Official Programming & Development Thread Vol. ASP.NET, C/C#/C++, HTML, Java, Etc.

[shimmyhendrix]

So you dudes are stating a CS degree is not required in order to have a career coding?

Will it help, definitely.  Is it required? Nah.  (Also keep in mind that CS is not the only degree that can get you into the field.  Mathematics, IS, IT, EE, etc are also relevant)

You can get into the industry without a degree at all, but if you're looking to join a company you'd better have enough experience and accomplishments to take the place of it.  

Usually people without CS degrees and get into the industry and get experience by doing freelance work,  creating their own startups, joining startups (most big corporations want those degrees) etc.  I'd recommend atleast getting some kind of certs if you dont have a degree at all.  The degrees/certifications dont really matter in the industry, but alot of companies use it as a preliminary weed-out.

You can definitely get in without the degree, but be prepared to grind and start low to get that foot in.

 

[frankmatthews]

So say I want to try to learn programming on my own, completely from scratch, all from one of these tutorial websites posted in here. Which language would be most beneficial to start with in terms of prevalence of use? I'd like to start with something that's not extremely difficult but also something a lot of people use. Something that would look good on a resume, something useful across many fields.

 

[ecruteakcityboy]

Yoo this is pretty fun
Got halfway through building that Cat app. Finishing tomorrow.

 

[shimmyhendrix]

So say I want to try to learn programming on my own, completely from scratch, all from one of these tutorial websites posted in here. Which language would be most beneficial to start with in terms of prevalence of use? I'd like to start with something that's not extremely difficult but also something a lot of people use. Something that would look good on a resume, something useful across many fields.

I think Python might be the easiest to get your feet wet with.

Java is the most popular language, and learning it will allow you to easily pick up most other object-oriented languages.

If you dont mind a slightly steeper (not super hard at all though) learning curve, jump straight into Java.   If not, Python --> Javascript --> Java.

If you want to take the tough route, get down to the nitty gritty and really understand programming, C++ --> Java.

This infographic may help (probably should be added to the OP)

WARNING!!! Image will be BIG AS **** when you click it!!!

 

[vladimir dinero]

So you dudes are stating a CS degree is not required in order to have a career coding?

bootcamp grad here with no prior cs knowledge at all. wrote my first line of code at the age of 31 last april. attended hack reactor in june and landed a job in october as a mid level software engineer at a google ventures startup. got exactly the outcome i was looking for job/salary/equity wise so it's possible, but it's a lot harder than it sounds

 

[tay1]

So say I want to try to learn programming on my own, completely from scratch, all from one of these tutorial websites posted in here. Which language would be most beneficial to start with in terms of prevalence of use? I'd like to start with something that's not extremely difficult but also something a lot of people use. Something that would look good on a resume, something useful across many fields.

Python. I started learning c++ first though. Why not just dive in to you'll eventually need to know? The biggest problem for me is finding the right book/teacher.

 

[luckyluchiano]

Anyonw dive into the swift language apple dropped a yr or two ago?

 

[capital sb]

 
bootcamp grad here with no prior cs knowledge at all. wrote my first line of code at the age of 31 last april. attended hack reactor in june and landed a job in october as a mid level software engineer at a google ventures startup. got exactly the outcome i was looking for job/salary/equity wise so it's possible, but it's a lot harder than it sounds

Congrats ! Mind explaining your process for other people that are looking to get where you are?

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

bootcamp grad here with no prior cs knowledge at all. wrote my first line of code at the age of 31 last april. attended hack reactor in june and landed a job in october as a mid level software engineer at a google ventures startup. got exactly the outcome i was looking for job/salary/equity wise so it's possible, but it's a lot harder than it sounds

I'm so happy someone stepped up to the plate with an experience like yours Vlad.

My goodness lol, we didn't even get to the second page before the "this method works, and that method doesn't" commentary started up. Look there are many avenues to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish, and it depends on a few factors. I for one am an advocate for organized and well developed paid courses, but then again that might not work for someone who is tight on money or flat out just don't want to pay....fortunately there are a cornucopia of free resources available to do so.

And yes of course it takes experience, but again that goes for most careers so there's no need to have to emphasize that repeatedly. But you have to start somewhere. I'm at a point in my career where I can get top level assignments/jobs/further education, BUT that was after almost a decade of career development. RIght out of undergrad I accepted a "measly" $35k career where I had to move to Alabama in less than 2 weeks after the offer. All my buddies picked on me, but little did they know that "little" job set me up to get another job one year later where I made $100k in 6 months. Then from there my career kept growing and growing.

I'm not saying that to brag, the relevance of my statement is to say get started in coding however you can...then get as much hands on experience as you can by completing small projects and developing a portfolio....take that unsexy tech support job if needed...you never know what it could lead to and what you'll learn on it...continue to hone your craft, and the chances of you achieving your goals will improve.

