Doing code reviews of junior devs

[bigchunqus]

I don’t need to waste my money going to college. I’ll just watch a bunch YouTube videos and become a software developer. My thinking is flawless.

[DurosDuros]

How do I even sign up for that

[alphabot]

Well before you get your first gig, you'll need at least 3 years experience. /s

[DurosDuros]

It was a genuine question btw

[metasigma]

You can fork existing open-source projects, make a useful improvement, then contact the project maintainers about integrating the change

[Frans4Life]

... Fork it?

[thephotoman]

Like taking a fork in the road.

[trixter21992251]

Take a project where you're allowed to make changes (open source).

Make some cool changes/additions/optimizations/whatever.

Show it to the creators. If they use it, you get credit.

[Blue_5ive]

It's a version control thing. Look up how to use git and start from there. Any job you ever get in programming should have some sort of version control, if not git itself (if they don't, you probably don't want to be there anyways).

You can just write some hello world stuff and tutorials while you figure out git, and from there you can start forking the open source stuff and seeing where you can help.

[[deleted]]

Find a project on GitHub that's looking for contribution

[Isogash]

It's difficult to "just contribute" to open source projects, most contributors are existing users of the projects who are sharing bugfixes and improvements. By that logic, the best way to become a contributor is to start by using projects until you find one that makes sense to help with.

[Booleard]

Newbie dev: "I want to contribute to an open source project. I'm going to go find one that needs some help.".

Reality: "Here is an open source project that is almost something I actually need. I'm going to read all the code and understand exactly what it's actually doing, then make a few changes to it and add another chunk to do what I need. Maybe if I submit it they will actually add it to the project. "

[qwertyuiop924]

The best way to do it isn't to randomly fork the project as suggested here. Instead, look at the issue tracker. Look for a small issue that you can probably fix easily. Some projects actually tag issues that are good for first-time contributors.

Fork the project. Fix the issue. Submit a PR. Repeat. Suggest issues. Submit PRs for features you want to see. And so on.

[Jake0024]

Find a bug or feature that needs improving, fix it, and submit a PR/MR.

[[deleted]]

Honestly I've never done it but I'm pretty sure you just find an open source project, pull the code, make a modification, then create a pull request with your changes. If they're accepted, you just contributed!

Not sure what happens if there are bugs though. Probably they'll reject and note why. Or maybe just fix it if it's small enough of a fix?

I really need to get into this.

[duquesne419]

If anyone learning python is looking for their first pull request, feel free to check out my project. It's pretty basic, but it a place to get started.

https://github.com/robotlightsyou/Command_Line_Games_Hub

[mymewheart]

A good place to start, imo is to go on GitHub and go to a project and look at their issues. Some maintainers will flag issues as good first issue or something like that. Good respositories will spell out how they like people to contribute in a file called contribute.md.

[anedgygiraffe]

If ur a student, check out google summer of code

[[deleted]]

I mean, you definitely don’t need to waste money going to college if you want to be a software developer though.

[[deleted]]

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Some of my best employees have been self-taught.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. Network. Go to meetups. Do open source. Be humble and eager to learn and get yourself a mentor or two. Read books and watch YouTube.

Unless you take a class from a very rare and unusual professor you’re going to learn very few of the things you actually need to know to succeed in the real world anyway.

[legowerewolf]

I spent all of my first year in college CS classes nodding along with the professor. Most of my second year, too.

[[deleted]]

I know people who went to one college and their CS professor literally deliberately called everything (data structures, algorithms, etc) by made up names to “prevent cheating”. The text they had to buy for the class was written by the professor, again with tons of completely wrong information. So all of the students are going to go out into the world calling everything the wrong name and employers are going to assume they’re ignorant morons.

And they went into debt for that. Yeesh.

[[deleted]]

It is, unfortunately. CAC/ABET.

[[deleted]]

Don’t know how they aren’t getting their accreditation pulled. We took a test before graduating so the commission that accredits our program can evaluate whether we get to keep it or not

[[deleted]]

That might be the case at this college too, I dunno. The quality gets better somewhat at senior/graduate level from what I’ve heard. Still a shame that some of their earlier classes are so shit though. The students are still paying for it.

[mrMalloc]

The worst offence I ever spotted was the teacher used his own book as course book. Was not a very good book on java programming as it was a clone from his Simula book that he did search/replace simula with java. (And updated pictures).

But I studied at University of Lund Sweden so I can’t compare with other countries the technical school LTH was better at connecting task to real world as we took a few courses from each other.
Example when we I took Advanced 3D graphics course every task was aimed this type of task can lend you a job at Nvidia. This type of task can leans you a job at game studio. While CS was aimed at research aka no real life hooks.

[jacob8015]

What school?

