Why are there so many resources for learning to program?
No other professional field is stupid enough to train their own competition for free.
Why are software devs so eager to cuck themselves?
Off yourself.
Why are there so many resources for learning to build a car?
No other professional field is stupid enough to train their own competition for free.
Why are automobile companies so eager to cuck themselves?
excellent logic here anon.
>>54809092
Why?
>>54809078
>Why are there so many resources for learning to program?
because it's easy to set up a shit blog with tutorials and throw in ads and ref links to amazon for books, etc.
things like codeacademy sell other stuff, services (things that run their website could be useful, like online code compile & sandboxing), paid lectures and training maybe in addition to the free stuff
>he doesnt have 6 udemy tutorials which he sold over 18000 copies of for 20+ dollars
look at this pleb
>>54809078
Now google "Learn programming in COBOL" and see how many free resources you find
those dumb idiots at Midas are giving it away! LULZ EPIC AMIRITE LOLOL EPIC!!
>>54809078
Programming is easy to learn, but hard to master.
I can teach you how to play Donkey Kong for a year, but it doesn't mean you're gonna beat my highscore, or prevent me from playing the game on my own machine.
Plus, maybe it hasn't crossed your mind, but not everyone programs so that they can become the next Google employee, or so that they can make millions.
>>54809078
Just like trying to learn another language (like Spanish, German, Mandarin, etc.) you probably won't achieve much without formal, paid education, even though there are thousands of free online resources to do it.
>>54809126
Holy shit you're right, hold on lemme fire up vs and write up a copy of tesla 3 this week
>>54809210
You're not getting paid to play DK though. Or are you?
>>54809220
do you have a point or are you just shitposting because you wanted to make noise?
>>54809210
I've learned the basics but I don't know what to do next or what to even try coding to learn
More pawns equals saturated work force equals dumping wages.
You know, the libertarian way.
I'm gonna let mah boi Louie school your ass OP
Not the same field, but still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O4fXQY1_vI
>>54809218
In formal education, most professors/instructors just regurgitate shit from textbooks.
>>54809126
>Why are there so many resources for learning to build a car?
Why indeed?
>>54809370
>listening to a guy who fixes cellphones for a living
Kek
Those insecure dipshits at Google should just share their pagerank algorithm with Yahoo and Microsoft, because they should be fine with competing on a level playing field
>>54809450
>listening to a guy who fixes cellphones for a living
he doesn't
You absolute moron.
If programming wasn't easy to learn we'd have a range of languages which are incompatible with each other with few people who know how to use them and barely functional software.
How fucking stupid are you?
>>54809469
>easy
Meant open/free.
>>54809078
Welcome to the internet. The greatest information tool in the history of mankind, giving you access to more knowledge and learning resources than all previous generations of humans had combined.
And you use it to post threads like this.
>>54809438
Note how closed source has no drivers.
>>54809503
>>54809078
Because programming isn't a normal skillset.
It's more of an artform than anything else, you don't even need a degree to work as a dev, starting from nothing, so to speak.
>>54809469
>>54809469
>with few people who know how to use them and barely functional software
And those people would be swimming in money by selling that barely functional software.
>>54809438
not an argument
>>54809078
Because people don't do programming to make money, they do it because it's fun.
>>54809527
They wouldn't, because pen and paper would be vastly more efficient and inexpensive.
You really are full retard.
>>54809078
free == ad-supported or optional subscription supported
![af96b29ef2bc2266789b768eb3dcd01d[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/gu1TFMA.jpg "af96b29ef2bc2266789b768eb3dcd01d[1].jpg")
>>54809519
>artform
CSS artisan reporting in
Because the field of programming is so vast and varied that the current number of capable programmers in the world could double and there'd still be strong demand. Software is slowly consuming the world, gradually weaving its way into every facet of human existence, and at least for now humans are required if you want to create software.
The crazy part is that demand for programmers is only going to grow in the coming years. Vast stretches of government and business systems are only now starting to come into the digital age.
>>54809567
You may laugh but there is indeed a liberal arts aspect to good code. The best code isn't just functional, but readable, easy to maintain and augment, and damn near self-documenting. Doing that requires something beyond algorithms and logic.
![Z-machine480[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GCqhDCs.jpg "Z-machine480[1].jpg")
>>54809078
Scarcity is over, it's time for us to stop competing and start cooperating
The current human project, it seems, is to make a super intelligence that will solve all our imminent problems that threaten our existence. It won't be a lab of scientists that invent that, it won't even be 1000 programmers. It'll take the collective will of hundreds of millions of smart people. Similar to how the CAPTCHA is using human vision to figure out storefronts and shit, the hyper intelligent messiah computer will require all of our logical brains to figure out, working together. You can't just put together the analogue of a brain and expect it to gain intelligence, it took evolution millions of years to do that.
Your job is just a blip on the timeline of mankind. Think about something bigger than your dick for once, if your capable of thinking beyond 4 inches.
