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Spiritus Nox posted:So, I'm about to finish my Freshman year as a comp sci major. No internships seem to have turned up on this side of the country this year, but no big - lets me work on some of my ancillary requirements over the summer and then really go intern-hunting Sophomore year. My question to anyone with Industry experience - what are some of the things you would say are most important, either to learn now or just in general, to be successful in the field? Also go into the Games forum and find all the threads about making games or being in the games industry (there should be at least one industry thread and one thread about weekly game jams, and maybe others). Read them, and then re-post your question in one of them.
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Apr 21, 2012 05:33
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Cicero posted:If you want to go into the games industry as a programmer, start making games. It's fine if your first few are small and crappy, that's how it usually goes. If you don't manage to make any games over the summer after being given this advice, you may not have the drive to make it in the games industry (hint: the work-life balance + pay is crap compared to other sectors of programming, so you better REALLY want it). This is great advice. I'm a third-year CS major, and I can confirm that what just got me a 6mo internship making games at one of the bigger companies is having even one extra curricular game on my resume and being able to breeze through the tech questions. The game I made was a crappy failure during a 48 hour game jam, but it was great to talk about at my interview and taught me a lot about making things quickly. Ludum Dare is happening now and you should get on it... otherwise check out the bi-weekly SA gamejam thread if you need a jumping off point. It doesn't have to be amazing, it just has to be. There's also a lot to be said, as an undergraduate, about being able to kill easy technical interview questions. You should be able to get a simple question and snap back with, "Oh, do a filter on the list, then map it with this function," or, "Oh, that's just a DFS." It might not seem like a ton, but I've been told that interview questions that simple have completely destroyed senior-level applicants. My experience (and that of another friend who got an engineering internship in games) has been that if you put in the hours and know your poo poo, you don't have to really worry about finding an industry job.
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Apr 21, 2012 06:08
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Spiritus Nox posted:So, I'm about to finish my Freshman year as a comp sci major. No internships seem to have turned up on this side of the country this year, but no big - lets me work on some of my ancillary requirements over the summer and then really go intern-hunting Sophomore year. My question to anyone with Industry experience - what are some of the things you would say are most important, either to learn now or just in general, to be successful in the field? 2. Get familiar with unit testing with xUnit or whatever popular unit testing frameworks for your language of choice. Unit tests aren't an optional afterthought, they are proof that your code actually does what it's supposed to do, and keeps doing what it supposed to do after you muck around with it. They are also an important design tool. 3. Get comfortable with the idea of test-driven development, i.e. writing failing tests before code and coding to satisfy these tests. If your code is hard to test, then it's badly designed. Starting with tests, which requires you to think what you are really trying to accomplish in the first place, and having the unit test act as a second user for your component, enforces good design decisions almost naturally. The younger and greener you are, the easier it is to pick it up, so do read up on TDD. It will certainly look good on your resume, too, while looking for internships and first jobs.
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Apr 21, 2012 08:30
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Don't listen to pigdog's suggestion #3, that's his dark side coming through. You can make a long list of very good and very productive programmers that don't use test driven development, and it's definitely a bad use of the time before your sophomore year. Also, a unit test framework isn't something you should use or bother learning about until you're making a sufficiently large software project, at which point you'll want it, and need it. (Speaking of which, writing actual semi-large interesting projects is a good use of time, definitely something that'll make you better, and then you'll probably want to make unit tests, because they'll save you time.) Version control systems are useful and easy to learn how to use, not worth mentioning because you'll end up learning how to use them anyway.
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Apr 21, 2012 09:48
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Don't listen to shrughes. You are young, open-minded and able to adapt where he hasn't, thus you'll be a better programmer than him.  Unit tests aren't an afterthought or a chore, they are tools that were made by programmers, for programmers, to help the programmer do his job better. In TDD, they not only help validate the result, but are essential in building code that is flexible and easy to refactor and change to changing requirements - from the get-go. If applied correctly they help you build better code and do it significantly faster, the larger the project is. Read up on it, and don't trust people who just go "pfff you mean you want me to write more code lines to do the same thing  ". Trust me, you'll want to.
pigdog fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Apr 21, 2012 |
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Apr 21, 2012 11:49
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The universe around you is an observable counterexample to the things you say. If TDD is essential for writing flexible code that's easy to refactor, how am I and my coworkers writing such code all the time? It must be magic.
