Jobs?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Jobs?
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| Hey i was just wondering if anyone here does programing as their job (or sumthing close to it). Im only 15 and was wondering if their are any (future) job oppotunities for a programmer, and what a programmer does for their job thanks droolBucket |
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| Yes, alot of people here have programming experience in the past, or currently as their primary source of income. As of right now, programmers will become more and more demanded apon. As far as what we do.. there's almost nothing modern these days that a programmer hasn't effected in some way. |
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| Programming is almost exclusively what I do for a living and make a pretty penny doing it. Like Dev says Programming will always have a future! Skully |
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| You've got more chance of a really well paid programming job if you learn some mad language like COBOL. There are firms (like the whole of the UK NHS, as far as I can tell) that still have a reliance on systems that run software written in obscure languages for which the original developer(s) have long since disappeared. You can pretty much write your own paycheck if you get a job maintaining / updating such systems. C/C++, PHP, MySQL, VB, C# coders are ten a penny. They do marvellous jobs but competition for a position is extreme verging on ridiculous, resulting in some very tough interviews. |
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| The problem is most VB C# etc jobs are about as interesting as watching a fresh dog turd dry up on a sunny day. Trust me on this one as a VB.Net/ ASP.net/ SQL noddy... About as entertaining as pushing a blunt stick in your eye... If you're down the pub and people ask what you do, you get as far as the word programmer and they're already knawing off they own leg to get away... It's nearly as bad as saying Accountant. I strongly recomend getting a job as a hymen breaker, superhero, racing driver or something similar and keep programming as a hobby. It gets worse too if you do computery stuff both at work and at home... People are surpised that you can't name the crew of the Starship Enterprise and speak Klingon. Anyway... Apart from that it's great. |
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| I'm a professional Perl programmer; internet content management is my area of expertise. Depending on the organization, you can be involved in only construction (someone else does all the planning and you connect the dots) or everything from requirements development (and even client management) down to construction. Most companies I've worked for have large codebases to speed development, so sometimes you might add features or perform maintenance on these libraries. Some projects are custom solutions for specific clients and others are software that's intended to be sold to many customers later. Some projects you'll never hear of again and others will require constant maintenance and changes. In short, it's a mixed bag. C/C++, PHP, MySQL, VB, C# coders are ten a penny. True, but good ones aren't. Having been involved in the hiring process I can tell you that most programmers don't have a very good grasp on what they're doing. The generally accepted dogma is that a great programmer is 10 times as productive as a good one; from personal experience I can tell you that a bad programmer can be a productivity liability: sapping other team members' time with questions better answered by Google and writing atrocious code which will cause all manner of expensive headaches down the road (and may even need to be rewritten!) Very tough interviews are a necessity for the more popular languages! |
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| recomend getting a job as a hymen breaker WHERE DO I APPLY!?!? |
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| You've got more chance of a really well paid programming job if you learn some mad language like COBOL. This is not always true. I do cobol and other mainframe stuff like easytrieve, db2... and also some more exotic newer languages for servers. And I do not get paid very well. I guess it depends on where you live. Or who you work for. Good luck. |
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| Programming, mixed with system management and analysis (the term changes from company to company - basically it is someone who does all the design work from initial gathering or requirements to technical support) is, I believe, a safe bet for the future. So take the programming classes, but also decide what industry you want to work in and take classes about the business end of things. Once you are at a job and have experience and a track record it gets easier to switch around. I've gone from a company producing patient tracking software, to Order Management, to pricing cheese, to a firearms tracking and personnel management, to my current job writing a program to optimize runway utilization at airports. |
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| I'd suggest to surf some pages like jobs.com (well maybe somthing more local) and see what they want from a programmer, usually it's Web, Banking or Industry oriented. You'll get useful lists of skills you need to find a job today, also what certificates and schools they prefere. |
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| I hired and managed a team of 10 developers. As octothorpe correctly said, *good* programmers are not that easy to come by. There's an incredible number of weak developers out there. What I looked for in a new hire was someone who wrote a lot of code on their own, outside the school environment. I pretty much ignored 'school projects'. Also I was partial to anyone who had written a game. Maybe that's my personal prejudice, but honestly writing a game involves a lot of skills that you don't necessarily _need_ for application writing, but that can come in very handy. It requires a different way of thinking to write a game. Most applications are straight through top to bottom, little consideration for time it takes to run (until later, when load becomes a problem!) Anyway, spend your time now honing your skills. The language doesn't so much matter (you can pick up any language if you are good). If you have actually *completed* projects on your own, outside the school environment, especially if a game or two is involved, that counts for a lot. In my opinion. I think it would count even more if you were hoping to work in the gaming biz. Most developers are worker bees. If you've taken the initiative to start a project and more importantly complete it, that shows a skill that most applicants simply don't have. You can make the best money, by the way, if you come up with your own internet applications, develop them, get a ton of users and then sell them. I know, I know, if only. But I've seen it happen many times to people I know. They knew the idea was good, and pushed and made the software great, and weren't too proud to have people help them (a very common developer mistake is too much pride, and fear of getting help with areas they aren't masters of, like business). by the way it seems that C# is the new visual basic, runs almost as fast as C++ but much easier to develop in. Easy to learn too. It'll be popular, in fact it is being used as a 'scripting' language for major 3d engines. I think that will continue, because the 3d engines don't want necessarily to maintain their own languages. Learn it, its v easy. also if you want to work in games, i suspect that Digipen and the other schools are a very good idea. If I was hiring game developers I'd probably look there first. Ryan |
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| It's really quite frightening how many 'programmers' don't know their arse from their elbow, despite having a degree under their arm to the contrary. |
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| Ryan... If we're talking .net here, there's very little in it between VB.net and C#.net the .net does most of the work so the actual bits of code do very little in the grand scheme of things. |
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| > Ryan... If we're talking .net here, there's very little in it between VB.net and C#.net We agree, there really is no difference, but... generally speaking, C# programmers make more money. (I forget the places where I read that comment, but it was a couple of industry mags). The important thing is knowing the .net framework though - but not many personnel drones know that, and the personnel drones are the ones you have to get past in order to get an interview. |
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| Programming is cool for many reasons - it can fufill at both an artistic and intellectual level in a way few other professions offer. It's "indoor" work so you don't get cold in the winter ! You don't have to spend vast amounts of time dealing with the general public - always a bonus ! Nobody really knows how long its going to take to do a certain piece of programming ;) |
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| You might be better off getting a job skill as an apprentice in a trade. Programming for a living is full of cut throat competition...there is so much to learn- all the time! Learn how to do Visual Basic for Applications (its built in Excel, Word, Access, Powerpoint and Visio from M*#%&soft Then when you get a chance- show your bosses how to automate stuff in spreadsheets, word processing, databases etc. They'll be impressed and grateful....most of them don't have a clue about programming common applications. Works for me! |
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| regarding c# vs vb... c# is very quickly replacing vb. i'm not saying they are the same. |
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| recomend getting a job as a hymen breaker WHERE DO I APPLY!?!? Move to Guam: http://www.dribbleglass.com/subpages/strange/sexlaws.htm "There are men in Guam whose full-time job it is to travel the countryside and deflower young virgins, who pay them for the privilege of having sex for the first time. Why? Under the law in Guam, it is forbidden for virgins to marry." |
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