Post: #1

Hey y'all, I had a brief question about all you software engineers / people working in tech. Can't thank frenchcorporation's /thread-26260.html thread enough.

My background is as follows:

I'm a polisci major(Junior in college) who's interested in web development - Mostly I'm trying to get a software engineering internship for next summer. Right now my skillset is quite limited, I only took one CS class in college and struggled but have started learning Ruby on Rails on my own and although I'm still fairly new at it right now, I've been working consistently and could see myself deploying simple web apps in a month or two.

I have two specific questions:

1. When is the general deadline for summer software-engineer internships? Ones from major companies have already closed(December 1st) but a lot of them have deadlines till April. My concern is that my skillset won't be developed enough / won't have any personal side projects on my resume UNTIL April and that's when I plan on applying(Late March - Early April).

2. As a safety plan I applied and got accepted into a coding bootcamp. If you're not familiar with what that is, it's a new business that's popping up everywhere in SF, NYC that teaches you to code in a matter of 8 to 12 weeks. The one I got accepted to has a hefty price tag, $13k for one summer. I've looked at the curriculum and researched some info behind the bootcamp on Quora, how they give job support and how their alumni is doing and it doesn't look bad. But I'd much rather teach myself RoR and get proficient at it enough until April and land something on my own for summer.

Overall I feel pretty backed up, and being from a non-CS background trying to catch up on all the technical knowledge that a typical CS major would have seems like a lot to overcome by myself; but I'm willing to put in the work and see where it takes me. Any thoughts and feedback would be much, much appreciated.

Post: #2

a.) your obviously more interest in web dev than polisci. change your major to computer science, you may have to suck up an extra year in school, but it will be worth it.

b.)I would jump at 1.3k for a summer code camp. you may be right that your coding skills aren't up to par yet, but let them figure that out, im assuming they have some of entrace requirement

edit - just realize your already accepted into the bootcamp. go for it. yes you can teach yourself any programming language, but having access to competent and experience programmers will accelerate your progress

my original point still stands. your more interested in comp sci then poli sci. change your major.

Post: #3

Hey AntiTrace, thanks for the prompt response -

EDITED : I totally typed the wrong price for the bootcamp. It's $13,000, not $1300. Plus living expenses in NYC would drive it up about 2~3k more.

I've entertained the thought of changing my major to CompSci, but I'm entering my second semester of my junior year and have taken ONE CLASS in the Compsci department. Coursework-wise it's simply too late especially considering I have no math classes done or pre-requisites from high school(AP's, etc).

I don't think I can afford another year of college as it is anyways, tuition for a year of education at a private college is $45k + and goes up every year... So right now I'm just interested in getting my degree and getting out.

Post: #4

so goto a community college that offers a cs degree. higher education is a racket anyways, and you prove it by saying you could learn everything yourself.

face it bro. you entered college getting a degree in something you THOUGHT you were interested in. You now realize your interested in something else, and luckily that something else pays MUCH more than a poli sci degree.

Charge it to the game, make some life changes, change your degree, and do what your passionate about. Plus, community college sluts are easy.

edit - I changed my degree 3 years into a business degree. went to CS. never regretted it.

Post: #5

Are you planning on going to Flatiron, per chance?

Coding bootcamps are a great investment (many times better ROI than college) if they have strong job placement stats.

My only hangup is that the industry is starting to turn away from Rails. Javascript is where I think it's headed.

Post: #6

(12-13-2014 02:06 AM)gaffer Wrote:  My only hangup is that the industry is starting to turn away from Rails. Javascript is where I think it's headed.

Why do you think this is?

Post: #7

(12-13-2014 02:17 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 02:06 AM)gaffer Wrote:  My only hangup is that the industry is starting to turn away from Rails. Javascript is where I think it's headed.

Why do you think this is?

http://readwrite.com/2013/08/09/why-java...enterprise

Post: #8

@gaffer, I've gotten into Dev Bootcamp but I'm applying to hack reactor and will choose there if i get in(I'm aware of the whole javascript direction of the industry...)

Post: #9

In a few years, the language of choice will change again. You have to constantly update your skills if you want to stay relevant.

Post: #10

I know that smart people say that investing in your education is best posible investment but this is too much for something you can learn for free or at very low cost, good books are bellow 50 $.If you lack motivation I doubt that camp will help.