>>54809640
I've always heard that it's hard to get decent jobs in programming because foreign imported talent is available, so code monkeys have to work hard to compete
Is that not true?
>>54809720
I am in the industry. This is absolutely true. And not even that, you have immense competition among fellow peers. I'm not joking when I say at least 50% of software development jobs at any medium-big software companies are occupied by Indians.
>>54809708
*tip*
>>54809720
If you want unmaintainable shitty code and a mountain of technical debt, go ahead and hire Pajeet.
>>54809934
Companies care much more about their short term bottom line than whether the code Pajeet shits out is going to cause major problems in 5 years
>>54809078
Most free online resources are shit though.
>>54809301
Shit post is as shit post doe
>>54809078
Read up on GNU and the GPL. Now you might understand programmers better. (hint: it's communism)
>>54809720
While there is truth to what >>54809795 says, really all you have to do to escape that problem is:
1) Select a lang + set of APIs that isn't thoroughly saturated. For example, you're going to have a very hard time getting hired and paid decently if you go for something everyone in India knows like Java. On the other hand, iOS devs or embedded devs writing C face relatively little competition.
2) Move to a place where programmers are in high demand. Yes, that means picking up your flyover country ass and hauling it to somewhere like the SF Bay, Portalnd, Seattle, Austin, or Melbourne. In these places, the industry is so robust that companies regularly compete for good engineers. This is the environment you want.
>>54809949
Indian contracting has very little presence here in the SF Bay, where end-user consumer rules supreme. The only contracting I've heard of is Android porting in eastern europe/russia (the valley doesn't give two shits about android user experience).
>>54809335
Programmers have told me to stop waiting for a big idea, write something useful for you or your friends, and don't be afraid to to make something that already exist...
Programming is a language
>hurrr why are there so many resources to learn [Language].
It's not like business and accounting where you need authorisation and experience, there's a reason why the term code-monkey exists
Because there's money to be made from hosting these sites/writing these books.
>>54809210
>Programming is easy to learn, but hard to master.
It's even harder to convince the guy in pic that your code is any better than Pajeet's, the guy with the degree who out sourced his homework, or the blue haired feminist who contributes code(s of conduct) to a FOSS project.
I fucking love computers. I loved them in grade school. Not "hurr durr build PC for vidya" love. Fucking CPU architecture and assembler love.
But if I had known what a career in IT was like I would have never, ever chosen the field. I would have done something else and just enjoyed computing on the side.
IT is shit. It has no stability. You're constantly looking over your back wondering what management is thinking. Someone is always pushing a meme whether it's good for the project or not. You're always cleaning up shit code from other people. Work places are flooded with Indians and their cliques.
And the real kicker:
>anon that software you wrote is amazing, saved the company big time
6 months later
>sorry anon we're selling the company and the buyer wants you to train Rajeesh Inc.
I just walk. I won't train my replacement. But what kind of shit field is this where that's a thing? I have a friend who is a firefighter and a friend who is a police officer. When they're asked to train someone it means a promotion and pay raise.
Fuck IT. Fuck the valley.
>>54809640
>Because the field of programming is so vast and varied that the current number of capable programmers in the world could double and there'd still be strong demand.
>choking on the blue pill
This is absolute bullshit. We could ship every H1B visa home and still have too many people in the field.
>The crazy part is that demand for programmers is only going to grow in the coming years. Vast stretches of government and business systems are only now starting to come into the digital age.
It's not 1988 any more.
>>54809708
Fuck the noosphere you jesuit faggot
>>54809708
>make a super intelligence that will solve all our imminent problems that threaten our existence.
>super intelligence becomes the #1 threat to our existence
>>54811413
>This is absolute bullshit. We could ship every H1B visa home and still have too many people in the field.
Where do you live, out of curiosity? As mentioned earlier I'm in the SF Bay and out here companies trip over themselves any time a half-competent SE makes an appearance. They'll do damn near anything to hire you, including paying the guy who referred you to the company a cool $5k and this is true for several different subfields (app development, machine learning, backend dev, the list goes on and on). Nobody can seem to get enough good engineers. It's insane.
>>54811380
>Fuck IT. Fuck the valley.
Seriously this.
I want to find a way around the corporate diversity bullshit to figure out how to get a bunch of smart young white guys in a room to build something new so we don't have to deal with Pajeet or Lilith the Feminist or Tammy from HR.
I wrote some Powershell scripts that saved the company I was at over 80k hours by the time I had left and the fucks had the audacity to remove my bonus along with everyone else's "because the company wasn't doing well". I just fucking left. I want to do something else so bad but I have no idea how exactly to move to another industry with no experience, and I other than an interest in finance I have no idea what I would do.
>>54811498
>Nobody can seem to get enough good engineers. It's insane.
I'm not surprised. I don't know shit about app development but it seems every popular phone app only gets more bloated and laggy as time progresses.
