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Use learn python the hard way. (It's free).
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On June 28 2012 22:35 tofucake wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2012 14:54 Taku wrote:
A biiiiiiiiiiiit of a stretch but anyone here familiar with VHDL? Been a while since I used it, but I did technically make a CPU with it once...
Same more or less. If you are just starting to learn it, it's important to realize that it is declarative (maybe misusing this term but that's how I think of it) rather than imperative. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this fact, but I always tried to write VHDL as I would write something in C and it just doesn't work like that.
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What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance.
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On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance.
I've learned more practical software engineering knowledge working on side projects than anything I took in school. So I encourage you to do the same. Work on some side stuff that's interesting.
IMO, programming is like writing. Good writers don't only write in writing classes. Good writers write in their own time, they write for fun, on personally interesting topics, and continually polish their craft in a non-academic manner. A good software engineer should be doing the same.
When I'm interviewing candidates, I love seeing a well-filled Github or similar profile with a long history of repos and commits. It doesn't have to be forks of anything famous, and it doesn't have to be filled with complete projects. Just the existence of activity indicates to me that this is a person truly interested and invested in the field.
The same goes for internships. Normally the interns I've seen hired are the ones that brought the best side projects to show during their interview. It doesn't have to be directly applicable to the position. It simply illustrates that this person, in lieue of professional experience, can still execute on ideas and software.
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On June 29 2012 13:59 thedz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance. I've learned more practical software engineering knowledge working on side projects than anything I took in school. So I encourage you to do the same. Work on some side stuff that's interesting. IMO, programming is like writing. Good writers don't only write in writing classes. Good writers write in their own time, they write for fun, on personally interesting topics, and continually polish their craft in a non-academic manner. A good software engineer should be doing the same. When I'm interviewing candidates, I love seeing a well-filled Github or similar profile with a long history of repos and commits. It doesn't have to be forks of anything famous, and it doesn't have to be filled with complete projects. Just the existence of activity indicates to me that this is a person truly interested and invested in the field. The same goes for internships. Normally the interns I've seen hired are the ones that brought the best side projects to show during their interview. It doesn't have to be directly applicable to the position. It simply illustrates that this person, in lieue of professional experience, can still execute on ideas and software.
I fully 100% agree with this. I've learned sooo much more from working on stuff in my spare time than I ever have from school, and its so much easier to learn things when its about something you're interested in. Not to mention that it can look great for potential employers 
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On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance.
Don't worry about it.
What yo'u're thinking of as a programming: Guy surrounded by monitors, extremely smart, coding a new top secret sophisticated missile guidance system. One mistake and the world ends.
What 80% of the industry is: Can you take this data from accounts receivable and make it into different data for accounts payable? Can you make HR a cool data entry app with pretty pop-ups?
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On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance.
High level CS schools should teach you how to think well about problems that you are solving. Programming is something that is taught, but it is expected that you will be doing it mostly on your own anyway. Things I took from school were the non-programming related stuff : math (discrete math with graph theory, analysis, complex analysis, set theory, statistics and probability, algebra,...), CS stuff (computability, complexity - P vs NP and related stuff, AI, functional calculus,...) and logic (completness, Godel,...). One thing that some schools do not do, but I found quite helpful, was a multi-semester collaborative project with rather high standards for acceptance that was required for finishing the school. That is because the most important thing to learn in job environment is to learn how to work in groups. How to program in a way that minimizes chance of error of programmers that will work on the code after you and so on.
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On June 30 2012 09:19 destian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance. Don't worry about it. What yo'u're thinking of as a programming: Guy surrounded by monitors, extremely smart, coding a new top secret sophisticated missile guidance system. One mistake and the world ends. What 80% of the industry is: Can you take this data from accounts receivable and make it into different data for accounts payable? Can you make HR a cool data entry app with pretty pop-ups?
Yes this is true, but this is very bad advice. If you shoot to be average, you will end up below average.
