EPTLearning other languages takes time. If they have a project come up that needs that skillset now, they can't wait around for you to learn it.
The more you know the better. Keeping up with technology is important, too.
The Big Programming Thread - Page 296
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Thread Rules 1. This is not a "do my homework for me" thread. If you have specific questions, ask, but don't post an assignment or homework problem and expect an exact solution. 2. No recruiting for your cockamamie projects (you won't replace facebook with 3 dudes you found on the internet and $20) 3. If you can't articulate why a language is bad, don't start slinging shit about it. Just remember that nothing is worse than making CSS IE6 compatible. 4. Use [code] tags to format code blocks. | ||
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Craton
United States17262 Posts
Learning other languages takes time. If they have a project come up that needs that skillset now, they can't wait around for you to learn it. The more you know the better. Keeping up with technology is important, too. | ||
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Shield
Bulgaria4824 Posts
I'm currently 2nd year at university, so one more year to go until I finish BSc. I'm usually interested in OOP paradigm. ^^ | ||
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Sluggy
United States128 Posts
On May 08 2013 07:30 Abductedonut wrote: Hey guys - this isn't really a "programming/technical" question but it's about hiring and it has bothered me for some time now. I've been looking for software engineering internships/jobs as I'm almost out of school and I'm royally confused about some of the job requirements these employers have. Most if not all job requirements that I look at for non-huge tech companies often want expertise in a certain language, including internships. Are these requirements bullshit/just there for show? Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc etc generally don't list specific language requirements. They'll say experience with C/C++/Java or other object oriented languages which to me, says they want someone who knows both theoretical software engineering as well some practical application of it. I ran into an undergraduate internship positions who wanted Erlang as a language requirement. This is how I figure: if you know how to program in general then you basically know every language (excluding different paradigms, bear with me here). To truly claim to know and understand a language then you must know the dark corners of it, and that takes YEARS of programming experience. Do these companies honestly expect me to have spent years learning Erland - a language I and most people haven't heard of? If they don't, then why the hell even bothering listing it as a requirement? If I know one language I can find my way around it. The same issues pops up with the J2SE and J2EE. I know Java - isn't that enough? I understand J2EE is more for enterprise software but having theoretical experience in distributed systems would be more important than knowing the J2EE dialect of the language, right? Why bother listing it as a requirement? And another thing - why bother listing language requirements at all? They're pointless. Software Engineering is not about programming, it's about the engineering behind the design of software. That's the job I'm applying for, C# just happens to be the tool I use to implement my design. I'm just so lost. If you haven't proven that you can productively develop in those environments, why would they hire you over someone who has? That being said, if someone has all of the qualifications some of these places want, chances are that person is happily employed somewhere else making a lot more money than the searching company can offer. It doesn't hurt to try and get an interview if a job looks attractive to you. Straight out of college with no experience you might want to filter your search more towards a 'junior' position which will be more realistic about what they are getting out of someone with no experience. | ||
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tec27
United States3702 Posts
On May 08 2013 08:17 darkness wrote: Is there still money for C++/C/Java? I was talking to my father who is in IT and has to deal with ABAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP), and he advised me to switch to business processes, whatever that means. Perhaps COBAL/ABAP languages. I'm currently 2nd year at university, so one more year to go until I finish BSc. I'm usually interested in OOP paradigm. ^^ I highly recommend you completely discard that advice unless you want to pigeonhole yourself into maintaining awful legacy enterprise systems for the rest of your life. There's a ton of jobs using C++/Java right now, I don't know why you'd be worried about it at all. | ||
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Shield
Bulgaria4824 Posts
On May 08 2013 08:54 tec27 wrote: I highly recommend you completely discard that advice unless you want to pigeonhole yourself into maintaining awful legacy enterprise systems for the rest of your life. There's a ton of jobs using C++/Java right now, I don't know why you'd be worried about it at all. Alright, thanks. I kind of think that C++ actually may have good future, especially with C++11 (already there actually), C++14, etc that are on way. Edit: Some question for C++ programmers, what do you think of Stallman's and Torvald's criticism towards C++? E.g. Richard Stallman criticizes C++ for having ambiguous grammar and "gratuitous, trivial incompatibilities with C [...] that are of no great benefit".[47] Linus Torvalds said in a famous email[48] that C++ was a 'horrible language'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C++#Criticism | ||
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Craton
United States17262 Posts
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berated-
United States1134 Posts