I've also mentioned how coding can help in other ways as well. For instance maybe you have a job working in an office doing non-tech type stuff. But you people use Excel to input things on a regular basis. Knowing VBA you can create a custom GUI which allows for more efficient data input. That's a value added skill that could get you promoted, or you can put that on your resume/portfolio for future opportunities.

To the more experienced programmers in here, I ask that you be supportive to the ones who are looking to start. No need for reality checks or what not, you could possibly discourage someone that was interested.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Anyonw dive into the swift language apple dropped a yr or two ago?

Yes Lucky, I'm using it as we speak. It's not that bad, syntax is clean and simple. I'm using it as a part of the Xcode IDE. They have a mode called playground where you can dynamically test your code before using it in your app that is cool. There are some annoying things though like the contextual code completion feature...it's very distracting. Also they are getting rid of a few things for Swift 3 that you might be already accustomed to doing. For example when doing for loops the syntax for the incrementation block it usually like "i++" but they are getting rid of C style for loops in Swift 3.

 

[capital sb]

Even Vlad said it himself "It is a lot harder than it sounds", thats all that I am saying. Saying that something is challenging shouldn't be enough to discourage someone who claims they want to get into the software world.

@ElderWatsonDiggs going to send you a PM.

 

[Barbados Slim]

I don't know if this has been posted, but check out pluralsight. Unfortunately it's not free, but it's still a great resource. They have a bunch of courses with actual instructors.  

https://www.pluralsight.com/

 

[HankHill]

Bootcamps:

I'm currently going through a free online bootcamp. My background is primarily software engineering, but I want to learn front-end design and development. The bootcamp provides structure and an objective of what I want to learn. I don't have to go back to school to learn this and can work on it at my own speed since its not a paid bootcamp. Since I'm already in a position to get on web development projects, this just gives me a broader knowledge base so I'm comfortable at applying my skills, similar to what elderwatsondiggs said.

For those who have no experience and aren't in a position visible to that kind of work, I'd suggest doing a paid boot camp if you have the time like vladimir dinero if you're looking for work. If they have a pool of companies/start-ups they feed to, or a network of people that look for entry-level programmers, it may help with you landing a job.

If you just want to learn because you always wanted to, do some free tutorials.


Interviews:

Recent grad interviews are a lot harder than experienced hires from my experience. When I had interviews my final semester, everyone of them included a portion of writing code on a white board. I remember having to write classes and methods for an imaginary taxi cab company.

Just did some "technical" interviews not too long ago where they just asked me about the current projects I worked on and how many years experience I've had with ___ language.


Resources:

For those doing web development, Sublime and Brackets are good code editors if you want something more robust than Notepad++. They typically offer live preview and plugin functionality.

 

[4318michaeljohnson4318]

Obviously you're not going to get a corporate job without a bachelors. But the argument should be which makes you a competent coder. A bootcamp should provide that speciality to certain frameworks. It is much easier to create a curriculum for a bootcamp than a degree. Way more flexibility. Most of the modern languages is a bit harder to outsource. I work for a global company and we outsource a lot of our development role strictly for cost reasons. If we were going off quality it's never better to outsource. But one for sure thing is you definitely don't need a CS degree (not a degree but specifically CS) to get a job at any level programming.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Even Vlad said it himself "It is a lot harder than it sounds", thats all that I am saying. Saying that something is challenging shouldn't be enough to discourage someone who claims they want to get into the software world.

@ElderWatsonDiggs
going to send you a PM.

Ok my dude hit me up!

Obviously you're not going to get a corporate job without a bachelors. But the argument should be which makes you a competent coder. A bootcamp should provide that speciality to certain frameworks. It is much easier to create a curriculum for a bootcamp than a degree. Way more flexibility. Most of the modern languages is a bit harder to outsource. I work for a global company and we outsource a lot of our development role strictly for cost reasons. If we were going off quality it's never better to outsource.

Yes true, also for some companies/institutions outsourcing is a dead issue due to proprietary information and security concerns. If possible make sure the particular bootcamp you are interested in has good followup resources that you can access after the course is over with.

Professionally I've only done bootcamp type courses when I was already familiar with the type of stuff I was already doing. In other words learning a new software platform similar to the ones I was previously using. Lol with Udemy I can be that slow guy that has to repeat a lesson 5 times till I get it and not have to worry about the instructor and half of the class being upset with me I haven't run into that yet, but later on with the "hacker" course I already know that's gonna be extremely challenging.

 

[luckyluchiano]

Yes Lucky, I'm using it as we speak. It's not that bad, syntax is clean and simple. I'm using it as a part of the Xcode IDE. They have a mode called playground where you can dynamically test your code before using it in your app that is cool. There are some annoying things though like the contextual code completion feature...it's very distracting. Also they are getting rid of a few things for Swift 3 that you might be already accustomed to doing. For example when doing for loops the syntax for the incrementation block it usually like "i++" but they are getting rid of C style for loops in Swift 3.

