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Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 17:15:

quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
I never went to school for this, infact I failed high school because all I did was sit around and code random stuff at home...

I think it depends on the mindset of the person.

For example, I worked 3 years in a small firm, I loved it at first, but then it got horribly boring and frustrating. It felt like the company was going no where and in turn myself wasn't going anywhere.

Now that I am out of that position, even though it sucked ass... I still want to go back into the same general field. This time not so much as low level coding but more so from an over all architectural/business standpoint. Its still going to be a lot of the same work though and I don't mind that.

Its not so much of loving to code as it is something you are good at and you like the field in general. I like problem solving and designing systems and getting something out and having people use. There really isn't a better feeling than knowing your work is helping a person or organization better reach their goals.

So if you don't really feel like this is for you then maybe you made a mistake in taking it in school. I have seen lots of people that go into school with a mild to no interest in CS or anything related to IT and then come out of it with a degree and still not be interested.

People like that are worthless... I don't give a fuck if you went to the best school, if your heart and mind isnt in the field then what good are you to a company or to your clients? You just end up being a tool with a piece of paper and no practical knowledge.

It's like music I think, it helps if you start young and really enjoy it.

Whoaaaaa, calm down bro!

Thanks for your angle though.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-04-2009 17:17:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
Whoaaaaa, calm down bro!

Thanks for your angle though.

I'm serious though, people like that come in and you have to train them from the ground up, and you wonder why they even went to school. They could have learned the same thing themselves in their free time.

In this field, education is one thing, but experience is a whole other.

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 17:40:

quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
I'm serious though, people like that come in and you have to train them from the ground up, and you wonder why they even went to school. They could have learned the same thing themselves in their free time.

In this field, education is one thing, but experience is a whole other.

And from what I gather this is the same with everything. My sister is graduating with a Religious Studies degree, my mate a chemistry degree, all the same situation. You know enough to know you need to know more.

It's good you made it on your own, but the fact is you need that bit of paper to even have a chance of getting a foot in the door (I know there will be exceptions, you included) my cousin spends his life coding and in front of his pc, literally from waking up to bed, he graduated with a history degree and is doing fuck all with it. He has the IT skills but hasn't got shit all to prove it really, so he's started at the very bottom of some local firm helping some guy to use a cms to develop a shitty little e-commerce website. Had he a relevant degree behind him then no doubt he'd be able to go and do the whole thing for himself.

Yes I know you can build your own portfolio with voluntary work or helping small companies, but shit most places still wanna know what you got at A-Level before you even get an interview, so to approach a company with no degree isn't likely to fare well.

I was enquiring as to how other people felt at this stage in their life, how they found the change from education to work. Not be called out for having wasted 4 years of my life on a worthless piece of paper. I also wanted to know the learning curve, since I don't think giving up all my time for a job (regardless of what it is) is a very fulfilling life. I didn't go into this degree without any interest, I enjoy the field in general, but people change mate. And I wanted some real world opinions on an industry I may go into, which you have provided, albeit in a very harsh manner, but nonetheless I am thankful for your input.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-04-2009 17:45:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
And I wanted some real world opinions on an industry I may go into, which you have provided, albeit in a very harsh manner, but nonetheless I am thankful for your input.

Its a harsh world, and a harsh field, that is if you want to be anyone in it.

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 17:56:

quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Its a harsh world, and a harsh field, that is if you want to be anyone in it.

Point taken, thanks for the enlightenment.

Posted by LeopoldStotch on May-04-2009 17:59:

also, do not be surprised or upset if the company you work with decides to go economic, and ship your work to India to finish it up and decide to lay you off to improve net profit.

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 18:06:

quote:
Originally posted by LeopoldStotch
also, do not be surprised or upset if the company you work with decides to go economic, and ship your work to India to finish it up and decide to lay you off to improve net profit.

Fuck, education it is then.

They can't ship education off to India!

Do you speak from personal experience? Is any job safe?

Posted by LeopoldStotch on May-04-2009 18:21:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
Fuck, education it is then.

They can't ship education off to India!

Do you speak from personal experience? Is any job safe?

don't mean to scare you away from IT work. if you love it, stick with it. that's my motto.

and yes i do speak from experience. there is no such thing as a "safe job" these days. 10 years ago maybe yes. but not now.

Posted by AnotherWay83 on May-04-2009 19:10:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
Is any job safe?

the way things are today i think that no job that is desk bound (and particularly those jobs that are done entirely using a computer, such as coding, accounting, etc.) is safe.