Post: #11

Bootcamps are the new trade schools. I'd advise not to go to a bootcamp unless you want to be a code monkey for the rest of your life. Sure bootcamps put you in touch with employers (mostly startups that will fail in the upcoming months or years let's face it) but you can learn programming on your own for $0. Even getting a CS degree seems more wortwhile as it opens a lot more doors (ie software engineering, IT, management consulting, project management, and so on).

Post: #12

I've got a BA in bullshitting (journalism) and realized the industry was getting commoditized not long after graduating in the early 1990s. Years later, like you I looked for alternatives since the Internet boom was heating up. I began self-studying for a now-defunct cert (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) until I started seeing ads for boot camps teaching the MCSE popping up at bus stops.

Not long thereafter the dotcom bubble burst and I was instantly gun shy about IT, generally. Fast forward after yet another pointless and commoditized degree (law - but don't get me started on that), and I realized there's still plenty of demand in the IT sector, particularly coding skills. I'm now PMP certified (self taught, no boot camp) and have been working in the field for the past few years. I've started teaching myself Javascript via codecademy but only to better understand the projects involving that language - not sure I will ever be a highly competent coder but the source of the knowledge is free so why not learn?

I'm a lot less gun shy about coding boot camps than I ever was about the old MCSE camps since coding is in demand and importantly, it's difficult. Therefore I see less likelihood that *good* coders will be commoditized. Does that mean a $13k boot camp makes sense? Hard to say as I don't know your financial situation, but time is definitely on your side. You may therefore have the time to learn on the cheap from good sources versus plunking down a serious chunk of change you may not have. My only formal computer class was an intro course I took way too late in my college career, like you. In retrospect a second bachelor's degree would have made way more sense than that useless JD but it's water under the bridge now. I agree with others that community college options are also well worth investigating.

Just be glad you discovered your strengths early on and of course, stay current & never be comfortable!

Post: #13

Been in IT for 17 years now. I majored in Biochemistry. I am a completely self taught programmer.

A word of encouragement - NONE of the best guys I have worked with have majored in IT/compscience. The best guy I ever worked with majored in English.

My company is recruiting now and the #1 thing they look for on a CV is experience. We need people who already know C#/SQL/Sybase whatever and preferably have a track record in it. So find that experience somewhere.

A possible career ladder into the industry is help desk worker > application support > developer > team leader > project manager.

Post: #14

In my experience the only employer who seriously requires a CS degree, eventually, is the government. After so many promotions it's almost written into the law that they can't possibly have someone with too much reaponsibility who does not have the requisite degree. But if at all possible, fuck working for the government.

Post: #15

(12-14-2014 01:42 PM)TheSearcher Wrote:  In a few years, the language of choice will change again. You have to constantly update your skills if you want to stay relevant.

That's true whether you get a degree or go to code camp.

Most IT/CS guys I know have to develop a skill set on top of whatever they do at work to remain competitive.

As to OP,

Coding bootcamps are the new gold rush. If you get in early, like right now, and get a job with some start up, you can parlay that into more money, more training, more certs, and an a degree in CS if that's what you want.

The advantage that the bootcamp has over learning it yourself is that a good bootcamp places its graduates..for now.

As boot camps get more popular, the startups and companies are going to be more and more discriminating.

Either way you're going to be on the employee treadmill.

WIA

Post: #16

(12-13-2014 04:43 AM)one-two Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 02:17 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(12-13-2014 02:06 AM)gaffer Wrote:  My only hangup is that the industry is starting to turn away from Rails. Javascript is where I think it's headed.

Why do you think this is?

http://readwrite.com/2013/08/09/why-java...enterprise

JavaScript as is definitely not going to be the dominant programming language of the enterprise. But a future version of JavaScript that makes it much more enterprisy could be the future. Then again, it's unlikely that one language will complete dominant the landscape, since this has never occurred before and the trend is a proliferation of languages.

Post: #17

(12-04-2014 09:57 PM)swishhboy25 Wrote:  Hey y'all, I had a brief question about all you software engineers / people working in tech. Can't thank frenchcorporation's /thread-26260.html thread enough.

My background is as follows:

I'm a polisci major(Junior in college) who's interested in web development - Mostly I'm trying to get a software engineering internship for next summer. Right now my skillset is quite limited, I only took one CS class in college and struggled but have started learning Ruby on Rails on my own and although I'm still fairly new at it right now, I've been working consistently and could see myself deploying simple web apps in a month or two.