>>54811529
That's often not the result of bad engineers... more frequently it's due to the company pushing too hard to move too quickly leaving no time for refactoring, performance work, documentation, etc. Product managers demanding every form of tracking on the planet can also be a problem.
>>54811498
>Where do you live, out of curiosity?
SoCal
>As mentioned earlier I'm in the SF Bay and out here companies trip over themselves any time a half-competent SE makes an appearance. They'll do damn near anything to hire you, including paying the guy who referred you to the company a cool $5k and this is true for several different subfields (app development, machine learning, backend dev, the list goes on and on).
Maybe I'm in the wrong fucking location.
>>54811636
>Maybe I'm in the wrong fucking location.
>socal
>tech field
you think?
>>54811675
Los Angeles and Orange County? It's not exactly Fucking No Where, Kansas.
And just how stable is a career in SF when all I see are stories about Apple, Google, etc. importing Pajeets? That's an expensive area to try and build a life only to hear "can you train your replacement?"
>>54811498
Another thing to mention is that while having a degree is nice, they ultimately don't give two shits here, especially if you've got 2+ years of experience on your resume.
>>54811705
I can't speak for the megagiants but startups tend to prefer citizens because all the H1B nonsense is a royal PITA and they'd rather divert resources to other things.
>>54811705
It's >>54811746 again
I'd recommend you get a company to move you to the SF bay - if you're good, many companies would be willing to help you. They'll cover moving costs allowing you can try out the area for a year or two. If that doesn't work out, just quit and move back south.
>>54811705
1) they're importing pajeets because they need an order of magnitude more engineers than are coming out of universities every year. if you're competent, you shouldn't have any trouble getting a job. this xenophobic shit on /g/ is coming from NEETs who need a scapegoat to explain their unemployability; don't fall in with that fucking retarded crowd.
2) i'm not claiming that every place is either SF or NOT SF AND THEREFORE BUMFUCK KANSAS. you've made the right move by being in california, compared to every other place you could go to find work, but SF is clearly a better place to find a job if you want companies fighting over you.
3) you're the one who complained about job prospects and options. backtracking and insisting that things aren't that bad there is confusing and kind of retarded.
>>54811705
>maybe i live in the wrong location
>probably
>hey man my area is pretty good!
don't second guess yourself.
If I know how to create objects and classes. Is this good enough for a job?
Keep in mind I have a CS Degree.
>>54809078
Because to those of us who share our knowledge for free on the internet, programming is an art and not a job.
>>54811838
having a CS degree will get you an interview.
only knowing how to create objects and classes will get you weeded out.
this is a stupid question. you should take your next question(s) there.
>>54809078
being a codemonkey is just that easy
>>54811805
>you're the one who complained about job prospects and options. backtracking and insisting that things aren't that bad there is confusing and kind of retarded.
I'm not back tracking. I feel like IT has been a terrible career in SoCal. I'm simply pointing out that I'm not in Oklahoma or New Mexico or some shit.
I've worked at several companies. All left me feeling the this way: >>54811380
Since the 2007 crash I've done contract work. For a few years I had "full time" contract work with a local company that was pretty sweet. I was basically their SE and IT admin. I was stuck paying my self employment tax and buying my own medical, but the hourly pay was decent and they didn't require me to be there every day. I could work from home a lot.
More importantly, management listened to me, liked me, and had zero desire to pull a bait and switch. But they hit hard times and the work stopped. (Recently they called me back in to do a few things. It was a point of pride that the software I wrote for them was still running the company with practically no love or care after 4 years of literally no IT personnel what so ever.)
I've never felt truly in demand. I've never felt like I'm earning all that much (compared to friends in other fields). But I can literally point at a few companies and say "I wrote this software and it runs their business."
C/C++, C#, VB.NET, PHP, Obj. C, Postgres, MySQL...that same business mentioned above has apps I wrote to be cross platform (OS X and Windows) so I know how to deal with cross platform frameworks and multiple APIs.
When I look at my life earnings compared to my friends I wish I had been a firefighter or a cop.
I do NOT have a degree. College was interrupted by hard times. I'm self taught. I have no criminal record or anything weird that would stop me from working...any where. Even FBI.
So what am I doing wrong? Is there a fucking recruiter I should contact?
>>54811805
>1) they're importing pajeets because they need an order of magnitude more engineers than are coming out of universities every year.
They're importing retards though. They don't "need" as many people as they think they do, they just have diversity quotas to fill and Pajeet is trapped in the US so he has to work for whatever company imports him- this is basically modern slavery but it's better than living in streetshitting India.
>>54811826
That wasn't my point.
LA and OC are two pretty big metropolitan areas with some significant corporations present. So I'm taking my experience as representative of the industry as a whole.
It would shock me to discover that SF bay is significantly different or better in this respect.
>>54812029
Why the _fuck_ haven't you started your own software company?
Refactor your code for cloud scalability and start selling subscriptions.....your cross-platform experience should make this much easier than you might think.
Seriously man, you could be making fucking bank and employing people yourself.
