for another 2 years may be. I need your advice on which skill should i ADD or ENHANCE being an ASP.net, C#, sql server programnmar ? Thanks in advance for ur expert advice!!

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• Job conditions conflicting with personal principles on software-development - how much is too much?

  - by Baelnorn

  Sorry for the incoming wall'o'text (and for my probably bad English) but I just need to get this off somehow. I also accept that this question will be probably closed as subjective and argumentative, but I need to know one thing: "how much BS are programmers supposed to put up with before breaking?" My background I'm 27 years old and have a B.Sc. in Computer engineering with a graduation grade of 1.8 from a university of applied science. I went looking for a job right after graduation. I got three offers right away, with two offers paying vastly more than the last one, but that last one seemed more interesting so I went for that. My situation I've been working for the company now for 17 months now, but it feels like a drag more and more each day. Primarily because the company (which has only 5 other developers but me, and of these I work with 4) turned out to be pretty much the anti-thesis of what I expected (and was taught in university) from a modern software company. I agreed to accept less than half of the usual payment appropriate for my qualification for the first year because I was promised a trainee program. However, the trainee program turned out to be "here you got a computer, there's some links on the stuff we use, and now do what you colleagues tell you". Further, during my whole time there (trainee or not) I haven't been given the grace of even a single code-review - apparently nobody's interested in my work as long as it "just works". I was told in the job interview that "Microsoft technology played a central role in the company" yet I've been slowly eroding my congnitive functions with Flex/Actionscript/Cairngorm ever since I started (despite having applied as a C#/.NET developer). Actually, the company's primary projects are based on Java/XSLT and Flex/Actionscript (with some SAP/ABAP stuff here and there but I'm not involved in that) and they've been working on these before I even applied. Having had no experience either with that particular technology nor the framework nor the field (RIA) nor in developing business scale applications I obviously made several mistakes. However, my boss told me that he let me make those mistakes (which ate at least 2 months of development time on their own) on purpose to provide some "learning experience". Even when I was still a trainee I was already tasked with working on a business-critical application. On my own. Without supervision. Without code-reviews. My boss thinks agile methods are a waste of time/money and deems putting more than one developer on any project not efficient. Documentation is not necessary and each developer should only document what he himself needs for his work. Recently he wanted us to do bug tracking with Excel and Email instead of using an already existing Bugzilla, overriding an unanimous decision made by all developers and testers involved in the process - only after another senior developer had another hour-long private discussion with him he agreed to let us use the bugtracker. Project management is basically not present, there are only a few Excel sheets floating around where the senior developer lists some things (not all, mind you) with a time estimate ranging from days to months, trying to at least somehow organize the whole mess. A development process is also basically not present, each developer just works on his own however he wants. There are not even coding conventions in the company. Testing is done manually with a single tester (sometimes two testers) per project because automated testing wasn't given the least thought when the whole project was started. I guess it's not a big surprise when I say that each developer also has his own share of hundreds of overhours (which are, of course, unpaid). Each developer is tasked with working on his own project(s) which in turn leads to a very extensive knowledge monopolization - if one developer was to have an accident or become ill there would be absolutely no one who could even hope to do his work. Considering that each developer has his own business-critical application to work on, I guess that's a pretty bad situation. I've been trying to change things for the better. I tried to introduce a development process, but my first attempt was pretty much shot down by my boss with "I don't want to discuss agile methods". After that I put together a process that at least resembled how most of the developers were already working and then include stuff like automated (or at least organized) testing, coding conventions, etc. However, this was also shot down because it wasn't "simple" enought to be shown on a business slide (actually, I wasn't even given the 15 minutes I'd have needed to present the process in the meeting). My problem I can't stand working there any longer. Seriously, I consider to resign on monday, which still leaves me with 3 months to work there due to the cancelation period. My primary goal since I started studying computer science was being a good computer scientist, working with modern technologies and adhering to modern and proven principles and methods. However, the company I'm working for seems to make that impossible. Some days I feel as if was living in a perverted real-life version of the Dilbert comics. My question Am I overreacting? Is this the reality each graduate from university has to face? Should I betray my sound principles and just accept these working conditions? Or should I gtfo of there? What's the opinion of other developers on this matter. Would you put up with all that stuff?

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• Which language to learn

  - by Pmarcoen

  I am fresh out of college, I'm pretty skilled in weblanguages like PHP, Perl, Javascript (JQuery). I have some basic skills in java, experienced c++ a little. People have been telling me c# is a good way to go because a lot of companies look for .NET developers. What would be a good next move for me ?

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• What skills are needed to be successful at robotics?

