Post: #376

Should I quit my bullshit IT tech support job, blow all my savings and attend one of these developer bootcamps?

There's one in my area that was put together by the local financial industry because they couldn't find enough developers to hire.

It's a big risk so I have mixed feelings about the idea, but I hate my job.

Post: #377

@silver_tube: take a intro coding course at your local community college 1st and see if you like it. While I'm confident anyone can learn to code, having the temperament to code is another thing all together.

Post: #378

(06-23-2016 11:08 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  Should I quit my bullshit IT tech support job, blow all my savings and attend one of these developer bootcamps?

There's one in my area that was put together by the local financial industry because they couldn't find enough developers to hire.

It's a big risk so I have mixed feelings about the idea, but I hate my job.

No, I do NOT recommend dev bootcamps in general. The exception to consider are the ones that don't take payment unless you're placed. I think they take payment from your paychecks in installments. This shows they're confident that you'll find a job.

What I recommend is to take classes from accredited edu institutions in your area. There are many big name colleges/universities that allow you to take classes a la carte without having to go thru applying & getting accepted, just enroll & pay.

Take 2-3 a semester then make a call.

Post: #379

Why blow all your savings away? Dedicate you weekends and weeknights to the study of programming. You can learn a lot more over time than in a very short period of time, no matter how intense.
As someone suggested, consider taking programming courses at a local college. Also, don't forget about programming books, online tutorials, forums and programming meetups. When you actually start working on something, you will run into many, many questions. And you will find that there are ample resources to help you answer them.

Post: #380

(06-23-2016 11:08 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  Should I quit my bullshit IT tech support job, blow all my savings and attend one of these developer bootcamps?

There's one in my area that was put together by the local financial industry because they couldn't find enough developers to hire.

It's a big risk so I have mixed feelings about the idea, but I hate my job.

dont quit, keep your day job and learn on the side


in other news... I interviewed today for a job paying over £9k a month, and they've offered me the job. And the UK has voted to leave the EU.

best day of my life.

Post: #381

(06-24-2016 04:15 PM)frenchcorporation Wrote:  

(06-23-2016 11:08 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  Should I quit my bullshit IT tech support job, blow all my savings and attend one of these developer bootcamps?

There's one in my area that was put together by the local financial industry because they couldn't find enough developers to hire.

It's a big risk so I have mixed feelings about the idea, but I hate my job.

dont quit, keep your day job and learn on the side


in other news... I interviewed today for a job paying over £9k a month, and they've offered me the job. And the UK has voted to leave the EU.

best day of my life.

Can you summarize your college education and years of work experience, FC?

Post: #382

(06-24-2016 05:42 PM)WalkingMan Wrote:  Can you summarize your college education and years of work experience, FC?

I have an engineering degree, and next sunday I would have been programming for a living for 3 years

Post: #383

software engineering, right? I might take this to PM so I don't clutter the thread.

Post: #384

(06-24-2016 05:51 PM)WalkingMan Wrote:  software engineering, right? I might take this to PM so I don't clutter the thread.

ive mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but not software engineering, a more traditional kind of engineering, like mechanical engineering

Post: #385

Tech/Dev Bootcamps are the new Remington College/University of Phoenix.

While there are some diamonds on the dirt, most are shady as fuck and employers won't take you seriously.

Experience > edumacation

Post: #386

How many of you work remotely (permanent full/part time) and how did you get this job? Did you work in house first or applied with the explicit intention of working remotely?

Post: #387

(06-24-2016 06:53 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  Tech/Dev Bootcamps are the new Remington College/University of Phoenix.

While there are some diamonds on the dirt, most are shady as fuck and employers won't take you seriously.

Experience > edumacation

Agreed with this, do your research. In general, it's impossible for 99% of people to go from zero to employable programmer in three months. Myself, and all others in the bootcamp who found coding jobs within ~1 month of graduating have had some previous exposure to coding - whether it be similar education or previous failed attempts at self-education. Most others took another ~3 months of self-study to become employable.

Quote:How many of you work remotely (permanent full/part time) and how did you get this job? Did you work in house first or applied with the explicit intention of working remotely?

I work fully remotely. I only applied to remote jobs. Have no interest in ever going back to a standard office environment.

Post: #388

(06-27-2016 10:23 AM)yeppels Wrote:  I work fully remotely. I only applied to remote jobs. Have no interest in ever going back to a standard office environment.

Can you share your experience with company expectations regarding remote work in the sense of proximity to the office/team you work with? A lot of guys are interested in remote work, but not all remote is the same. For example: myself I can work remotely from home, I cannot work remotely(yet) from halfway around the world.

Post: #389

(06-23-2016 11:08 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  Should I quit my bullshit IT tech support job, blow all my savings and attend one of these developer bootcamps?

The general rule in programming is that if you can't learn a language or tool on your own (with a book, online resources, etc.) then you aren't cut out for programming. It will be hard to compete with people who are.

I once taught programming courses to laid-off workers who were given the course for free as part of the "retraining" guaranteed in their contract, part of their severance package. Not even the best instruction could have turned them into employeeable programmers.

Post: #390

(06-27-2016 11:31 AM)jj90 Wrote:  

(06-27-2016 10:23 AM)yeppels Wrote:  I work fully remotely. I only applied to remote jobs. Have no interest in ever going back to a standard office environment.

Can you share your experience with company expectations regarding remote work in the sense of proximity to the office/team you work with? A lot of guys are interested in remote work, but not all remote is the same. For example: myself I can work remotely from home, I cannot work remotely(yet) from halfway around the world.