It's the classic competent IT engineer guy with little-to-no business sense. You need an ex-IT fag like me to give you the direction you need to make bank. The product you make is good, charge for it!
>>54811498
>tfw no one in the bay area wants to hire me
I think I should just kill myself.
>>54812029
i'm not looking to be your career counselor. you just seemed to have problems getting good jobs, and if we assume that we're similarly qualified (or that you're more qualified than me), then we need to conclude that some other differentiating characteristic is causing you to not find a job while i'm getting unsolicited emails from recruiters
have an online profile like linkedin or github or something. be *occasionally* active. if you're doing all that, then the only other factor i can think of is that your location is holding you back. and i didn't even think of that option - YOU did. you proposed the possibility that you're in "the wrong fucking location".
i went to a university in socal for my undergrad so i still have friends down there, and i don't know anyone working in tech who's had any trouble finding work. they're not "flashy tech startup" jobs and only one or two work at a big tech company down there (the irvine google office is tiny compared to the mothership), but they all seem happy.
>>54809078
>No other professional field is stupid enough to train their own competition for free.
Software engineering isn't a profession.
The only reason it's *ever* classified as a profession is thanks to Bill Gate's efforts. He pushed for "professional" categorization to make programmers overtime exempt.
So, you get all the unpaid overtime, and none of the prestige.
Lawyer, doctor, CPA, engineer, these are professions. They have a professional body that assures competency. "Software Engineer" is a bullshit title meant to give you a feeling of importance. Meanwhile, your boss think you're a manchild ("herding cats"), and nobody has any reason to believe you're at all competent.
>>54812045
>They're importing retards though
this is what happens when demand far exceeds supply, dude. you end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to ship code.
if you're trying to understand how so many /g/ faggots don't have jobs when so many pajeets are getting hired, then consider that pajeets are more employable than retarded NEETs.
that's how worthless NEETs are. they're worse than pajeets.
>>54812149
Oh, I forgot to mention that programmers are the automobile assembly plant workers of the 21st century. It's a semi-skilled, blue-collar position.
>>54812161
>this is what happens when demand far exceeds supply, dude. you end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to ship code.
No, that's what happens when you won't pay appropriate wages.
Companies harp on and on about how H1-B's are well-paid. It's bullshit. I've seen my own company's listing for a DBA at about 20k under market value for the time.
>>54812161
I am one of those /g/ NEETs, how do I get a job programming?
>>54812149
>Lawyer, doctor, CPA, engineer, these are professions. They have a professional body that assures competency. "Software Engineer" is a bullshit title meant to give you a feeling of importance. Meanwhile, your boss think you're a manchild ("herding cats"), and nobody has any reason to believe you're at all competent.
While you don't need it for regular joe schmo shit, you or your immediate superior are supposed to have a professional software engineering license to work on life critical systems.
At least that's how its supposed to be.
https://engineers.texas.gov/software.html
>>54812138
>i'm not looking to be your career counselor.
Sorry. I don't mean to put you on the spot demanding advice. But my frustration is real (as you can tell).
I didn't have trouble getting interviews before the crash and worked at several locations. I was never fired (i.e. bad work or fuck up), but was turned over as companies were sold or outsourced or what have you.
Since the crash? I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
>>54812053
>It would shock me to discover that SF bay is significantly different or better in this respect.
socal has a large population, but the industries are diffused across lots of industries. NYC has a fair amount of diffusion as well, but with some focus on finance.
the bay area has very little else going on *except* engineering. everything else - the food, the art, everything - is residual mostly *because* of the tech scene.
even the financial scene in SF primarily supports tech companies/startups now. there's almost no place in the world that converges so many industries into supporting one thing (maybe puget sound, but that's bifurcated with aerospace and tech).
>>54812029
>I've never felt truly in demand. I've never felt like I'm earning all that much (compared to friends in other fields). But I can literally point at a few companies and say "I wrote this software and it runs their business."
Same. I've never understood the people who say they can jump ship and have a new job by the end of the week. In my experience, every single interview is wildly different, and there is absolutely no way to be prepared for one. I guess things are tending toward "Cracking the Coding Interview", but I just find it depressing that you have to study a fucking book to get a job in the industry you've had a solid track record in for ten, fifteen, or twenty years.
It's the most fashion-of-the-week, trendy, circular bullshit field in existence. And absolutely nobody sees IT or Engineering as something to invest in, it's always overhead that they resent.
>>54809438
Teslas are open source
>>54812263
>I've never understood the people who say they can jump ship and have a new job by the end of the week.
it really, REALLY helps to be confident. i've never prepared for a technical interview except by masturbating that morning and just relaxing before the interview.
i've never encountered anyone expecting you to be perfect. they just want you to be "quick on your feet", which means thinking through a problem at a reasonably good pace. just walk through your thought process and they'll see that you're reasoning through problems logically and quickly.
maybe this is honestly not possible. occasionally when i ask people to do this their thought process seems to be genuinely slower than mine, and if that's the case i don't know what to say. i honestly just think that people freeze up, though. i don't believe that there are people whose brains work slower than mine - just that they lock up from nervousness.