I have two specific questions:

1. When is the general deadline for summer software-engineer internships? Ones from major companies have already closed(December 1st) but a lot of them have deadlines till April. My concern is that my skillset won't be developed enough / won't have any personal side projects on my resume UNTIL April and that's when I plan on applying(Late March - Early April).

2. As a safety plan I applied and got accepted into a coding bootcamp. If you're not familiar with what that is, it's a new business that's popping up everywhere in SF, NYC that teaches you to code in a matter of 8 to 12 weeks. The one I got accepted to has a hefty price tag, $13k for one summer. I've looked at the curriculum and researched some info behind the bootcamp on Quora, how they give job support and how their alumni is doing and it doesn't look bad. But I'd much rather teach myself RoR and get proficient at it enough until April and land something on my own for summer.

Overall I feel pretty backed up, and being from a non-CS background trying to catch up on all the technical knowledge that a typical CS major would have seems like a lot to overcome by myself; but I'm willing to put in the work and see where it takes me. Any thoughts and feedback would be much, much appreciated.

To be completely straight with you you have a major life event coming up in less than 2 years - graduation. You have only 1.5 years if you want to participate in on campus recruiting - because you will have most of your interviews for your post graduation job between dec and march.

Most US CS graduates are simply not great coders and need a few years on the job to be able to begin to be productive. (Stanford, CMU, MIT, Cornell are usually capable of coding but not following any maintainable practices) (In the rest of world CS graduates are typically much better coders). The main reason that these graduates get hired is because of their degree. You will be competing against the people in CS masters programs - they are typically almost at the same level as CS undergrads - 90% of CS masters students are people that failed to make it in india or china, or just want a green card, or want a doctorate. Luckily you are not competing against those that want a doctorate.

If you want a job in your new field at graduation that pays decently you need either a CS degree or you need to be able to really get shit done with good coding skills. You will need to focus on the second. 1.5 years is not a lot of time to become a good coder. The top 20% of programmers that graduate from school need 6 to 7 years to become productive. The top 10% can do it in 4 years. The top 2% can do it in 2 or 3 years.

You need to do a few things:
1) learn how to talk the talk and sound better then you are (this a core skill for everyone in life lol, but few coders master it)
2) have some online demos that sound cool - the tech behind them will be less interesting than how compelling then the idea -they can be shallow demos that no one would ever use in real life - the point is to show your ambition, and to demonstrate that you are self motivated and that you are intellectually curious, you don't need to show that you can deliver end to end on a project. do not focus on performance or optimization, and focus on completing the tip of the iceberg - that part that people can see.
3) study practical algorithms and data structures so you can blow people away in interviews)
4) learn languages at different ends of the spectrum (you only need to be able to really get shit done in one language, the other languages are for perspective, you need to be able to bullshit convincingly about the other. bullshitting convincingly means you should have the entry level book about a language practically memorized (e.g. dive into python). Make JavaScript your core language so you can make cool demos. With node.js you can do front end and back end. You want some knowledge of a language that will teach you how computers actually work, the only contemporary languages that fit that bill are C and C++, so you will want C since it 100 times easier to learn and use. Then pick a language for cool points. Erlang, Scala and Go fit that bill. Go is probably the least cool of the languages. Scala is a bit too hard. Erlang is probably the coolest and is easier than scala. Python and Ruby would also be in this category, they are more useful than those other languages at the moment, but not nearly as cool.
5) make sure you come across as high energy, curious, extremely positive, respectful and not cocky in your interviews
6) get ready to spend a lot of time reading and coding, you are entering your larval stage and someday you may become a butterfly
7) be extremely focused in what you read and code, you need to have proficiency, you don't need breadth or depth yet, stay away from any time wasting websites.... it is very easy to convince yourself that you are being productive by staying up on tech news and news.ycombinator, but no one expects you to know that stuff yet, and it is an endless distraction

Post: #18

(12-14-2014 05:50 PM)TopPanda Wrote:  Been in IT for 17 years now. I majored in Biochemistry. I am a completely self taught programmer.

A word of encouragement - NONE of the best guys I have worked with have majored in IT/compscience. The best guy I ever worked with majored in English.

My company is recruiting now and the #1 thing they look for on a CV is experience. We need people who already know C#/SQL/Sybase whatever and preferably have a track record in it. So find that experience somewhere.

A possible career ladder into the industry is help desk worker > application support > developer > team leader > project manager.