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Apr 21, 2012 12:24
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shrughes posted:The universe around you is an observable counterexample to the things you say. If TDD is essential for writing flexible code that's easy to refactor, how am I and my coworkers writing such code all the time?  Joking aside, I should be safe either way on that one - my current professor (who, like his predecessor last semester, has us writing a great deal of code - our end of semester group project was to write our own version of a game called Bounce Mouse using SDL, and this is after two semesters of weekly programming assignments) requires that we do testing on everything we turn in other than timed practicums - if it turns out I need them in the industry, I'll know how. If not, no big.
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Apr 21, 2012 16:32
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There's an objective benefit at being able to throughly and quickly test the correctness of functionality of the components that your application consists of, and relies on, at any point of the development. The sooner you discover the bug after introducing it, the faster and cheaper it is to fix it. Thus the sooner you test after writing the code, the faster you will be able to catch the bugs. The optimal way, then, is to write tests before even starting with the code. Refactoring and optimization is all about potentially introducing change and irregularities. To be able to refactor with confidence, and be able to rewrite your code to the best code possible with confidence, you need a test suite that gives you that confidence. So it's best to have such test suite the whole time at any point that you are writing your application, from the very beginning. Cool thing about modern testing and mocking frameworks is that you can code and test a component without the rest of the application even existing yet. It has manyfold benefits beside that. Starting with tests forces you to specify and think what the component you're writing is actually supposed to accomplish, with concrete values. That's more important than you might think, because that's where the gaps and inconsistencies in specifications appear. There's a whole field of acceptance test, behavior or specification driven development that specializes in just that, but that's for another topic. It also forces you to write loosely coupled code, because you don't want to drag half your application in your unit test in order to run it. I'd specifically like to recommend that style to new programmers not only because they're more accepting to the initial unintuitiveness of it, and to get in the habit of offering proof of the code's correctness along with the code (which every employer will love), but also because TDD helps you naturally arrive to more optimal code architecture. A person can write crap newbie code to make the tests pass, but then adding more test cases and looking at the similarities of the code that was needed to meet them, will make code duplication and improvement patterns naturally obvious. A new programmer may write bad code, but if he's in the habit of TDD, he can always easily make it better. That's something that's not intuitively obvious by just reading up on the methodology, rather than practicing it. If you can arrive at good code without TDD, then good for you. Whatever works - can't argue with success. You'd just be missing out on the benefits that aren't obvious until you practice it. pigdog fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Apr 21, 2012 |
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Apr 21, 2012 16:35
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pigdog posted:If you can arrive at good code without TDD, then good for you. Whatever works - can't argue with success. You'd just be missing out on the benefits that aren't obvious until you practice it. If you can arrive at good code without TDD, good for you. Does anyone else ever have to maintain your code? Do you ever come back to it 6 months later and have to change it when it's not fresh in your mind? Having a suite of repeatable tests that help verify functionality is the greatest thing in the world when working on someone else's code. Although you said every employer will love unit testing. That's not true; some will love the benefits of it, in theory, but they want it done as an afterthought, or not at all because it "wastes time". These are places you don't want to work, because they just don't understand. I had to argue in favor of unit testing with two guys at my last job who were strongly against it. Argument #1: It'll make things take longer! Rebuttal: You're already testing your code, right? ("Yes"). Then you're just testing by hand, over and over, every time you revisit it to make a change. It incurs an up-front cost, but generally makes refactoring down the line faster. Code is only new once, then it immediately becomes legacy code. Argument #2: I don't care about whether code works properly as long as we have good reporting when something fails! Rebuttal:  Of course, that last one was the same guy who wrote lovely code such that Canadian customers were getting double-charged shipping fees that went undetected for years. How did it get noticed? I was writing unit tests for that section of code because I had to make an unrelated change, and I noticed that the tests were failing, and the results just didn't add up. I made it a point to remind him of that conversation. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Apr 21, 2012 |
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Apr 21, 2012 17:05
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Please everybody, stop arguing about TDD by saying things about testing. I think pigdog is the only other person having coherent thoughts here.