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 20:19:

quote:
Originally posted by AnotherWay83
the way things are today i think that no job that is desk bound (and particularly those jobs that are done entirely using a computer, such as coding, accounting, etc.) is safe.

What are your reasoning's?

There used to be a saying my granddad used to say "people will always need houses" and yet the housing industry is on it's arse. I know plenty of tradesman through my part time bar job, and all of them say there are no jobs in their line of work any more. This is going across the spectrum of mechanics, electricians, brick layers, plumbers, etc.

Even superstar industries are collapsing, musicians make nothing any more. I can seriously see it going the same way for acting too, maybe not so fast, but soon you'll have fresh talent offering to work for next to nothing to get noticed so they can do commercials to get paid.

What job would you consider a safe bet? I am interested to discuss this btw, but may be coming across aggressive, lol this is not the case.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-04-2009 22:45:

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 22:55:

quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Thats the thing, right now there really isn't anything. Every field still exists, a lot of them you can still make good money in. The problem is that no one is hiring right now.

Things like this happen. Give it 5-10 years an we will be back to where we were when this started. Probably a bit smaller, maybe a bit more regulated, but thats not a bad thing.

The blood of the workers, blue collar and white collar will continue to grease the cogs and wheels of capitalism...

Truth.

So anyway if I am gonna help myself here, what skills you suggest I school myself on?

I wanna get my object orientated programming far tighter, starting with my javascript. What else have you found useful in your career so far?

Posted by AnotherWay83 on May-04-2009 23:00:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
What are your reasoning's?

There used to be a saying my granddad used to say "people will always need houses" and yet the housing industry is on it's arse. I know plenty of tradesman through my part time bar job, and all of them say there are no jobs in their line of work any more. This is going across the spectrum of mechanics, electricians, brick layers, plumbers, etc.

Even superstar industries are collapsing, musicians make nothing any more. I can seriously see it going the same way for acting too, maybe not so fast, but soon you'll have fresh talent offering to work for next to nothing to get noticed so they can do commercials to get paid.

What job would you consider a safe bet? I am interested to discuss this btw, but may be coming across aggressive, lol this is not the case.

well, the trademan jobs are probably suffering due to the economy. so you shouldn't be surprised to see all sorts of people getting laid off, simply because in such a climate people are nervous about the future and tend to save instead of spend, which has a spiral effect on the industries across the board. but when the economy picks back up those jobs will come back.

jobs in which you need to be physically present to get it done, ie, plumbers, construction workers, surgeons, and so on will always be in demand, simply because there is no way to offshore those jobs. on the other hand, jobs such as computer programming, accounting, all kinds of backoffice stuff, these dont really require you to be physically present there and can be very easily offshored. so those are the ones that worry me the most (im in software myself).

just take a look at some freelance websites, eg, getafreelancer.com, and look at the wages that many of the freelancers in eastern europe, asia and india are willing to work for. they will take any jobs available and get them done for peanuts, eg, $200, when for the same job you would have to pay someone here 10x as much quite easily. in such circumstances it becomes very difficult to compete.

IT on the other hand (the guys that set up networks and fix computers in offices) is still a safe gig, because its something you have to be physically present to do.

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 23:10:

quote:
Originally posted by AnotherWay83
well, the trademan jobs are probably suffering due to the economy. so you shouldn't be surprised to see all sorts of people getting laid off, simply because in such a climate people are nervous about the future and tend to save instead of spend, which has a spiral effect on the industries across the board. but when the economy picks back up those jobs will come back.

jobs in which you need to be physically present to get it done, ie, plumbers, construction workers, surgeons, and so on will always be in demand, simply because there is no way to offshore those jobs. on the other hand, jobs such as computer programming, accounting, all kinds of backoffice stuff, these dont really require you to be physically present there and can be very easily offshored. so those are the ones that worry me the most (im in software myself).

just take a look at some freelance websites, eg, getafreelancer.com, and look at the wages that many of the freelancers in eastern europe, asia and india are willing to work for. they will take any jobs available and get them done for peanuts, eg, $200, when for the same job you would have to pay someone here 10x as much quite easily. in such circumstances it becomes very difficult to compete.

IT on the other hand (the guys that set up networks and fix computers in offices) is still a safe gig, because its something you have to be physically present to do.