On May 08 2013 07:30 Abductedonut wrote: Hey guys - this isn't really a "programming/technical" question but it's about hiring and it has bothered me for some time now. I've been looking for software engineering internships/jobs as I'm almost out of school and I'm royally confused about some of the job requirements these employers have. Most if not all job requirements that I look at for non-huge tech companies often want expertise in a certain language, including internships. Are these requirements bullshit/just there for show? Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc etc generally don't list specific language requirements. They'll say experience with C/C++/Java or other object oriented languages which to me, says they want someone who knows both theoretical software engineering as well some practical application of it. I ran into an undergraduate internship positions who wanted Erlang as a language requirement. This is how I figure: if you know how to program in general then you basically know every language (excluding different paradigms, bear with me here). To truly claim to know and understand a language then you must know the dark corners of it, and that takes YEARS of programming experience. Do these companies honestly expect me to have spent years learning Erland - a language I and most people haven't heard of? If they don't, then why the hell even bothering listing it as a requirement? If I know one language I can find my way around it. The same issues pops up with the J2SE and J2EE. I know Java - isn't that enough? I understand J2EE is more for enterprise software but having theoretical experience in distributed systems would be more important than knowing the J2EE dialect of the language, right? Why bother listing it as a requirement? And another thing - why bother listing language requirements at all? They're pointless. Software Engineering is not about programming, it's about the engineering behind the design of software. That's the job I'm applying for, C# just happens to be the tool I use to implement my design. I'm just so lost. So much confusion, I don't even know where to start with all this! Craton's advice is pretty much spot on, but I'm going to elaborate and go long winded for a bit. The Microsoft's, Amazon's, and Google's of the world are so large that they can pretty much list whatever they want. They have a lot of projects in a lot of languages -- so they have flexibility in what they can do with the person or project. I don't know if I'm just biased because I enjoy working for my small software company, but in my mind these huge tech companies just feel so unreal to me. When you can deploy up to hundreds of programmers on a project, you can spend time doing a lot of stuff that looks awesome and not have specific requirements etc, etc, etc..Why? Because you have so many damn developers. This just isn't the way it works at a smaller shop. The company I work for right now has 10 programmers. We're definitely a java shop, even though we have a .net project and some python projects. When we hire, we list j2ee, stripes framework, jms, spring, other java buzzwords on our requirements. It's not because we expect for the applicant to have everyone of those skills, that would be awesome... It's because that's what you're going to be working with if you work for us. We hope that applicants have some understanding of the concepts, not mastery. We can teach you the dark corners. Listing this isn't pointless. Sure, we can all classify ourselves as software engineers, but to your point, at the end of the day we have to solve a problem. Unless you're a contractor, it's probably going to be on someone else's schedule. Unless you're a senior developer / architect, it's probably not even going to be designing the solution. A new developer has to come in and be productive and work with a bunch of other guys who are java programmers, on a java project, on a system that is designed for java. If you haven't programmed more than a main method in java, you're probably going to have a pretty long ramp up time which just isn't going to work for us. Anyways, if you see some listings that seem interesting to you in areas you want to work with, apply. Don't let it stop you because you don't have mastery of the subjects. Just be honest with what you know and don't know if you get an interview. On May 08 2013 09:21 Craton wrote: It's pointless argumentation. It may be true, it may not be, but it's pretty irrelevant to businesses and what they're going to use. The sweet sound of practicality...  | ||
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Craton
United States17262 Posts
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Kambing
United States1176 Posts
On May 08 2013 08:59 darkness wrote: Edit: Some question for C++ programmers, what do you think of Stallman's and Torvald's criticism towards C++? E.g. Richard Stallman criticizes C++ for having ambiguous grammar and "gratuitous, trivial incompatibilities with C [...] that are of no great benefit".[47] Linus Torvalds said in a famous email[48] that C++ was a 'horrible language'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C++#Criticism It's true. For low-level tasks (embedded systems, operating systems, etc.), C provides a suitable level of abstraction and access to low-level internals to create consistently performant programs. For high-level tasks, there are a plethora of better options than C++ that sacrifice low-level control for high-level abstractions. On first inspection, C++ on its own, therefore, fills a very small niche where you need additional abstractions that C does not provide, but also the low-level control. The thing that most people don't understand is that well-written C++ gets you high-level abstraction (think like Haskell-level sorts of abstraction) and low-level control for C-like levels of performance cost. The catch is that you have in-depth knowledge of the language in order to make this happen. | ||
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DeltaX
United States287 Posts
Kind of off topic, but I am sort of worried about what might happen with the new immigration bill with lots more visas for tech workers. If a company is able to hire someone with the exact skills they want it might create problems for new graduates, or people trying to change technologies. (I could also be way off base too, idk) | ||