>>54812247
Also: other people are expressing the same thoughts as me in this thread. And this thread reflects some of the conversations I've had in real life. Am I really to assume that it's just worthless NEETs who can't compete with Pajeet? I know my skill level and I'm struggling.
In real life I hear one of the following. Either:
A) The demand for programmers is so high anon why don't you have a great career?
or
B) I'm about to get fired and I can't even get an interview how can I get contract work like you so I can eat???
I've told people in my real life that IT seems like the most schizophreic industry I've ever seen. I've got one friend who is actively recruited. And another who left the field. I hear degrees don't matter but that's the only difference I can see between them.
>>54809438
its still better than the electric poo in the loo mobile.
>>54812161
>that's how worthless NEETs are. they're worse than pajeets.
Maybe socially I can agree with you. But having employed said "NEETs" in the past I can say with confidence that once you get them into building and maintaining code they are much more skilled and end up being cheaper in the long run despite having to pay them more than Pajeet.
I can give an example off the top of my head. I had a piece of legacy business software that would build a socket every time it needed to talk to an SQL database, it was single threaded and slow as fuck. Teams of Pajeets had already tried and failed to refactor the netcode to optimize for scale. The company spent money on F5s, faster WAN links, all kinds of shit trying to fix this single design problem in the code.
So I dug around and found some kid going to community college that a friend of mine said was a decent dev. I threw the business requirements at him and said I'd give him $8k if he could fix it. He refactored the code in three fucking weeks, and despite a hiccup on the network due to him implementing load balancing (the F5s were stepping on something he set up) everything worked perfectly. I delivered that project ahead of deadline by 3 months and 1 week, and one person handled it. I'm hoping his head doesn't get big and he jets off to Amazon or something, I'm hoping to utilize his services i the future.
>>54809078
Why are there so many resources for becoming a billionaire?
No other professional field is stupid enough to train their own competition for free.
Why are billionaires so eager to cuck themselves?
>>54812321
>just walk through your thought process and they'll see that you're reasoning through problems logically and quickly.
Yeah, that's a huge part of the problem: the interview process is laughably misplaced. I don't "think out loud" as I scribble on a whiteboard when I'm working on the 10th bug in our shitty codebase that week. It's basically demanding presentation skill of people who you'll have chained to their desks working in solitude for the duration of their service. It's ridiculous.
Hell, I've had *interviewers* who were so socially anxious that they literally shook. Heh, one was shaking and her voice was quivering as she asked how I would write a program to solve a Rubik's cube. As I started sketching something out on a sheet of paper, she shouted (no joke) "NO!!". What the actual fuck. I guess she expected an answer where I simulated the blocks themselves rather than just representing the faces using matrices... Later on, she argued with me about how TCP/IP works.
>maybe this is honestly not possible. occasionally when i ask people to do this their thought process seems to be genuinely slower than mine
I don't think it can be compared. At all. You have no idea how many tangential thoughts they considered and threw out before giving you one iota of information.
Hell, most interview questions boil down to, "have you seen this exact thing before?"
>>54812391
i agree that it's shitty, which is why i tend not to use it when i interview people (i just ask them to tell me about some bug that they encountered recently and how they dealt with it - the level of technical detail they get into pretty effectively signals how comfortable they are; or i ask them to send me some code they've written and ballpark how long it took to write),
BUT
the point i'm drawing out right now is that NEETs think whiteboard interviews are about being eerily silent for 10 minutes while they scribble away on a whiteboard and ultimately deliver some code golf answer to some problem. it's not any of that at all.
it's best to imagine this as optimizing for the wrong criteria. you should focus all of your effort not on memorizing structures and stuff, but being comfortable explaining your thought process as it's churning through a problem.
that actually IS part of what your job is about, or at least more so than writing code silently on a whiteboard while someone deciding your fate watches you.
>>54812263
There's a trend to come up with trick questions and "think fast on your feet" type problems in the hopes that this will distinguish good candidates.
The problem is that obscure knowledge about a language / API / system != good overall engineering skills. It's obscure for a reason and a good engineer will know enough to find the docs and figure it out if he ever needs it.
Likewise with "solve this puzzle under pressure" type shit. Most people don't work well under pressure. And you want solid solutions, not the first thing that comes to mind.
This is compounded by the "white board" which is shit when every IDE on the planet utilizes auto complete with parameter/function preview. I can understand wanting to see if a candidate can solve a problem without StackOverflow or GoogleFu. But for fuck's sake let them use an IDE.
Note: I don't consider FizzBuzz to fit in these categories. I understand why that became popular because I actually knew a guy who out sourced his homework, got a CS degree, and couldn't write one damn line of code.
If I was an interviewer I would probably say "Pretend we're writing a program to do X. Give me your thoughts on the best architecture." At long as you can spot bullshitters that should tell you very quickly if the person "gets it" or not.