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Apr 21, 2012 21:45
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Sorry shruges, I have to go with pigdog here. I wouldn't say it's necessary to use TDD to write good code (I don't always use TDD because sometimes I'm lazy), but I think most people would agree that it's easier to write good code with TDD. And learning it early on teaches good habits.
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Apr 21, 2012 22:21
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Gordon Cole posted:Sorry shruges, I have to go with pigdog here. I wouldn't say it's necessary to use TDD to write good code (I don't always use TDD because sometimes I'm lazy), but I think most people would agree that it's easier to write good code with TDD. And learning it early on teaches good habits. You do? Because... most people do not use TDD. (Are you misunderstanding what TDD is? Believing TDD is useful is one thing, believing that most people would agree it's good is making an objectively wrong statement about the universe around you.)
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Apr 21, 2012 22:26
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I'm going to leave this here in case there is still some confusion about TDD being synonymous with "you should write some tests": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development
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Apr 21, 2012 22:33
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Ithaqua posted:Having a suite of repeatable tests that help verify functionality is the greatest thing in the world when working on someone else's code. TDD isn't about having a suite of repeatable tests. Every company I've ever worked for wrote unit tests, but not a single one of them actually practiced TDD.
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Apr 21, 2012 23:01
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Enough about Test Driven Design. It's all about Documentation Driven Design (yes, I do agree with a lot of the points here, and loved the talk in general)
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Apr 22, 2012 05:04
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shrughes posted:You do? Because... most people do not use TDD. Fair enough, I guess I was speaking from my own experience. TDD was always encouraged when I was in college, and aside from a gameplay programming internship, everywhere I've worked (which is admittedly not many places) has used TDD. But yes, I do understand what TDD is and how it's different than just writing tests in general.
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Apr 22, 2012 05:28
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Lurchington posted:Enough about Test Driven Design. It's all about Documentation Driven Design Such document driven approach seems beneficial, but it seems to stop halfway through. It would help at formulating the task and what we're trying to accomplish, but it doesn't seem to offer much help at keeping the documentation up to date and in sync with the code. In behavior-driven programming, which could be construed as TDD brought to the next level, and applied to the process of development rather than the code, the documentation for the code consists of English language, readable rules/descriptions of behaviors. These rules (specifications) are illustrated by hard examples, which in turn a tool then reads and passes to test code which interfaces with the actual system. So while the specifications are readable and understandable by anyone, they can also be at any time be automatically verified to be truthfully and correctly implemented in the code. pigdog fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Apr 22, 2012 |
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Apr 22, 2012 09:39
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If you all want to keep debating whether or not TDD is a good idea why not make a thread? In interview/job related news: I'm accepting that offer, and this time next month Ill be living in Chicago!
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Apr 22, 2012 14:56
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pigdog posted:That isn't by any means an alternative to TDD, which works at a lower, code component level. Sorry for the confusion, I didn't intend to imply that this actually was a replacement for TDD, and I don't think the talk did either. You're right in that they complement each other, which is that's why I posted it in here. As an extra bit of perspective on development that happens before code is even written. Congrats astr0man! 
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Apr 22, 2012 16:40
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pigdog posted:But the idea of writing documentation first, i.e. specifying how the application is supposed to behave, sounds good. BDUF, aka 'waterfall', is a catastrophic failure outside of domains where requirements are well-known in advance (eg. some embedded projects where the code forms a part of a much larger system whose behavior is well-specified). Incidentally, any specification complete enough to answer questions of the form "how should X do Y?" is not actually a specification but rather a very verbose programming language with an unparseable grammar
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Apr 23, 2012 02:51
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So, for a person who is now working on drafting a new resume with no CS degree or professional experience beyond side projects that I did for my company while working in an IT capacity, where do I even begin? Do I start with the technical stuff (languages, frameworks) and then do a rundown of the applications I've developed under my IT job (in addition to what I actually do?)
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Apr 23, 2012 15:08
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aBagorn posted:So, for a person who is now working on drafting a new resume with no CS degree or professional experience beyond side projects that I did for my company while working in an IT capacity, where do I even begin? Do what you said and explain in your cover letter that you're trying to change careers. What's going to be really important is having a decent portfolio of code to show off. You don't have a proven track record of employment as a developer, so you have to give evidence that you know what you're doing. You'd be surprised how many people can memorize a book and recite the correct answers to technical questions, but have no idea how to actually do the things they're talking about. And don't be surprised if you end up having to take a pay cut and start out as a junior developer alongside the "fresh out of college" kids. It might be easier to move within the same company.