  - by Click Upvote

  I'm considering studying to be a robotics engineer. The desire to work in that field is definitely there.. but I'm wondering what my chances of success would be. Generally I'm good with mental tasks of any sort such as programming, maths, physics, etc, and I think i'd be able to do electrical work such as soldering wires, changing batteries, etc. However, I'm not so good with things of a physical nature where I have to use my hands. For example, if you give me some vegetables to slice and dice, all of them will be diced un-evenly and some will look ugly. This might be because I have poor mind-hand coordination or because of a lack of concentration. Thoughts?

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• Do you feel threatened by younger developers?

  - by bobsmith123

  When an opportunity for a new project in my company presented itself, I volunteered with a little bit of skepticism but a lot of excitement. I have been working with this company for 5 years on a different project in which I was a team lead for several releases. I have a consistent track record of delivering good quality projects. The new project has a team that is built from ground up and the management decided to hire new developers. The technologies used are the latest ones that are different from the previous project I had worked on (although they both are in .NET). The newer and the younger developers in the team have more experience with the latest technologies from their previous gigs. The younger developers have a lot more energy, can work 14 hours a day (they remind me of my early 20s) and live on ramen noodles. Since they are new, I feel they are obligated to show what they are made of and to prove their mettle. I feel like I am sidelined in this project and the management obviously like the younger developers as they bring more to the table. I know ageism is rampant in our field and the more I think about this, the more it makes me feel that there are very few transferable skills from one project to the other and one day you could be a team lead managing a number of developers, the next day some one you hired becomes your boss. Do you see yourself in situations like this very often? What plans do you have to make yourself valuable in a long term perspective?

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• How to learn to estimate how long assigments will take?

  - by SDGator

  This might be out of scope for this website. If it is, let me know and I'll remove the question. After 15 years in the industry, I still suck at answering the question "How long do you think X will take?" For scheduling purposes, we always have to give an estimate of how long different sub-tasks in a project will take. What's the best way to get better at estimating how long it will take to do something? Some people are really good at this. Are there any books, techniques or whatever that people use to get better at this?

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• How do I change careers to become a programmer with little money

  - by bgc83

  I'm currently a network engineer, but find myself wanting to get into the world of development. I took a little bit of Java in college, am 27 years old and have been network engineering for 4 years now. I have a mortgage and student loans so going back to school would be difficult. I'm willing to put in however much hardwork is needed around my full time job to learn, but part of me feels I may need actuall schooling to get down some of the advanced concepts. Just looking for a little advice and direction. I have purchased a bunch of the Head First programming books and have begun reading through some of them as I figure out my way into this transition.

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• A feeling that I'm not that good developer

  - by Karim

  Hi, Im having a strange feeling, but let me first introduce myself as a software developer. I started to program when I was still a kid, I had about 10 or 11 years. I really enjoy my work and never get bored from it. It's amazing how somebody could be paid for what he really likes to do and would be doing it anyway even for free. WHen I first started to program, I was feeling proud of what I was doing, each application I built was for me a success and after 2-3 year I had a feeling that I'm a coding guru. It was a nice feeling ;-) But the more I was in the field, the more types of software I started to develop I was starting to have a feeling that I'm completely wrong in that I'm guru. I felt that I'm not even a mediocre developer. Each new field I start to work on is giving me this feeling. Like when I once developed a device driver for a client, I saw how much I need to learn about device drivers. When I developed a video filter for an application, I saw how much do I still need to learn about DirectShow, Color Spaces, and all the theory behind that. The worst thing was when I started to learn algorithms. It was several years ago. I knew then the basic structures and algorithms like the sorting, some types of trees, some hashtables, strings etc.. and when I really wanted to learn a group of structures I learned about 5-6 new types and saw that in fact even this small group has several hundred subtypes of structures. It's depressing how little time people have in their lives to learn all this stuff. I'm now a software developer with about 10 years of experience and I still feel that I'm not a proficient developer when I think about things that others do in the industry. Is this normal what I'm experiencing or is it a sign of a destructive excessive ambition? Thanks in advance for any comments.

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• Will a Ph. D. in Computer Science help?

  - by Francisco Garcia

  I am close to my 30s and still learning about programming and software engineering. Like most people who like their profession I truly believe that I should aim to improve and keep updated. One of the things I do is reading technical papers from professional publications (IEEE and ACM) but I admit there are very good bloggers out there too. Lately I started to think (should I say realize?) that Ph. D people actually are expected to expand constantly their knowledge, but little is expected from lower classes once they know enough This made me think that maybe having a Ph. D will help to have more... respect? but I also believe that I am already getting old for that. Futhermore I see many master and doctor programs that does not seem to add any value over hard experience and self learning. I belive that a degree in computer science, althought not necessary, can lay out a good base for programming work. However: What can a Ph. D. degree give you that you cannot learn on your own? (if you are not into something VERY specific and want to work in a non academic environment)

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• Have you gotten a job through http://stackoverflow.com/ [closed]

  - by fastcodejava

  Or made any other financial gain?