>>54812358
so... would teh key to getting into the market that this kid was tapped by, does one just get his reputation out there?
>>54812102
>Why the _fuck_ haven't you started your own software company?
I have an idea that I'm confident would be profitable. (And not something stupid like "hurr durr Angry Birds only better!")
But it takes money. A small team (I can only pound out so much code in a day), small office, servers, etc.
I wouldn't even begin to know how to get investors without losing control of the idea or getting fucked in some way.
I was part of a startup in 2004 that would have been decent until an investor pulled out, thieved ideas and code, etc. I felt awful for the engineer behind it all. He was a good guy and just wanted to make a decent product that would make all of us a little cash.
>>54812454
Back when I was applying to Windows desktop C++/WTL/ATL/GDI/COM (heavy multithreading, internationalization, stuff like that) jobs, here's a statement from an actual interviewer:
"Here, I like this question, I think it's pretty interesting. If you were creating an Internet search engine, how would you do it?"
What the actual fuck? I'm tired of applying only to *specific* jobs that my skillset matches, only to show up and get some interviewers personal, masturbatory topic. Motherfucker, ask me something about my experience. Asking me how I'd make a search engine is like asking me to describe the dream you had last night: not my fucking area.
> you should focus all of your effort not on memorizing structures and stuff
Or how about tech interviewers ask questions relevant to the job description to which you applied?
Again, people are just asking their own personal flavor of "explain something that I know because obviously anyone competent knows everything I know". The field is rife with people who have no idea how large their unknown-unknowns are.
>that actually IS part of what your job is about, or at least more so than writing code silently on a whiteboard while someone deciding your fate watches you.
1) You shouldn't be writing code on a whiteboard in the first place. That's the first, obvious step into irrelevancy-land.
2) Nobody here is advocating scribbling silently. But the very act of standing at a whiteboard, solving a problem, and "thinking out loud" is a cluster fuck of irrelevant skills. The people who say they "want to see you think" are fucking retards.
>>54812478
>obscure knowledge about a language / API / system != good overall engineering skills
I've never, ever had an interview where I felt that they even touched on things that I consider important to real-world engineering. Like, do you wildly over-engineer? Do you know how to write a decent comment? How to write a decent checking description? Do you have a ...
>>54812551
(cont'd)
...low bug count? Do your coworkers like taking over your code, or is it an illegible pile of shit?
>Most people don't work well under pressure.
Well, I for one work well under pressure, *at my actual job*. I don't work well under pressure working on somebody's irrelevant, academic nonsense question that he's proud of because it doesn't come up on any Google searches. Yeah, you know why? Because it's contrived and academic.
>I don't consider FizzBuzz to fit in these categories.
Yeah, FizzBuzz is great for gauging basic ability to read a problem and create conforming output. It also weeds out the overconfident uber-nerds (like all the guys on /g/ who start from zero). It's a little harder than "reverse a string", solely due to the nuances of the problem description.
>If I was an interviewer I would probably say "Pretend we're writing a program to do X. Give me your thoughts on the best architecture." At long as you can spot bullshitters that should tell you very quickly if the person "gets it" or not.
Yeah, when I interview I mostly ask them about prior projects. For example, one guy who was a contractor for years literally could not describe how a system was implemented. He kept repeating the same summary, almost verbatim. It became obvious that he did zero work on the project. We dropped down to asking him to do some simple loop (I dunno, print a string one character at a time?) and it became clear that he literally didn't understand how loops work. If "i++" was the iteration part of the loop declaration, he thought that every time 'i' appeared in the loop body, i got incremented.
>>54812527
>I wouldn't even begin to know how to get investors without losing control of the idea or getting fucked in some way.
Probably by soliciting your family and friends, to be honest. It's dangerous though. Fuck up and you can destroy relationships.
Here's my suggestion: create the shittiest Minimum Viable Product version of it. Doesn't matter if it even works right. Create it and try to shop it around. The fact that you've even tried to implement it puts you ahead of any competition that might try to duplicate it in-house. Meanwhile, secure a couple of contracts and eat shit when things fail while you desperately work to patch up the system the way you intended to in the first place.
>>54812551
>I've never, ever had an interview where I felt that they even touched on things that I consider important to real-world engineering. Like, do you wildly over-engineer? Do you know how to write a decent comment? How to write a decent checking description? Do you have a ...
This x1,000. It's only with contract jobs that I *sometimes* get questions relevant to actually engineering a piece of software that will work, have decent performance, and can be maintained / expanded in the future without rewriting the damn thing from scratch.
When I think back on job interviews I've had it's all the bullshit being posted here.
>>54812604
>For example, one guy who was a contractor for years literally could not describe how a system was implemented. He kept repeating the same summary, almost verbatim. It became obvious that he did zero work on the project.
Was his resume entirely made up?
