Anyone In Computer Programming? Options

[Keilnoth]

What command you use does not really matter. There is a lot of different language references over the net (php.net, w3cschool, etc...) and you will memorize the markup and code by using them.

I think that what is really important is the way you use the language. The methodology to build clean cross-browser standard code.

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[Vasilije Vukmiro...]

Emir, you really suprised me, I didn't know you're into programming. Way to go!

David, HTML is so simple it can be learned in a week. Everything starts from there, nowadays you can't even make decent web page without knowing HTML, that is C major scale, as Emir put it. I am computer engineer by vocation, learned lots of serious languages in college, programming microprocesors and logical ciruits and gates, machine-oriented stuff, ect.

I can tell you that web programming, and maybe even application programming, is overrated, everybody is doing it, you cannot really earn money there, there are lots of excellent programmers in India who will do it for 5$/hour(liberal capitalism ), and even more....that is TOUGH job, really tough, sitting 8 hours a day and looking into code can be devastating, except you LOVE programming, but basically it is tough...
Programming hardware on the other hand is more paid, but language is very different, totally different, hexa and octa systems ect....My advice is to pick the language and technology that you love...

My friend learn Java in 6 MONTHS, and got a job as junior JAVA programmer, but he practiced 4-5 hours daily, best resource for JAVA is book "Thinking in JAVA", that is like bible of java programming

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

there are lots of excellent programmers in India who will do it for 5$/hour(liberal capitalism ), and even more....that is TOUGH job, really tough, sitting 8 hours a day and looking into code can be devastating, except you LOVE programming, but basically it is tough...

This is very true, coding is a very tough job, lots of learning needed, and coders must follow the technologies all the time if they want to stay in the business. Even then, when they get a bit older, young guns will come and replace them just because they can code faster. Sad but true.

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[David Wallimann]

So, should I give up before starting? :-/

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[JamesT]

Do you plan to take classes David? ... or learn on your own?

Regardless, I wouldn't give up on the idea. Programming is not hard really, and it can be a lot of fun. Some of the above comments are correct/true, but I wouldn't let that discourage you.

Whatever you end up doing though, don't give up on the guitar. You really can do both in your life, and as good as you are already on guitar, you can always fall back on doing music for a living . .. Funny, when I was in school, I was so keen on playing guitar professionally, that my "fallback plan" was engineering school. ... good thing I finished school for sure.

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This post has been edited by JamesT: May 26 2009, 02:28 AM

[maharzan]

I am a web designer though do some jQuery and PHP stuff.

Programming is all about if and else...

Don't hear what others say.. If you like doing it, you should do it. If you don't, then don't even try it out as you will regret all the years after some time and wish you had done something else.

It applies to anything!

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This post has been edited by maharzan: May 26 2009, 06:22 AM

[Keilnoth]

I am not that pessimistic than the people above.

Yes, there is Indians, but you cannot just tell "they work for 5$/hour" because they don't. First, right now, they are almost as expensive as European or US programmers because they are overused. But there is still Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, etc... who are cheaper. But this won't last for long.

Still, those guys are coders, not developer. They are typing code the way you want them to type the code. They cannot think the way you think and the way your customer think. So you spend a LOT of time writing specifications. That time has a price as well.

Plus, you need to check everything 10 times more than if you had done it on your own.
Plus, you cannot outsource complex algorithmic or process.

Check on monster.com, you will see that there is still a lot of companies looking for developer and they pay them very well. Check what they are asking and go for that.

But keep in mind that it can take years before you can get a full time job and $50'000 a year.

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[-Zion-]

I can tell you that web programming, and maybe even application programming, is overrated, everybody is doing it, you cannot really earn money there, there are lots of excellent programmers in India who will do it for 5$/hour(liberal capitalism ), and even more....that is TOUGH job, really tough, sitting 8 hours a day and looking into code can be devastating, except you LOVE programming, but basically it is tough...

hmm.. overrated, huh??

Well, sure there are people in india, pakistan and whatever country who do it for 5$ in hour, but you get what you pay for.. In my previous company we tried to outsource some development to both india and ukraine, but neither of the two cultures involved could provide the quality that we could do ourselves.. That meant we had to spend a lot of time fixing the work that came back from them..

and you cannot really earn money?? well.. i've been doing quite well i must say.. much much better than i've ever hoped and thought i could ever do.. that might not sound that crazy but lets just say that after paying all my bills, i can almost buy myself a custom gibson LP every month..

and then there is the hours.. and i am split here.. When i started out, 8 hours were not hard.. everything was new and exciting.. it was the first three or four months of my first job i REALLY learned to code..

You may actually never get tired of your job.. the internet and programming in general is one of the fastest moving jobs there is.. there are constantly new technologies on the way.. new things to try, and new things to learn.. this is why i loved the job, but this is also one of the things that makes it hard.. sometimes its difficult to keep up, and it could be stressful as well..

If you get to work at a company thats doing internet, changes are that every other month you'll be working on something new, which is what i like..

After 7 years of programming i've thought to myself more than once that now it's time to change direction.. this happened usually after a crunchperiod.. the worst being 120 hours a week for three weeks.. after that i went to my boss and told him that i would NEVER in a million years do overtime work again.. he wasn't pleased but he had nothing to say.. i never did work overtime again for the last two years i stayed there before changing jobs..