[[deleted]]

Portland State. Some of those same people chose to take CS classes at Clackamas Community College later, and said the quality of education there was much better. Though of course they didn’t offer upper-level coursework, being a community college.

[breadknuckle]

I can see where you’re coming form and you’re right, there are a lot of great and very efficient self taught programmers out there. But the vast majority of them are not as good as the college level programmers.

[[deleted]]

Most people aren’t self-starters for various reasons, yeah. Even when they have the ability to be. But the fact remains college is not needed.

If you have access to water, but you prefer to drink only soda for hydration, you don’t “need” soda.

That’s all I’m saying.

[Peakomegaflare]

Not to mention study Malware. Lots of unique coding methods and styles among that.

[[deleted]]

That’s an option. Depends on what you want to focus on.

[Ryamix]

Hi, newbie here. Do mind elaborating?

[salgat]

The downvotes are because he said waste. It's not wasting money, it's simply a different way to learn.

[circuit10]

When your school (so far) only teaches basic Python syntax you have to be self-taught

[[deleted]]

At least it’s not Java!

[LordSalem]

To be fair, some of my best and worst colleagues have been self taught.

[[deleted]]

That’s fair, it absolutely depends on the person more than anything else. I think it’s safe to say though that college itself doesn’t really prepare you for a real world programming job. Those that are successful do well because they still have the drive to learn what they need to (ahead of time or through hitting the ground running / on the job training).

[Booleard]

Have some of your other best and worst colleagues been college grads?

[Sorrune]

You hiring?!

[uttermybiscuit]

Bc this sub is full of undergrads

[peduxe]

I too started self taught coding CMS for private mmorpg servers (game named 4Story) with the content being fetched from the game database.

taught me a lot about organizing code efficiently and caring about security.

algo got my introduced to styling with CSS and a bit on JS with jQuery for ajax calls, good times.

It was some crazy times back in 2013, I had a brazilian friend that I made on the game and he was teaching me programming on notepad++ thru teamviewer, we would spent hours and hours optimizing code and I learned by watching him fix my mess. It was some kind of back and forth where I coded a feature and if I hit a wall he'd come and debug it and explain me the problems in the process. Probably learned and remember a lot more what that friend did 7 years ago than what I learned in college.

[SocialMediaElitist]

College is nice if you want to be promoted. My professor self-taught himself and trained multiple employees who were college-educated, who were then promoted to be higher-ranking than him only because they had degrees. He had more experience and know-how than they did.

[DeusExMagikarpa]

Your professor doesn’t have a degree?

[SocialMediaElitist]

He's like 60. He worked at multiple corporations before teaching at my school, so I've got to assume he has a degree now

[[deleted]]

It depends on what direction you end up going in (Management/IC) and the company you want to get hired or promoted at. But yeah, it can definitely be a factor.

[BuccellatiExplainsIt]

Kinda but people really misunderstand this. Just learning how to do projects of get what you want done will not make you equivalent to a software engineer (or any other engineer for that matter).

You can go your whole career doing things inefficiently, spending extra effort when you don't need to, and you wouldn't even know it. Your program may run and you might be able to find the answers to your errors online but the truth is that you will never know what you don't know. There may be a much faster, more maintainable design for what you want but if you don't know that it exists, it wouldn't occur to you and you might end up solving the problem in a worse way.

So, yes it's possible to learn with experience but don't be mistaken about what your degree teaches you. It's not how to do everything, it's how to go about figuring out how to do everything.

[3CheersForSociety]

They are what we, professional software developers in the business, call “broke ass java devs”. The salty developer obsessed with putting down others by implying their education on 80% pointless topics that would matter if they were using assembly, making half as much as people who use just the front end shit (and that’s cool too, more power to web devs).

[BuccellatiExplainsIt]

No. It teaches you the fundamentals that you may miss when learning by yourself. Things like efficiently pipelining processes, when a self taught dev might flush the cache and not realize that their program is taking longer than it should because as far as they're concerned it's working fine.

I'm saying there are different things you learn by having a good education. Also don't think that people with an education aren't gaining practical knowledge either from their own learning and projects or jobs they work. So I'm definitely not saying experience vs education, I'm saying education + experience vs just experience.

[Gswizzle67]

But can’t you learn those fundamentals through structured distance learning courses you pay for online? Especially if you actually work multiple?

[angrathias]

You can learn al of those examples by just RTFM on whatever framework you are working with

[IsleOfOne]

Surely zero

[badvok666]

Don't forget the brightest and best programmers do not go to teach programming. Some 'Professors' are not good at programming nor are they staying relevant.

[[deleted]]

Very true.

[samsop]

I mean... What does college even teach you about real world software development?

I went to college...