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Apr 23, 2012 16:34
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Ithaqua posted:Do what you said and explain in your cover letter that you're trying to change careers. All good points. I'm trying to move within the company too, but keeping my options open. And there's pretty much no way even the most junior of jobs would be a pay cut for me. I'm making about 30% less than I should because I'm working for a non-profit (think low 30s)
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Apr 23, 2012 16:42
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So I've been slowly learning to code and really enjoy it. The plan was to learn as much as I could and start making things and contributing to OSS while keeping the current job and then start applying to dev positions. However an opportunity has arisen in my current company, its a large multinational so it'd be enterprise (I think that's the word). Anyway, I've just noticed a badly advertised job, its been up for ages (a few months) and is currently being covered by a contractor. I think its had gently caress all interest for reasons not to do with the job (its a relocation away from many of the tech\dev parts of the company to a smaller hub where I work, it was incorrectly advertised, its a technical job being advertised among basically sales people). Had a very quick chat with the manager today and its basically a bit of a combination role, starting as a t3 support, with a bit of analytics, then incorporating small change coding (small change in business terms not especially coding terms, although they often match). From what I can gather it looks like they want someone who can learn rather than who already knows, due to the combination of it being a large, complex in house bit of software. I have about 3 years as an end user, which he seemed keen on, and I'm really interested in the move to dev work. It's pay grade bump as well. Is this as good as it seems?
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Apr 23, 2012 17:34
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Otto Skorzeny posted:BDUF, aka 'waterfall', is a catastrophic failure outside of domains where requirements are well-known in advance (eg. some embedded projects where the code forms a part of a much larger system whose behavior is well-specified). quote:Incidentally, any specification complete enough to answer questions of the form "how should X do Y?" is not actually a specification but rather a very verbose programming language with an unparseable grammar
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Apr 23, 2012 18:18
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Any British goons have experience with employment tribunals? I was fired on thursday for alleged speed of programming, after having broken a finger, and told that I would be paid up until the end of this month. The contract of employment states that I should be given one months paid notice on termination. Numerous other clauses in the contract have been completely ignored.
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Apr 23, 2012 19:58
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optiuum posted:Any British goons have experience with employment tribunals? I was fired on thursday for alleged speed of programming, after having broken a finger, and told that I would be paid up until the end of this month. The contract of employment states that I should be given one months paid notice on termination. Numerous other clauses in the contract have been completely ignored.  Just out of curiosity, how did they measure productivity? It sounds like whatever metric they used sucked pretty badly if "speed of programming" means what I think it means.
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Apr 23, 2012 20:19
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Ithaqua posted:
I don't think they measure productivity at all. This was apparently in result to meetings that they'd had that I was not even made aware of. In actual fact I don't think my line manager wanted me to learn the systems for various sites. He gave me 2 days total php development time out of 8 weeks. The rest being allocated to mundane expression-engine and general html/css work. "Speed" sounds to me like an excuse they maybe thought I might find plausible.
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Apr 23, 2012 20:36
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Roughly how long have you worked there?
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Apr 23, 2012 21:11
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return0 posted:Roughly how long have you worked there? 2 months, but the contract was signed on the first day. I'm under the impression that the contract automatically extends my legal rights above the minimum required by law.
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Apr 23, 2012 21:24
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Lawyer go go go. Seriously, get yourself there now. If you don't have money find one that offers free half hour consultations. If you can't do that, talk to the citizens advice bureau. I'm not 100% certain, obviously not having all the facts, but UK law really does help in situations like this. Get real advice from someone who knows what they are talking about.
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Apr 23, 2012 21:41
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Lawyer go go go. Seriously, get yourself there now. If you don't have money find one that offers free half hour consultations. Thanks. I have been attempting to do that today, but unfortunately my local CA is closed this week. I have been in touch with ACAS, who've informed me that the best course of action is to give 2 weeks notice of my intentions before requesting an employment tribunal. Something that I intend to do once Aprils pay is in my account. The minimum i'd like is the rest of my notice as laid out in the contract, but I also think I might have a good case for wrongful and unfair dismissal and breach of contract.