Also a reason for me to change direction was that i was kinda fed up with development.. or was i really?? well.. the thing is i still dont really know.. because maybe i just needed change in my life or perhaps i was a little depressed.. hell, i dont know.. but one thing i did was to slowly move a little away from development and more into being an architect and design the systems and later develope them..

today i am happy with my job again, and i now think that it's because my life as it is now is on a roll.. oh yea.. i just got my daughter almost 6 months ago, and everything after that has been awesome.. hard to describe..

anyways.. programming for me has been fun, exciting, interesting, self-educating, but it has also been tough, depressing, hard, difficult, frustrating and plain annoying.. However, i am still here, so there must be something kickass about it right..

well.. actually i'm on top of the world right now because i just finished a program for someone that helps them out a great deal.. before my program it took them 3-4 months to create documentation (for powerplants).. now it takes them less than 2 weeks.. now THAT is gratifying work right there..

edit: i just found out why it is so gratifying.. haha..
The job as a developer, i think, is to talk to clients, analyse how they do their jobs and then find out how to optimize their job routine without changing too much.. people are generally scared of changes..

other times the client comes to you and tell you what they want, but it's never ever accurate and you have to figure out precisely what they need and what they want..

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This post has been edited by -Zion-: May 26 2009, 09:15 AM

[Koopid]

So, should I give up before starting? :-/

Not at all, the actual coding is a small part of making a great webpage. It is knowing what to program that is hard I am confident there is very little I would have to say no to when it comes to web functionality because I couldnt do it. And I am not working professionally as a webprogrammer anymore. The hard parts is to make a user friendly inituitive GUI and make it look great.

There are programmers that do it for very little money but they do specific ordered code. If you want to make money then you need to be good at the other part.

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[Keilnoth]

I pretty much think the same way than you, -Zion-.

Currently, I enjoy much more speaking with the client than typing code. I (We ?) become more an architect than a coder or developer. I think a lot of developers tend to move on the project management path sooner or later.

About the overrating stuff, people still think that everybody can code, develop, create internet website or applications and earn money doing that. This is wrong. And it's the reason we find so many crapy websites on the net.

You cannot spend 3 month in a school, read 2 books and then be a pro developer and earn $50'000/year. People think that because, about 10 years ago, you could do that. Forget about that now. You cannot do that anymore.

(Well, yes, you can, but this won't make you a life for a long time...)

It's the same than playing guitar. After playing for 3 month, you will be able to play a song or two. But you will need to play for years before you can play something real (earn some real money).

People still think that it's piece of cake. No, it's not. If you want to have "more value" than a foreign coder paid $5/hour, then you will have to learn and work a LOT. And companies are not looking for script kiddies. They need experienced and professional developers.

Actually, you cannot imagine, how it's hard to find professional and experienced developers. It's the reason we pay them a lot and we try really hard to keep them in the company.

(I know, I know, I am getting a little bit dramatic about this debate.)

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This post has been edited by Keilnoth: May 26 2009, 12:36 PM

[Nadir]

I was amazed with this:

http://wave.google.com/

Definitely there are great stuffs that can be made with GWT.

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[Emir Hot]

I agree with Keilnoth about getting a job as a developer. It's really becoming harder and harder. If you only miss one month of being up to date with the new stuff, some other guy will take the job with no question. I am having real difficulties to find such position just because I don't do actionscript even though I do pretty much of all the other stuff. You mentioned $50.000. I would jump of happiness like a kangaroo if I manage to get half of that salary

Nadir, I watched wave presentation last night (1 hour and 20 min). That thing looks really promissing but looks scarry that Google wants to rule the world and keep all our personal data on their servers. This tool is one more in ther chain of applications that will push us to use it and store important data on their servers. I can just imagine when it expands into an accepted standard where you won't be able to live without it. They are mentioning meetings and editing important documents in teams. That's something I wouldn't do with their tool.

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[Nadir]

I agree with Keilnoth about getting a job as a developer. It's really becoming harder and harder. If you only miss one month of being up to date with the new stuff, some other guy will take the job with no question. I am having real difficulties to find such position just because I don't do actionscript even though I do pretty much of all the other stuff. You mentioned $50.000. I would jump of happiness like a kangaroo if I manage to get half of that salary

Nadir, I watched wave presentation last night (1 hour and 20 min). That thing looks really promissing but looks scarry that Google wants to rule the world and keep all our personal data on their servers. This tool is one more in ther chain of applications that will push us to use it and store important data on their servers. I can just imagine when it expands into an accepted standard where you won't be able to live without it. They are mentioning meetings and editing important documents in teams. That's something I wouldn't do with their tool.

As I figured it out from presentation you will be able to have wave on your servers in your network so sharing some document stays local (in the rack as said in presentation). Of course it will be also available as "public network".

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[mattacuk]

Im a Web developer, but I decided to go down the route of developing my own applications and running them myself, rather than work for a company.

This is a viable option if you you really enjoy what you do, and are confident enough.

I learnt XHTML, CSS, PHP and mySQL through the Open Univeristy as part of my Computing degree. Im also near to completeing a 9 month course on JAVA. I will study another 2 Java courses next year.

The great thing about learning JAVA is that its syntaticly similair to alot of programming (C and C++) and scripting languages such as Javascript (client side script) and PHP (server side scripting).

Nearly everything I learnt on my Java course I have applied to my Web scripting/programming. So I would suggest doing a formal qualification in whats called Object Oriented programming as it will give you the skills and confidence to use a variety of different languages and technologies

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