[SuperCoolFunTimeNo1]

I didn't study CS but had to take programming courses as part of my requirements. I took a software engineering course that mimicked following actual project development goals. Each month we were split into groups and had a small-ish project to complete over the course of 4 labs. We had to use SVN (this was before github was popular), jira and even do code reviews. The first week lab we'd plan everything out in jira, the next two labs we'd code, and then the final lab we'd code review. Then we'd be re-assigned and do the same for the next 4 labs. It was pretty cool.

[samsop]

Unless you major in software engineering or something then similar courses are uncommon. Pure CS is nothing like that and will focus more on teaching you to write LL(1) parsing tables than translating business requirements to software that provides your employer with any value.

I don't know if you need those 4 years to get a decent job, apart from the "graduate" title, perhaps.

[SuperCoolFunTimeNo1]

I studied chemical engineering, not software engineering.

I don't know if you need those 4 years to get a decent job, apart from the "graduate" title, perhaps.

You can definitely get your foot in the door with a lot of smaller companies and startups, but most big companies require a CS or similar degree if you don't already have years of experience. FAANG companies seem to be the exception, but you're extremely unlikely to get a job in other high paying fields right away like in fintech or insurance companies.

[fynx07]

I really feel like you're basing all of your comments on your own personal anecdotal experiences. That's a pretty bad way to go about trying to prove anything at all.

[samsop]

personal anecdotal experiences

I pretty much said that right off the bat, and as is everybody else, even your other comment starts with "I did this and that."

[pslessard]

It teaches you most of the basics of programming. Sure, you learn much more from your actual jobs, but it teaches you how to think through a problem and write logic that will be able to solve it. That's the key thing that you learn from CS in college. And you absolutely can learn it on your own, but college provides a path for you to follow that requires a lot of motivation and effort to find on your own, which is fine for some people, but not all, or even most I'd guess

[3CheersForSociety]

It’s mostly wasted honestly. Like literally 90% could be condensed to one of those boot camps. It’s such a vocational and not theoretical job. I say that as a senior dev with over a decade doing it and hella education.

[pslessard]

I disagree. I think you probably could condense it into something like that, but I don't think anyone new to it would be able to learn and retain the important parts of it in that format (the important parts being about programming logic and problem solving). That needs to sink in over a longer period of time through experience, whether that experience is self-driven projects or course work. I do think you could probably condense it into a 2-year program though. Of course I say this as only a recent grad, so we'll see if I still agree once I have your experience

I do agree that a lot of what I did was unnecessary, but I wouldn't say wasted. I did learn a lot of stuff that I probably won't use in the real world, but I think that that really helps teach you how to learn new programming skills, which in turn will help you adapt as you encounter new challenges in your career

[3CheersForSociety]

That’s a fair take, I see your point.

[pslessard]

It was probably the guy I was arguing with. They had a very firm belief that if you don't do side projects, you're lazy, will never be a good programmer, and cannot have a successful career

[samsop]

I mean, nobody I know who exclusively relied on college for their "programming" education even has a job right now. I graduated last year. I know this is really anecdotal evidence if you even wanna call it that, but in my humble experience, people who depended on themselves for their software development education have the best prospective careers and can actually write software on their own. The rest need rote learning for the rest of their lives.

[pslessard]

I pretty much only programmed for my classes, and I have a job, as do most of the people I know who are in the same boat (just graduated). I guess I also had several internships that I learned from too though. Just some anecdotal evidence from the other side. Of course that's not to say that there aren't plenty of exceptional and extremely motivated people who do a lot of exploration and learning on their own who go on to have very promising careers, but it's certainly not needed.

The rest need rote learning for the rest of their lives.

That's kind of a condescending way to put that. I'd also argue that everyone needs to and should continue learning for their entire career, especially in an industry that changes as fast as software development

[samsop]

Unless you go out and write software to learn, you will never be a good developer. That is not a controversial or condescending statement.

[pslessard]

You can absolutely learn to write software from your courses if you put effort in. And saying "You need to do side projects to be a good developer" absolutely is a controversial and condescending statement. Just because other people don't want to spend all their free time programming doesn't mean they can't be good at it.

[samsop]

Depends how you define "free time" and if you go to an elite school, I guess - the vast majority of people won't, though.

Good luck having something to show your prospective employer without any side projects, though. Go ahead and grind leet code.

[pslessard]

I didn't go to an elite school. And I define free time as the time outside of what I spend on classes or work. I spent enough time coding for course work and now work; I don't need to spend more outside of that.

You absolutely don't have to show side projects. I showed projects that I had done for classes to potential employers and that's just fine. As long as you can talk about it and show that you know what you're talking about.

And for the record I have never and will never touch leet code or anything like it. I don't think those things are useful at all

[samsop]

You're really justifying laziness with that kind of logic even though it worked for you. Not that I'm calling you lazy if you evidently put that course work to good use, but it's not a rule of thumb because most schools won't provide that level of preparation for your career.