>>54812551
>1) You shouldn't be writing code on a whiteboard in the first place. That's the first, obvious step into irrelevancy-land.
>2) Nobody here is advocating scribbling silently. But the very act of standing at a whiteboard, solving a problem, and "thinking out loud" is a cluster fuck of irrelevant skills. The people who say they "want to see you think" are fucking retards.
I am a useless NEET so you can probably discard everything I am about to say.
I think the whiteboard stuff can be pretty important for discussing ideas with other developers. When I was a research assistant, it was not too common we would all gather around a white board and start scribbling rough ideas on how to solve a problem. In actual industry, not really sure, I had an internship and there was never really much white boarding being done, even though the company plastered whiteboards everywhere even making walls you can write on. I imagine some companies somewhere use it more often to think together to solve problems. I mean I still write down on paper ideas to solve a programming problem.
>>54812338
look up triplebyte, they may be shilled to death by hn but they do make a point of ignoring whether or not you have a degree
with less people programming there wont just be fewer job appliants, there will also be fewer jobs to apply to.
>>54812604
>For example, one guy who was a contractor for years literally could not describe how a system was implemented. He kept repeating the same summary, almost verbatim.
Really? LOL! If that had been me I would have lost the job because I wouldn't have shut up :-)
Some of what's on my resume is work I did entirely by myself, from scratch, for a client. I love to talk about it, the architecture decisions I made, and why.
>Do you know how to write a decent comment?
Here's a PDF I wrote for a client that explained security related choices I made in his project, after which I got a phone call: "I never understood this stuff until I read your PDF. You should teach."
>>54812683
>Was his resume entirely made up?
I don't actually know. I mean, it seemed plausible from reading it. I just assumed that he got himself hired onto teams with competent people, and just sort of stood at the edges bullshitting all the time. It actually never occurred to me that he might have just fabricated the entire thing... I just can't wrap my head around that: why would you apply to a job that you have absolutely zero competency at? I mean, we weren't a run of the mill CRUD shop, we had specific and fairly technical requirements...
Then again, one of the best programmers I've ever worked with got hired, but he had to apply over and over for something like four years. The building manager dude who got pressed into recruiting service apparently had absolutely ZERO idea what a competent programmer looked like.
>>54809078
>Why are there so many resources for learning to program?
Because any retarded child could learn CS on their own.
>>54812501
Networking is super fucking important. Doing favors for people that will have your back in the future goes a really long way.
To give you an IT analogy, you're better off with a small, reliable 10gbe network than a massive gigabit network that doesn't work 25% of the time. Build connections with a small set of people that you trust (and not just IT people, you need business people, tech recruiters, security folks, etc) and keep in contact with them regularly. Do favors for them, ask them their professional opinion on things, etc.
>>54812527
>need and office and servers and shit
Get fucking slack and a TFS instance on Azure. RingCentral or GoogleVoice for a company number. Start talking to some coding buddies in your area if you have them or recruit off reddit or private forums you lurk.
You're way overthinking it. Start by talking to a company about a problem they have and see if you can pound out a solution and then present it to them. You don't need servers and an office and shit if whatever you're making is good and people buy it. If you're going for VC money it's better to have already proven that somebody is running your shit before asking somebody else for cash to scale up. I'm speaking from experience here.
As for "losing control", all it takes is having people you trust and a couple of NDAs you can get off LegalZoom. Get a decent lawyer if shit hits the fan and don't be afraid to use them if anybody gets dirty.
>>54812685
>I think the whiteboard stuff can be pretty important for discussing ideas with other developers.
It absolutely can be, but that's a WAY more natural environment than when it's used in an interview as -- quite literally -- a presentation method.
Make no bones about it: you're presenting in an interview. I don't give two shits if a job candidate for a SE position can give a good presentation. I care about 1) is he someone I want to spend time with and 2) is he competent *at relevant skills*.
>>54812703
Bookmarked. Will explore this week. Thank you!
>>54812753
>Get fucking slack and a TFS instance on Azure. RingCentral or GoogleVoice for a company number. Start talking to some coding buddies in your area if you have them or recruit off reddit or private forums you lurk.
It can actually be difficult to deal with the mailing address thing. You really want to avoid having your home address associated with your business.
>>54812768
PO box
>>54812795
I think you'll have trouble with that in a lot of areas.
I don't think you can use a P.O. box for registering your business, for example (likely depends on the state).
>>54812132
Make yourself as marketable as possible and apply to shit like mad. The last couple times I was searching for a new place to work I was speaking to 6+ companies per month. Eventually you'll find a fit.
>>54812263
>>Same. I've never understood the people who say they can jump ship and have a new job by the end of the week.
Half of it is the connections you've accumulated in your time in the industry. Your past coworkers who appreciated you can hook you up with interviews that skip the HR bullshit, instant-sign contracts, and other such things. If you play your cards right you can stay employed and even change companies somewhat frequently (every 1-2 years) with minimal interviewing.