There are certain things difficult to offshore though even in software. I can't imagine someone wanting to outsource a huge database project for example? Maybe I am wrong, I might try look for an angle to jump on the cloud bandwagon, you wid me blud?

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-04-2009 23:21:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
Truth.

So anyway if I am gonna help myself here, what skills you suggest I school myself on?

I wanna get my object orientated programming far tighter, starting with my javascript. What else have you found useful in your career so far?

It depends? Do you know design patterns? Stuff like Facade, Observer/Listener pattern, Command pattern, MVC? Stuff like that will help with your OOP skills.

People think that programming is specific to one language, its really not. You have to learn the little in and outs of all of them, but for the most part the same theory applies to all of them.

Seprating the theory out into the field you want to program in is what counts. If its desktop development, web development (including backend and frontend), systems/database development, they all have fairly different sets of theory. Learning one will def help with others tho.

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 23:24:

quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
It depends? Do you know design patterns? Stuff like Facade, Observer/Listener pattern, Command pattern, MVC? Stuff like that will help with your OOP skills.

People think that programming is specific to one language, its really not. You have to learn the little in and outs of all of them, but for the most part the same theory applies to all of them.

Seprating the theory out into the field you want to program in is what counts. If its desktop development, web development (including backend and frontend), systems/database development, they all have fairly different sets of theory. Learning one will def help with others tho.

Should I be embarrassed I've never even heard of design patterns?

Food for thought anyway, how did you learn?

Posted by LeopoldStotch on May-04-2009 23:40:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
Should I be embarrassed I've never even heard of design patterns?

Food for thought anyway, how did you learn?
Wiki Link

The most common i have seen are Creational Patterns with Abstract factories, factory methods, builders, object pools, singletons, and resource acquistions.

One I have rarely seen, but think it is a up and coming one and i know i will see in the future is Concurrency patterns. Half the stuff listed is basic multithreading development. the other half i have yet to mess around with.

but yes. take a look at design patterns, and see if you can get a good handle with it. along the way, while you take a look at web framework development. There are a whole bunch such as for php (Cake, zend, pear), java (spring, struts, tapestry, grails, cocoon) and javascript (jquery, yahoo!, scriptaculous, prototype), and flex framework material. just to name a few off the top of my head.

that's just for starters. there's a whole bunch more.

Posted by LeopoldStotch on May-04-2009 23:41:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7

Food for thought anyway, how did you learn?

i picked it up along the way at work, and also on the side too. it's very helpful to work with a growing environment where they allow you to learn while you work.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-04-2009 23:43:

quote:
Originally posted by Lunar Phase 7
Should I be embarrassed I've never even heard of design patterns?

Food for thought anyway, how did you learn?

I learned OOP from teaching myself C++ in 9th grade...

I didn't learn a lot of things like design patterns till I got a real job and a coworker who ended up leading the developers gave me a couple books to check out.

This is the one I really read...

http://www.amazon.com/First-Design-...41480375&sr=8-1

and this one is like the bible of design patterns and resuable coding practices...

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patter...=pd_sim_b_4_img

A lot of it ends up being sort of "duh" stuff if you have done a lot of OOP, but really they help a lot.

For example... undo/redo in any app... thats all pretty much the Command pattern. You break up actions into individual blocks of code that know how to do whath they need to do with given paramaters and how to undo them. Then you have an invoker or some other piece of code to manage the set of actions that are being done so you can then undo them in the reverse order.

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-04-2009 23:45:

quote:
Originally posted by LeopoldStotch
i picked it up along the way at work, and also on the side too. it's very helpful to work with a growing environment where they allow you to learn while you work.

Yea, a work enviroment that allows you to learn things while working is a great advantage... just make sure that everyone else around you isnt learning the same thing... thats when things can get bad at a company (oh shit what are we doing!?)

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-04-2009 23:54:

Fuck I got a lot to learn.

Cheers guys!

Posted by LeopoldStotch on May-05-2009 01:46:

Posted by ziptnf on May-05-2009 02:07:

Thanks for hijacking my thread guys.

Nobody has played my game yet?

Posted by Joss Weatherby on May-05-2009 02:08:

just to say it cause i need to... fuck flex

Posted by Lunar Phase 7 on May-05-2009 09:39:

quote:
Originally posted by ziptnf
Thanks for hijacking my thread guys.

Nobody has played my game yet?

It's my fault I apologise. Once I got my bloody SQL stuff out the way today and tomorrow I will play the game then.

Looks awesome from the pictars anyway.

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