Anyway, I'll tell a bit about what I did and what I think you should do differently. I'm not saying this is necessarily the best approach, but I took a bunch of classes on a varienty of topics (a lot of them involving programming) because I like knowing a lot of stuff, but I think it really helped me be a more well-rounded programmer and able to easily jump into any sort of problem/project. This is one approach. I think focussing heavily on one or two areas is actually probably better, but I didn't want to limit myself too much.
One critical thing I would advise is that by the time you graduate, you should MAKE SURE you have at least one or two substantial projects that you could give a 20+ minute presentation on if you had to at an interview. My major (Computer Engineering) didn't require a senior project, but I ended up taking the CS Senior Design Class as an elective for 2 semesters. I was lucky that that one project was relevant to my (second and final) job interview, so I ended up using that project to give a presentation at the interview.
I only had one sort of crappy internship (that I did for two summers) because I was lazy and didn't apply early. Don't be like me; apply early for stuff. Also try to apply for at least one you think is a bit above your level, at least one you think is at your level, and also at least one that you think you are very likely to get into (just in case). I applied at NVIDIA a couple times for example, got the phone interview, but never got it. I dunno if it's because I applied too late or if I sucked (I thought I did OK...). Didn't really apply anywhere else and had a friend refer me to the one I ended up doing. Anyway, you should have SOMETHING. It would suck if you didn't have AT LEAST one real internship, ideally a few.
Personally I did NOT work on a lot of projects out of class. I just worked really hard on my class stuff to get a monster GPA I could put on my resume in big bold text. Definitely though you will look a LOT more impressive if you do work on a few moderately substantial projects outside of class that you are able to talk about at an interview.
In the end, I was lucky to have a friend who put in a good word and helped me get an interview at my current job and then nail the interview pretty well. It's a pretty damn good job and I enjoy it quite a bit.
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Hey guys I have a question about iOS game development (specifically for iPhone) and I'm a complete newbie to their libraries and frameworks. I just want to know the reason why I should choose cocos2d vs some other tool like unity or udk. Mainly in terms of perfomance, development time, simplicity and amount of programming required.
I managed to make a simple 2d side-scroller game with cocos2d and box2d, took awhile learning the libraries. Tried the same with unity (2.5d game) and was amazed at the speed and simplicity. So I was wondering why someone would choose one or the other, like what factors should I consider if I'm going to work on a game that I want to sell. Also, if I want a position at some gaming company, what would impress them more? Which would teach me more about game development and practices?
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On June 30 2012 14:17 waxypants wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2012 09:19 destian wrote:On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance. Don't worry about it. What yo'u're thinking of as a programming: Guy surrounded by monitors, extremely smart, coding a new top secret sophisticated missile guidance system. One mistake and the world ends. What 80% of the industry is: Can you take this data from accounts receivable and make it into different data for accounts payable? Can you make HR a cool data entry app with pretty pop-ups? Yes this is true, but this is very bad advice. If you shoot to be average, you will end up below average. Anyway, I'll tell a bit about what I did and what I think you should do differently. I'm not saying this is necessarily the best approach, but I took a bunch of classes on a varienty of topics (a lot of them involving programming) because I like knowing a lot of stuff, but I think it really helped me be a more well-rounded programmer and able to easily jump into any sort of problem/project. This is one approach. I think focussing heavily on one or two areas is actually probably better, but I didn't want to limit myself too much. One critical thing I would advise is that by the time you graduate, you should MAKE SURE you have at least one or two substantial projects that you could give a 20+ minute presentation on if you had to at an interview. My major (Computer Engineering) didn't require a senior project, but I ended up taking the CS Senior Design Class as an elective for 2 semesters. I was lucky that that one project was relevant to my (second and final) job interview, so I ended up using that project to give a presentation at the interview. I only had one sort of crappy internship (that I did for two summers) because I was lazy and didn't apply early. Don't be like me; apply early for stuff. Also try to apply for at least one you think is a bit above your level, at least one you think is at your level, and also at least one that you think you are very likely to get into (just in case). I applied at NVIDIA a couple times for example, got the phone interview, but never got it. I dunno if it's because I applied too late or if I sucked (I thought I did OK...). Didn't really apply anywhere else and had a friend refer me to the one I ended up doing. Anyway, you should have SOMETHING. It would suck if you didn't have AT LEAST one real internship, ideally a few. Personally I did NOT work on a lot of projects out of class. I just worked really hard on my class stuff to get a monster GPA I could put on my resume in big bold text. Definitely though you will look a LOT more impressive if you do work on a few moderately substantial projects outside of class that you are able to talk about at an interview. In the end, I was lucky to have a friend who put in a good word and helped me get an interview at my current job and then nail the interview pretty well. It's a pretty damn good job and I enjoy it quite a bit.