I was debating on starting with Objective C vs Swift, this is for my own personal things though more so than trying to use it to get a job. Objective C isn't going to be obsolete for a while, but still might as well go with Swift being that it is going to replace it.

Bootcamps:

I'm currently going through a free online bootcamp. My background is primarily software engineering, but I want to learn front-end design and development. The bootcamp provides structure and an objective of what I want to learn. I don't have to go back to school to learn this and can work on it at my own speed since its not a paid bootcamp. Since I'm already in a position to get on web development projects, this just gives me a broader knowledge base so I'm comfortable at applying my skills, similar to what elderwatsondiggs said.

For those who have no experience and aren't in a position visible to that kind of work, I'd suggest doing a paid boot camp if you have the time like vladimir dinero if you're looking for work. If they have a pool of companies/start-ups they feed to, or a network of people that look for entry-level programmers, it may help with you landing a job.

If you just want to learn because you always wanted to, do some free tutorials.


Interviews:

Recent grad interviews are a lot harder than experienced hires from my experience. When I had interviews my final semester, everyone of them included a portion of writing code on a white board. I remember having to write classes and methods for an imaginary taxi cab company.

Just did some "technical" interviews not too long ago where they just asked me about the current projects I worked on and how many years experience I've had with ___ language.


Resources:

For those doing web development, Sublime and Brackets are good code editors if you want something more robust than Notepad++. They typically offer live preview and plugin functionality.

Like I said before when you have experience your resume speaks for itself, so interviews will be mainly behavioral and "Tell me about a project" type question, pretty much the background check will get you out the paint if you are lying, while for entry level roles they do the whiteboard interviews being that different schools and bootcamps have different methods of teaching.

Obviously you're not going to get a corporate job without a bachelors. But the argument should be which makes you a competent coder. A bootcamp should provide that speciality to certain frameworks. It is much easier to create a curriculum for a bootcamp than a degree. Way more flexibility. Most of the modern languages is a bit harder to outsource. I work for a global company and we outsource a lot of our development role strictly for cost reasons. If we were going off quality it's never better to outsource.

Of course, companies realized they sent off too many jobs and are trying to pull them back stateside. IMO I think corporate America wants to make programming jobs the new factory job, where you make enough to support your family but you aren't rich, which is why I feel there is such a big push on "free code camps" and even talks about bringing programming classes to high schools. This will in turn create a cheap labor force in the US all while being good PR about "bringing jobs back". The issue at hand though is to do that the whole grade school system needs to be revamped because it doesnt prepare kids to think in the manner needed, thus only the ones who are naturally problem solvers excel in it.

 

[capital sb]

@ElderWatsonDiggs PM sent

 

[4318michaeljohnson4318]

@lucky I would personally recommend JavaScript over a native language right now. Why? Mobile is everything, what do all devices these days have? Browsers. You can literally make anything with JS these days. No matter the operating system JS will perform

 

[luckyluchiano]

@lucky I would personally recommend JavaScript over a native language right now. Why? Mobile is everything, what do all devices these days have? Browsers. You can literally make anything with JS these days. No matter the operating system JS will perform

Very true, I`m going to take the Advance Web Design elective for my Masters program so I can get reintroduced. Haven't done web design stuff in like 6 yrs.

 

[HankHill]

Also another good source

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/tutorialslibrary.htm

 

[4318michaeljohnson4318]

Very true, I`m going to take the Advance Web Design elective for my Masters program so I can get reintroduced. Haven't done web design stuff in like 6 yrs.

If you want some quality tutorials look at

Thinkster.io

True project based tutorials, also peep the Ionic framework which is JS based but has native integration to android and ios

 

[blaz3n]

Subscribed

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

I have found that using flowcharts definitely helps you with coming up with a logical well thought out program. You can identify possible issues before actually starting to write your program or make it even better.

 

[Based Jesus]

 

Very true, I`m going to take the Advance Web Design elective for my Masters program so I can get reintroduced. Haven't done web design stuff in like 6 yrs.

If you want some quality tutorials look at

Thinkster.io

True project based tutorials, also peep the Ionic framework which is JS based but has native integration to android and ios

Thinkster is dope. I was using it to help me with Angular

 

[dathbgboy]

@lucky I would personally recommend JavaScript over a native language right now. Why? Mobile is everything, what do all devices these days have? Browsers. You can literally make anything with JS these days. No matter the operating system JS will perform

JavaScript for some reason is so difficult to me and it sucks because I know I need it. Sure JQuery and the other libraries are coo but w/o JS, it's a moot point.

And you're right about focusing on a lang like JS, that's why I'm looking more into web app development instead of native app development; having to learn Java, Objective-C, and C#/ASP.Net all to develop for mobile phones is ridiculous and time consuming.

Of course I still will need C#/ASP.Net if I want to code less when developing apps but for the time being, learning a back-end language like JS,PHP, Python, and even SQL for database purposes, I think I should be good.