>>54813349
this. career means some amount of social networking, but that doesn't mean setting aside 45 minutes each week for designated "socializing" time; it just means being a likable human being throughout the course of your interactions with co-workers.
competition? what a cynical world view. computers are a massive part of our life now and the more people that understand them, the better the society. and writing tutorials and such can be fun, too.
It seems OP doesn't understand programming is not magical alchemy where you only need to be let in on a secret to gain special powers. Regardless of how many tutorials there are, it takes a lot of time to become good at programming. This also applies to many other things like learning natural languages, learning to play an instrument, learning anything. Just because you have a free guide on how to do it doesn't mean much unless you commit a lot of time and effort into actually doing it. In this age you can study pretty much anything for free (well, for the price of your internet access) to a pretty high level. The stumbling block is the effort and time it takes to do it.
I studied law. And in my country all laws, history of the laws and case law can be found online. Rights free.
If you buy a good legal book about a certain specialisation you can easily teach yourself what you need to now.
>>54813919
*know
>>54813919
In most states in America you have to attend a law school before you can take the bar exam.
You might potentially be the greatest lawyer on Earth, but no one would ever know if you don't have the resources to spend 6-8 years in school.
Then again, nobody is lobbying Congress to increase the number of Pajeets allowed into America to become lawyers.
>>54814641
a number of states (California, New York, Washington to name some of the important states) let you do a sort of work-study program. California lets you study/work in a law office for a number of years. New York lets you take the exam after a year of law school. it's not perfect, but it's not 6-8 years of mounting debt.
>>54809210
my high score is 352k, kind of hit some kind of mental block
i want to learn
>>54809078
Just because you can learn to 'code' doesn't mean you'll be any good.
You can pretty much find a guide to anything on the internet, not just programming.
>>54811514
>I want to find a way around the corporate diversity bullshit to figure out how to get a bunch of smart young white guys in a room to build something new so we don't have to deal with Pajeet or Lilith the Feminist or Tammy from HR.
You can do this, it's called starting your own company.
>>54816865
>starting your own company.
good luck being an autistic NEET and getting funding.
also with the pressure on startups these days, good luck getting a VC to fund you knowing you're going to expose them to legal shit like this.
>>54816888
Get a job (even if it's something gay like McDolans) save up, and fund it yourself. Recruit like minded NEETs who have the skills you need and believe in your cause. Or just go ahead and make it already. So much open source software is developed by a core team of a few or even just one person in their free time, what do you need VC money for?
Just do it, if you're truly a NEET you must have infinite time, what is stopping you from writing killer software? Tools and learning resources are basically free.
>>54817019
>Get a job (even if it's something gay like McDolans) save up
do you understand how much it costs to pay a single engineer?
honestly are you thinking this is like a slightly more formal operation than the lemon stand you just ran?
>>54817019
>make it open source
yeah /g/ tried that. we got as far as a dozen logos.
>>54811380
>Someone is always pushing a meme whether it's good for the project or not.
Got a guy like this on my team. He wants the new flavor of the month meme framework or some other bullshit.
>>54817032
>open source projects aren't worth it because of cost
you're right anon we should just stop thinking of ideas because it's too hard.
>>54817032
>didn't even read the rest of the post
literally what do you have in mind that requires so much money and other people?
>inb4 I don't want people to steal my """"ideas""""
I know you can definitely pay for things like server hosting and iOS/Android app store accounts with minimum wage savings (assuming you don't have to pay for your personal living expenses, which is probably the case if you're a NEET as you say), at least for a company that's starting out, so it's not a completely retarded idea.
>>54817077
that's not what i said at all. i said that you won't get funded if you act like an autistic racist faggot who just wants to "find a way around the corporate diversity bullshit".
if your goal is to hire the most competent people to execute on a good idea, come up with a way of assessing candidates that's neither fuzzy and bullshit nor blatantly racist, and give it to every candidate. making a startup where the primary function is to serve as a vehicle for your /b/tard faggotry is a bad idea that won't get off the ground.
but my hunch is it doesn't really matter; you're probably going to claim to be self-funded on principle when in reality nobody would consider betting on your success after speaking with you.
>>54817114
Hey buddy your keyboard is broken. it keeps repeating quotation marks.
>>54811380
if it makes you feel better you only have to deal with the pajeets a few more years until trump gets in. they wont be able to give them below standard pay and will have to hire americans first anyways
>>54812285
No, they aren't.
>>54809438
Every time this gets posted I chuckle a little at the irony
teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
Tesla is both the most open of any car manufacturer and the most advanced of any car manufacturer. Find better examples you fucking luddite.
>>54817149
Yes they are.
Next.
>>54809078
You cant learn it from the internet. Well you can the videos and tutorials start as a good ice breaker but after that you need to learn from text and hard work.
Also computer science fields have been doubling in jobs since they came into existence. At this point they only have like a 2% unemployment rating and 120k vacancies at the moment probably.
Basically these people dont feel threatened enough to defend it.
Golden thread
