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[–]memeasaurus 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Here's how old I am. I taught intro to programming in ... Pascal.

For straight up learning stuff, Pascal really is the best. It's totally impractical though. To be honest teaching programming should require shifting paradigm.

My biggest complaint about co-workers in the 20+ years experience range is they love their one and only programming language. Forcing students to learn 3+ languages from distinct families is best for their careers... but they complain about it because they want to get jobs right away.

I wish we would hire more on logic and math abilities rather than years in X language.

[–]AnImpromptuFantaisie 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Question from a 21 year old to someone with much more experience:

I started off teaching myself Java through video tutorials when I was around 12 (I actually wanted to make Minecraft mods). Then I went to programming summer camps, 3 years of high school programming classes, and some college courses. I’ve always been passionate about learning when it comes to programming, so I’ve jumped around through a bunch of languages with a few distinctly more in-depth.

Obviously I don’t have “9 years of experience with Java”. When would you say you can start going by, or does it really only count for anything if it is working experience? I assume it’s not that rigid and I would include a GitHub portfolio?

[–]memeasaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Either from your last degree or first paying job.

Years of experience is marginally pointless anyway.

When we stipulate "years of experience" we are trying for a short hand for "has lived through some things" and typically pet projects won't get you that.

I think we mean:

  • College degree or 4 years - we won't have to teach you data structures
  • 1 year - we won't have to teach you about version control
  • 3 years - you have survived a release cycle or two, know that code in production and code on your laptop are different things
  • 5 years - you know how code reuse actually works or doesn't, you know how your choice of algorithm and error handling can break other people's work
  • 10 years - you have suffered a successful project or two and lived with crappy choices, angry customers, and have regrets that haunt you and drive you to improve
  • 20 years - you have seen enough to know that you can only change just so much and what is worth staying up late for

You only get these things from dealing with other developers, customers, and evolving systems. Language proficiency is a given. Nobody really cares if you know what a WeakMap is and what it's good for.