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Apr 23, 2012 21:51
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Yes, you're right. I was just hoping you said "more than a year" because even the most incompetent employment solicitor could absolutely nail them to the wall over that. You should talk to a solicitor as soon as possible.
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Apr 23, 2012 23:35
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I just wanted to say that thanks in no small part to all of the helpful advice in this thread, I managed to get a pretty nice job lined up for me when I graduate. Thanks guys, you do really good work in here 
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Apr 23, 2012 23:56
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Slack Motherfucker posted:I just wanted to say that thanks in no small part to all of the helpful advice in this thread, I managed to get a pretty nice job lined up for me when I graduate. Thanks guys, you do really good work in here Grats! Where and doing what, if I may ask? We're all growing up 
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Apr 24, 2012 00:41
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Thanks! SDET with a small data company in Bellevue, Washington. I'll be working mainly on Java and PHP stuff in their data processing stack, which actually sounds pretty fun to me, though I know not everyone enjoys Java as much as I do  Bellevue is great though, and I am super excited to be back on the west coast with my family and a bunch of my friends. Gonna be a great summer, all I have to do is pass all of my classes, find a place to live, graduate, pack all of my poo poo, and move to the seattle area in the next three weeks  And yes, we certainly are. Getting a real job is a weird feeling. I feel like if I'm not careful, I will wake up and find myself transformed into a responsible adult. I imagine it would be a lot like The Metamorphosis except with suspenders and black socks instead of a chitinous exoskeleton.
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Apr 24, 2012 01:07
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That is a short amount of time to do all that, man! I just had my first day of my new internship that could turn into a full time job when I graduate in September, pretty excited for it. I can't imagine having to worrying about finals and finding a new place to live and everything while doing all that though, poo poo.
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Apr 24, 2012 02:20
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Slack Motherfucker posted:Thanks! SDET with a small data company in Bellevue, Washington. I'll be working mainly on Java and PHP stuff in their data processing stack, which actually sounds pretty fun to me, though I know not everyone enjoys Java as much as I do Congratulations, I really liked Bellevue
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Apr 24, 2012 05:47
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Alrighty guys, wanted some "fresh out of college" advice, and I figured you guys would be able to give me some good insight. First a little bit of background: I'm graduating next month from a smaller VA university with a CS major, 3.5 GPA. Last summer I did a REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) in Texas where I was paid to travel down and do some research for a stipend, and actually got some of my research published (nothing too interesting, a comparison of data serialization formats for mobile devices). For my senior year I've worked at the university making a little more than minimum wage creating their official iOS app (did the basis for the android app too, but they brought on another student to focus on that when I switched to iOS). Pay sucked but they were great with letting me put school and everything first. Here comes my question. Now that I'm graduating, they are offering me the chance to stay and continue my development work fulltime, but for $10 an hour. I know I can easily negotiate my way to $12, but I'm not dumb, and I realize that even then I'm being completely bent over as far as average pay in my field goes. Normally it would be a no-brainer to just say "thanks but no thanks" except for the fact that I will be relocating in less than a year, possibly halfway across the country. It's still up in the air as to where exactly I will be moving to (depends on which grad schools my SO gets accepted into and where she chooses to go) so I can't exactly start looking for jobs there quite yet. In light of this, I was thinking that it would make sense to accept this job simply as a way to stay afloat for this interim period, since it is adding to my "work experience" in the field, it's better than working a job unrelated to software development, I can frame it as a promotion on my resume, and it's something that I actually enjoy doing. Does this seem like a decent decision, or am I still better off looking for other software development jobs? TL;DR - Fresh graduate, relocating to an currently unknown location in less than a year. Take a lovely paying job in the field I want to work in, or try and risk my luck finding a better paying job to work at until I move?
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May 1, 2012 21:05
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Ignoring the rest of your questions for the moment, are you seriously considering working for $10/hour _fulltime_ as an iOS developer? And you think you can only negotiate to $12/hour? Also if there's a break period between when you finish school and when you start working / start looking for work. I would recommend you travel rather than work on an iOS app for TEN DOLLARS AN HOUR. No seriously, travel, even if its going to cost some $$$. You're not going to get much of a chance later on when you are working.
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May 1, 2012 21:21
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