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• What would PHP bring to the table for a Java Developer ?

  - by Rachel

  I am a Java EE developer working mainly with JSPs, Servlets, and frameworks like Spring. Will learning PHP be a wise decision ? What would PHP offer me ?

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• How do I change careers to become a programmer without spending a lot of money

  - by bgc83

  I'm currently a network engineer, but find myself wanting to get into the world of development. I took a little bit of Java in college, am 27 years old and have been network engineering for 4 years now. I have a mortgage and student loans so going back to school would be difficult. I'm willing to put in however much hardwork is needed around my full time job to learn, but part of me feels I may need actuall schooling to get down some of the advanced concepts. Just looking for a little advice and direction. I have purchased a bunch of the Head First programming books and have begun reading through some of them as I figure out my way into this transition.

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• Good Software development courses?

  - by user296970

  I'm a software developer with a BS in Computer Science. I've been working in the field for 5 years, and I'm looking to develop my project leadership skills (I'm currently not a lead). Does anyone have any suggestions as to which schools / programs I can do? A masters is probably out of the question, due to the time required (and my not so good verbal score on my GRE). A shorter course would be preferable.

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• How to be a better software designer

  - by Bmw

  I feel as if I am a hack programmer. I do things over and over again until they finally work. I copy/paste code. I don't think about why something makes sense, if it works I go with it. I have my undergraduate in computer science, and I've done this the entire time. Somehow I made it through the degree by doing this and now I'm in my second year of programming professionally and I am still able to do this and get away with it. Here's the thing, I don't want to be this way anymore. I am not proud of the work I do, I feel like I'm just a copy/paste programmer. How do I become better? I want to be able to design something on my own without copying code. Have you ever been in this situation, if so how did you move beyond it to become a better programmer? To add some background about myself, I started as an asp.net c# programmer, now I'm doing vbscript (which actually makes my tendency to copy/paste/hack a lot worse I must say!) with classic asp…

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• New job clarification [closed]

  - by Fred

  Lets say you have decided to join company A. During interview you got feedback on what technology you would be working on(C# win app) and other details( sketchy).Now you have decided to join the company. Is it ok to ask via mail for further information and also ask to specify certain topics to brush up so that one can be better prepared for next job? Of course i know this question is not programming related.

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• Career Plan: The one year plan. The three year plan.

  - by drelihan

  Hi Folks, I work as a developer however I only recently began developing full time having worked for 5 years in various roles. When it comes to career planning I think I pretty much agree with The Journeyman to Craftsman model coined in The Pragmatic Probrammer and used by Bob Martin. I see myself as a journeyman and I won't call myself a "good" (for want of a better word) until I re-evaluate my skills in 5 years time. However, as part of our careers we are encouraged to make one and three year plan with specific goals that we should hit. Unfortunately, my goal is this: Write clean code that solves a problem and is easy to maintain. From a technology point of view I want to know C++ and .net programming inside out(C#, WCF etc..) But that's it. That's my plan. Is this enough? So although there's a great discussion on what people should do with their career: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11313/career-planning-any-tips My question is this: What's your one year plan? What's your three year plan? And am I being naive with my career? Thanks,

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• SQL Server Certification - a database platform primer for your career path

  - by ssqa.net

  When you need to upgrade your knowledge then training is required, at the same time certifications will help you to keep up on what you have learned! There is a big debate on the web about whether certifications are important in your career or not, the bottomline is if you do not know the stuff or unable to answer few basic technical questions, it does'nt matter how many certifications you have then you will not get the job, well I'm not starting the same discussion here. But in the recent...(read more)

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• Oracle Certification on CIOs List of Tops For Career Advancement

  - by Brandye Barrington

  It's no secret that we think Oracle Certifications are some of the top in the industry. We go the extra mile ensuring their validity and value, spending countless hours scoping, developing and supporting these credentials. So although it wasn't a surprise, it was indeed an honor to see Oracle DBA Certifications listed recently in CIO.com's list of 12 IT Certifications That Deliver Career Advancement. Read the article and then get started on your own Oracle Certification today!

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• Pros and Cons of various career paths [closed]

  - by Snitse

  What are the advantages and disadvantages of various career paths within CS? By a path I mean something like: Web Development GUI Development Sys admin/DB admin/network admin Security (maybe should be grouped with sys admin) Programming back end (like a C programmer) Algorithm Development heavy programming And any other you think should be in this list. What are the various areas in which each of these professions excels, or lags?

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