^^agree
In the engineering fields, especially in CS field, portfolio >>>>> gpa. From what I have heard from a lot of people in respectable job positions is that once you reach that certain GPA mark then you are fine in the academic sense. Recruiters heavily review over projects moreso considering schools can only "teach" you so much about programming. Having a high GPA doesn't accurately represent what you are capable of. It can give you a little preview but that is all. This is one of the few fields where you can have a degree from an average university but still have a good shot landing a job at a reputable company depending on the projects and experiences your resume displays
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Also, start practicing coding interview questions early.
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uh dont worry, CS/Software Development is like one of the hottest fields right now. When I graduated (this past winter) I had no internship exp, no GitHub Stuff, no nothing and went to 3 interviews and got offers from all 3. As long as you can show that you are competent at coding (which will be required during the interview so try getting a book that preps you for it, FizzBuzz for example is a common interview question), you should be fine.
Most companies aren't looking for a genius hot shot or superstar (unless you wana work in Silicon Valley and a million hours a week). What they want out of college grads are people who can be productive and are willing to learn new languages/technologies.
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On June 30 2012 09:19 destian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance. Don't worry about it. What yo'u're thinking of as a programming: Guy surrounded by monitors, extremely smart, coding a new top secret sophisticated missile guidance system. One mistake and the world ends. What 80% of the industry is: Can you take this data from accounts receivable and make it into different data for accounts payable? Can you make HR a cool data entry app with pretty pop-ups?
That is a very dull way of looking at things and maybe the view of a web dev. But surely you must realize there is much more, like distibuted systems, big data, engineering best practices, concurrency issues, weird leap second bugs, integration frameworks, etc etc.
Once I also thought programming consists of making cool popups and shifting data around and displaying it in pretty tabs. Then I started working in the other 20% that do the serious stuff, and I like the toys, the processing power of a data center, the ability to add machines from the cloud when requiring more computational power. But yeah, my point is I would kill myself if I was one of the guys that 'have to make HR a cool data entry app'.
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On July 04 2012 07:36 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2012 09:19 destian wrote:On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance. Don't worry about it. What yo'u're thinking of as a programming: Guy surrounded by monitors, extremely smart, coding a new top secret sophisticated missile guidance system. One mistake and the world ends. What 80% of the industry is: Can you take this data from accounts receivable and make it into different data for accounts payable? Can you make HR a cool data entry app with pretty pop-ups? That is a very dull way of looking at things and maybe the view of a web dev. But surely you must realize there is much more, like distibuted systems, big data, engineering best practices, concurrency issues, weird leap second bugs, integration frameworks, etc etc. Once I also thought programming consists of making cool popups and shifting data around and displaying it in pretty tabs. Then I started working in the other 20% that do the serious stuff, and I like the toys, the processing power of a data center, the ability to add machines from the cloud when requiring more computational power. But yeah, my point is I would kill myself if I was one of the guys that 'have to make HR a cool data entry app'.
Though to be fair, destian has made a good point. There is a very large need for non creative programming skills, so thats where the money is.
Its not so bad. I work on the support side of things for an embedded toolchain, so I end up debugging customer's code. Its a very different challenge to debug code youve never seen before just from descriptions of symptoms. I very much love debugging, so it fits me well. I don't think I would want a job where I would have to create something on a daily basis.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I still am surrounded by 4 monitors, and no less than 60 computers within a 10 ft radius.