I work for a tiny company without an office ( < 10 people) so remote is the only option. We still communicate with each other on a daily basis so the only reason it would be hard to go to say, China, is because time zone differences would severely disrupt communications.

From what I've seen, a lot of companies hiring remotely have clauses like "must be online for at least 4 hours between 10AM and 6PM PST" or something like that. Really depends on the company and the people working there. One company I had an offer from was actually in the process of deprecating their remote work because they found they couldn't communicate effectively enough. Communication skills are the #1 skill that remote workers need because you do not see the people you need to interact with on a daily basis and a lot of programmers (probably a majority of skilled remote workers) already have piss poor communication skills.

Post: #391

What do you guys think about learning javascript as a first language?

Post: #392

It's a fine choice. With Node and the various front end frameworks you won't be limited in what you can do with it.

However, if you're not planning on doing a lot of front end stuff right away Python is a better choice, IMO. It's easier to set up, and the code isn't befouled with endless curly braces and semicolons.

Post: #393

I've been learning and programming daily since I posted in this thread three months ago. I can really recommend the Treehouse learning platform. I've finished multiple tracks there and am doing the Java Web Dev Techdegree projects there right now for 99$/month. They give you 12 real world projects to complete which are said to represent the skills that employers are looking for. I've finished 6 of the projects so far and am finally going to apply for jobs at the end of the month, no matter my progress. Currently digging into design patterns, too.

What I've learned so far:

1. Java, Spring, Hibernate, Spark
2. HTML5
3. CSS, Bootstrap, SASS
4. JavaScript, Node, Express, Angular
5. SQL, some NoSQL, too
   

It's great that there is so much to learn in programming. I am growing everyday.

Best Regards,
No Habit

Post: #394

^That's great. Where will you apply? In the past I've been looking at flex jobs and upwork, but for writing jobs.

Post: #395

I am going to search for Junior Java Developer jobs all over Germany and apply to them. Perhaps I might be able to freelance or do contract work later when I got the experience.

Post: #396

(07-17-2016 01:51 AM)No Habit Wrote:  I've been learning and programming daily since I posted in this thread three months ago. I can really recommend the Treehouse learning platform. I've finished multiple tracks there and am doing the Java Web Dev Techdegree projects there right now for 99$/month. They give you 12 real world projects to complete which are said to represent the skills that employers are looking for. I've finished 6 of the projects so far and am finally going to apply for jobs at the end of the month, no matter my progress. Currently digging into design patterns, too.

What I've learned so far:

1. Java, Spring, Hibernate, Spark
2. HTML5
3. CSS, Bootstrap, SASS
4. JavaScript, Node, Express, Angular
5. SQL, some NoSQL, too
   

It's great that there is so much to learn in programming. I am growing everyday.

Best Regards,
No Habit

I have some knowledge of C++, so I've started with JAVA on Treehouse, but I felt like the progress is too slow and they skip some of the most important things of the language. There are many different topics on teamtreehouse so I didn't know where to start and what to skip because of my previous knowledge. Didn't want to waste time.
I would glad if you can elaborate more about how to use the treehouse platform and what subjects to choose. My plan is to become an android developer with some web client knowledge.
Thanks.

Post: #397

Hi donn,

I learned the basics of Java from the Head First Java book. It is about Java 5, but the features that were added in the later versions are very easy to pick up once you understand the core, which is in my opinion very well taught in the book.

Having that knowledge I finished the "Learn Java" track on Treehouse. It might be a bit redundant but I think it's helpful to see the basics from yet another perspective and it taught me a lot of new things, too. Then I finished all the other Java modules they got on there.

My recommendation for you is to read through Head First Java and do it's exercises, then finish the "Learn Java" track and then do the "Beginner Android" and "Intermediate Android" track. Then you can see if you are still missing something and go from there.

I finished the Web Design, Front End Web Development and Full Stack JavaScript tracks, too, because those topics interested me and are wanted by employers.

I think the 25$/month are very well spent on the Treehouse learning material.

Best Regards,
No Habit

Post: #398

(07-18-2016 01:09 AM)No Habit Wrote:  Hi donn,

I learned the basics of Java from the Head First Java book. It is about Java 5, but the features that were added in the later versions are very easy to pick up once you understand the core, which is in my opinion very well taught in the book.

Having that knowledge I finished the "Learn Java" track on Treehouse. It might be a bit redundant but I think it's helpful to see the basics from yet another perspective and it taught me a lot of new things, too. Then I finished all the other Java modules they got on there.

My recommendation for you is to read through Head First Java and do it's exercises, then finish the "Learn Java" track and then do the "Beginner Android" and "Intermediate Android" track. Then you can see if you are still missing something and go from there.

I finished the Web Design, Front End Web Development and Full Stack JavaScript tracks, too, because those topics interested me and are wanted by employers.

I think the 25$/month are very well spent on the Treehouse learning material.

Best Regards,
No Habit

Thanks No Habit,
I'm in the middle of Java Oracle Tutorial, so as soon as I finish I will continue to Treehouse. There is an official Android Tutorial, do you think it's less effective? Sometimes I learn faster by reading than videos.

Post: #399

I can't tell you if the official Android Tutorial is less effective, because I haven't done it. I did have a good experience with the official Python tutorial, though when learning that language, so I think generally the official ones are pretty good, too. What I like about Treehouse is that they give you challenges and quizzes between videos. Sometimes they give you more advanced exercises in a video and then show you how they have solved it in the next video.

I guess that is as much advice as I can give you on this donn.

Best Regards,
No Habit

Post: #400

Someone had a tip on RN. I knew about React for front end.

I was going to study iOS apps soon. I think I will take a stab at RN because I keep learning Node for backend.

Javascript all the way motherfuckers.