This career ladder is possible, but you want to do everything in your power to skip directly into a developer role. in a help desk/support/testing role you will learn very little that is applicable to being a developer. not only that but, however unfairly, in the minds of many tech leads this will mark you in a negative way

Post: #19

(12-14-2014 06:45 PM)bigbait Wrote:  [quote='TopPanda' pid='905431' dateline='1418597446']
Been in IT for 17 years now. I majored in Biochemistry. I am a completely self taught programmer.

A word of encouragement - NONE of the best guys I have worked with have majored in IT/compscience. The best guy I ever worked with majored in English.

this is often true, but the reasons for this is not obvious.

1) the first reason is that there is a survivorship bias at work in this phenomenon. all of the guys who didn't get degrees and weren't in the top 10% are gone. everyone else is buoyed up by their tech degree.

2) the second reason is that the "best" people are often come from generations where CS degrees were not nearly as popular

Post: #20

(12-14-2014 06:08 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

(12-14-2014 01:42 PM)TheSearcher Wrote:  In a few years, the language of choice will change again. You have to constantly update your skills if you want to stay relevant.

That's true whether you get a degree or go to code camp.

Most IT/CS guys I know have to develop a skill set on top of whatever they do at work to remain competitive.

This is true. However it is a little more complicated than that. There is a real drop off in people's ability to learn new languages and new technologies. The top 25% of programmers can learn enough about a new technology or language in a weekend to be productive and seem knowledgeable. The middle 50% will take months. The bottom 25% take years or never learn.

(12-14-2014 06:08 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  Either way you're going to be on the employee treadmill.

WIA

This is true also, BUT the great thing about learning to code is that is a skill that also provides a path to build your own business or to freelance. I don't mean to say it is easy per say, but it is a hell of a lot easier than many other corporate jobs.

Post: #21

(12-04-2014 09:57 PM)swishhboy25 Wrote:  1. When is the general deadline for summer software-engineer internships? Ones from major companies have already closed(December 1st) but a lot of them have deadlines till April. My concern is that my skillset won't be developed enough / won't have any personal side projects on my resume UNTIL April and that's when I plan on applying(Late March - Early April).

What you wrote is quite accurate. Most are closing in december, but there will be a bunch open until april. The thing to remember is that unless you are going to a top CS school no one expects you to know much or to actually be productive. They interviewing EE and ME students as well and those kids do not know how to code either. These interviewers are looking for potential and fit. Yes, you are not going to get an internship with apple, google, MS or amazon but you can probably still get a good internship. There are 2 ingredients to getting this internship by april 1) mock interviewing so you can ace an interview even when you barely know anything and 2) a cover letter for your resume that gets you in the door of the interview (this cover letter has to tell a great story as to why you love tech and programming and the particular company)

Post: #22

I'm telling you this from experience. All the best programmers are self taught. Save your money and buy a book. Read through it 10 times. The first time you read it it will be completely alien to you but if you're serious and committed to learning it will sink in and start to make sense. There's also tons of YouTube videos to get you started. Figure which software you need to get started then download it from your favorite t-site Good luck.

Post: #23

(12-14-2014 01:42 PM)TheSearcher Wrote:  In a few years, the language of choice will change again. You have to constantly update your skills if you want to stay relevant.

This is true if by constantly you mean every three to five years. At least in terms of the core languages you use. That said as a coder you should be finding a way to spend 1-2 days a week learning new techniques, libraries, frameworks, approaches, etc.

Post: #24

(12-14-2014 07:42 PM)Parlay44 Wrote:  I'm telling you this from experience. All the best programmers are self taught.

It is true that many great programmers are self taught, but it also true that the majority of the worst programmers are self taught. Most self-taught programmers are not employed as programmers because they are not good enough.

It is also true that any great programmer in the sense that they have only learned .01% of what they know from any schooling, bootcamp or university.

(12-14-2014 07:42 PM)Parlay44 Wrote:  Save your money and buy a book. Read through it 10 times.

No one becomes a great programmer without reading countless books, blog posts, journal articles and code written by other people.

Post: #25

this thread is getting confusing.
to break it down:

these are the graduation options:
1) quit school now
2) switch to comp sci major
3) add a comp sci minor
4) don't change majors and just learn comp sci outside of school

these are the summer options:
1) get an internship through campus recruiting
2) attend a bootcamp
3) get his own intership
4) spend the summer in a larval stage

larval stage /n./

Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour hacking run in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also wannabee. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language.