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On July 04 2012 07:36 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2012 09:19 destian wrote:On June 29 2012 12:20 billy5000 wrote:
What does it take to work in an actual job setting, and how is it like compared to college?
I'm currently a sophomore at a university and although we've covered java and object oriented programming in general, the closest thing of what I think to be "job-like" is developing small android apps in my spare time. My grades may be pretty high, but I feel like this doesn't mean much. This leads me to be a bit concerned that I won't be qualified to contribute much to a company I may be working for once I graduate--if I can find a job that is. I looked at the usual four year plan for computer science, but these courses don't seem to relate to real life work all that much. I was hoping that somebody could explain the differences between college and work, and the transition they had to face.
While I'm on this topic, I would also like to ask how qualified (more or less) should you be when looking for internships? Thanks in advance. Don't worry about it. What yo'u're thinking of as a programming: Guy surrounded by monitors, extremely smart, coding a new top secret sophisticated missile guidance system. One mistake and the world ends. What 80% of the industry is: Can you take this data from accounts receivable and make it into different data for accounts payable? Can you make HR a cool data entry app with pretty pop-ups? That is a very dull way of looking at things and maybe the view of a web dev. But surely you must realize there is much more, like distibuted systems, big data, engineering best practices, concurrency issues, weird leap second bugs, integration frameworks, etc etc. Once I also thought programming consists of making cool popups and shifting data around and displaying it in pretty tabs. Then I started working in the other 20% that do the serious stuff, and I like the toys, the processing power of a data center, the ability to add machines from the cloud when requiring more computational power. But yeah, my point is I would kill myself if I was one of the guys that 'have to make HR a cool data entry app'.
Yes, this is pretty much exactly what I wanted to say also. My internship was mostly web dev stuff and I hated it quite a bit.
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Hey peoples, I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations as to the fastest way to parse html from the web. The background is that it's summer and between work and sc2, I still have some free time so figured I'd try my hand at developing a opensource android application for the website captionfish (as right now it doesn't have one and I need to use it pretty often, even though I might end up being the only one to ever use the app ^^). Although it'd be nice to have a ton of features, my first concern is the speed of parsing the data and displaying it. Basically it's parsing the HTML for certain elements.
My question could be completely off base but I think that's what I need to do at least, since I've never attempted a project like this.
Should I:
use HTMLParser
use HTMLCleaner
use Androids built in document/XPath
use lxml (some python parser that wraps C libraries) and figure out how to use this through JNI
something else?
or: stop being a lazy bum, try all options, and report back (not keen on trying the lxml cause that'd mean figuring out how to use JNI, although I have some old class project that I can look back on so not too terrible I guess).
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On July 06 2012 06:03 teamamerica wrote:
Hey peoples, I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations as to the fastest way to parse html from the web. The background is that it's summer and between work and sc2, I still have some free time so figured I'd try my hand at developing a opensource android application for the website captionfish (as right now it doesn't have one and I need to use it pretty often, even though I might end up being the only one to ever use the app ^^). Although it'd be nice to have a ton of features, my first concern is the speed of parsing the data and displaying it. Basically it's parsing the HTML for certain elements.
My question could be completely off base but I think that's what I need to do at least, since I've never attempted a project like this.
Should I:
use HTMLParser
use HTMLCleaner
use Androids built in document/XPath
use lxml (some python parser that wraps C libraries) and figure out how to use this through JNI
something else?
or: stop being a lazy bum, try all options, and report back (not keen on trying the lxml cause that'd mean figuring out how to use JNI, although I have some old class project that I can look back on so not too terrible I guess).
Have a script in your fav language scraping the site and store the info in a rds.
Then I don't really know what you need in terms of speed, with a simple curl based php script you can process a few million pages a day, including db insertion and relation handling with some sort of orm(like Doctrine).
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EPT