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Craton
United States17262 Posts
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billy5000
United States865 Posts
I recently finished a small website using rails with bare minimum css/js (trust me, it's nothing special as I'm just trying to gain experience for the main project I have in mind), and I really want to get started on that main project, but it might take a long time to finish. At the same time, the job offers I see around here are usually asking for .NET or PHP experience, which I don't have. Absolutely no rails related jobs. Any advice? Although relocation is a possibility, I really want to settle down prior to making huge choices as I'll have something to fall on because who knows, the job description may be totally different from what I have in mind. | ||
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phar
United States1080 Posts
Advice: build shit, build shit in the frontend, build backend servers. Do internships where possible. Keep up with your algorithms & data structures, because some companies will ask a lot of interview questions that require you to be quite good at that stuff. Solve problems, learn to write progressively less-shit code. Although relocation is a possibility, I really want to settle down prior to making huge choices as I'll have something to fall on because who knows, the job description may be totally different from what I have in mind. ^ Don't really know what you mean by this. Kind of off topic, but I am sort of worried about what might happen with the new immigration bill with lots more visas for tech workers. If a company is able to hire someone with the exact skills they want it might create problems for new graduates, or people trying to change technologies. (I could also be way off base too, idk) I wouldn't be worried about this. We don't have nearly enough H1-B's to fill demand as it is. We educate a huge number of foreigners in software every year, and then kick most of them out even though there's a distinct lack of qualified people here. And it's not like the H1-B program is geared at hiring people for undermarket wages (some of this slips through). All my co-workers on H1-B are paid just as much, if not more than an average dev here. There's always positions for new grads, because they're cheaper and have potential. | ||
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Craton
United States17262 Posts
Companies are going to train you to do things "their" way, anyway. Experience is hands down the best thing you can have in a blind interview (i.e. where you aren't recommended). Even with a solid recommendation from inside the company it's still the #2 thing to have. Get as many internships as you can in the field, write your own projects, contribute to open source stuff. You will get asked to provide code samples. My company of mid-30s has a single visa (it's not the H1-B; it's similar). He's a biochemist or something that somehow ended up doing software testing. | ||
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JonGalt
Pootie too good!4331 Posts
What are the best libraries for this? SFML? Allegro? Box2D? I was leaning towards SFML or Allegro, but I don't have any experience with either. I have a small amount of experience with OpenGL, but that was 3D, and am currently working with SDL, but I heard SFML was better than SDL. Thoughts? Suggestions? Edit: Also on this note, what is the best library for programming a 2D game in C. SDL works alright, but wondering if there is something better. | ||
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Rollin
Australia1552 Posts
 . Apart from that, sfml is pretty good, there are a ton of tutorials on the forums, and externally too, to get started. This is a nice one for example, albeit semi-outdated (covers sfml 1.6 with sfml 2.0 patched in). Dunno about allegro.SDL is pretty slow and depreciated these days compared to the alternatives, but if you want to avoid OOP based design it would be sufficient for an RPG. | ||
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Zeke50100
United States2220 Posts
I would recommend integrating OpenGL with SFML or SDL, ideally only handling windowing and input with the two with all rendering being handled in OpenGL. That requires a bit more work; if you already have experience with SDL, it should be completely fine (unless you're using the software rendering offered in 1.2 - you would want to look into SDL 2.0's hardware rendering if you run into performance issues, which really just a few changes). If you're really just trying to get something done, stick with what you know (unless you're still in the beginning stages - I would definitely recommend using SFML if you're not already too invested into SDL). As for C, I've really only seen SDL, although any old library that can handle windowing and input will let OpenGL do the heavy-duty work for your rendering in C (and something like OpenAL if you want audio). | ||
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CecilSunkure
United States2829 Posts
On May 08 2013 17:49 JonGalt wrote: Ok, I want to design a 2D RPG in C++. What are the best libraries for this? SFML? Allegro? Box2D? I was leaning towards SFML or Allegro, but I don't have any experience with either. I have a small amount of experience with OpenGL, but that was 3D, and am currently working with SDL, but I heard SFML was better than SDL. Thoughts? Suggestions? Edit: Also on this note, what is the best library for programming a 2D game in C. SDL works alright, but wondering if there is something better. Why would you want to use a physics engine for an RPG? Just use SDL for input/graphics and do the rest yourself. | ||
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Shield
Bulgaria4824 Posts
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misirlou
Portugal3241 Posts
On May 09 2013 05:08 darkness wrote: Are jobs with C++/Java usually well paid or do you need to go for a less used language like ABAP/COBAL/etc to have good salary? Depends more on the job/position than on the language. The guys that get the highest payments dont really code anything. | ||
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