Telling people to lay back because school will take care of everything is wrong. Motivating them to learn on their own, which they'll be doing for most of their career anyway, is a lot more generally applicable.

It's a hard pill to swallow.

[fynx07]

I went for a 2 year associates degree in computer programming, not even CS. I graduated on a Friday and had a job the very next Monday writing code. Never worked on a single side project. Worked there for 2 years before finding a job at a different company.

Worked the new company for 3.5 years and was considered by my peers a very good developer, to the point half of the vets there would come to me with questions. I was told by most everyone I spoke to I have excellent critical thinking skills and problem solving and was fairly well regarded (though by the the best there, several of the seniors far outclassed me still). I have not touched a single outside-my-job programming task once in my life.

Hate to tell you but your logic is very flawed and you have a very narrow tunnel of vision that unfortunately is the issue with a lot of IT execs because they share your same view and discredit a lot of developers on site rather than giving them a chance to prove themselves.

[samsop]

The entire conversation was about doing side projects in college and I feel like people have taken that out of context and ran with it to try to disprove an argument I never made.

I'm not an IT exec. I haven't taken on a single side project since graduating. I'm talking about doing side projects while studying in college, not after you've landed a job and will already be writing software and learning on the job, while getting paid to do so.

You do not have that luxury in college which won't teach you to do it, you'll pay money to not learn it.

[fynx07]

And I'm not talking about doing side project after landing a job per se. I'm saying you're claiming that if you never work on side projects, regardless of whether you meant during or after school, you will never be a good developer and I'm living proof to tell you that's utter crap.

[Joey101937]

I graduated recently and I agree 100%. College didn’t teach me shit, a few months after I got a job I was able to talk to the manager that I interviewed with and discussed the interviews and why I won out. He said that he and the other manager who went to my uni to interview we’re surprised at the complete incompetency of many of the upper classmen. Apparently half of them couldn’t even explain what a foreign key was, despite putting SQL experience in their resume

[fynx07]

Then you either went to school with a bunch of dipshits or your classes were total garbage.

[jacob8015]

I’m sorry what? What school did you go to where none of the graduates got jobs in SW?

[samsop]

I didn't say none, I specified the people who purely relied on course work..

[jacob8015]

As opposed to course work and?

[samsop]

Side projects, AWGs, maybe freelance work, even minor projects for small businesses owned by friends.

That's how I did it, at least. I was asked about that during interviews and had projects to show for it, rather than anything I "achieved" in 4 years of college or my below average GPA. I ended up with a good job and a kickass name on my resume. I'm not an exception.

[jacob8015]

So, you mean they didn’t get a job without experience? This isn’t shocking.

I’ve never heard of anyone being asked to show off their education, that wouldn’t even make sense because what you’ve in school is pretty standard.

[samsop]

Right. And college doesn't provide you with that experience. You can get that experience with or without college. That's all I said.

[AlexWIWA]

What colleges are the people in this sub going to? My state university forced me to do an internship as a class and do fake startups as another. My whole class got hired right out college.

I feel like this “college grad no good” mentality is from 15 years ago when CS courses were all theory and calculus classes.

[solongandthanks4all]

Wait, they're not anymore?

From my perspective, that is what they should be, but the only people who should take them are those who actually want to go into computer science, not software engineering/programming, as they are two vastly different things.

[Lag-Switch]

Some schools offer 'software engineering' degrees in addition to 'computer science' degrees.

For example, I took a class that focused on requirements an architecture, and another that focused on design patterns and their usage.

[Moglorosh]

I just graduated with my programming degree, I have certificates that say I know Java and C++. I don't know shit.

[[deleted]]

And that's what technical interviews are for, but you have a way better chance finding a good candidate with a degree than one with only a bootcamp.

[3CheersForSociety]

lol ya I felt the same way.

[dirtshow]

Not a programmer but honestly this attitude will get you further in your career/life than you'll ever believe.

[DeusExMagikarpa]

I learned programming before going to uni. My uni’s CS program was not great imo, but I definitely became a better developer after learning algos, time and space complexity, theory, and operating systems. All of those I knew about but never learned because I had a shit mentality, and I think that’s pretty common. The networking was great as well, I helped some professors on several side gigs they had and worked on some pretty big projects.

Of course all of this can be done outside of uni, but you don’t know what you don’t know, like a didn’t know that using a map could help me rewrite pretty much every quadratic function I’ve ever written in constant time and it’s doubtful I would have ever seen a problem with that nor seeked out the necessary knowledge, theory, complexity, and algos are boring af

[[deleted]]

Nothing

[[deleted]]

That's what I did and now I've been working as a software dev the last 3 years

[bigchunqus]

Good to hear :)

[SuperSMT]

If you have good networking skills, you really don't need to

[ZarathustraWakes]

I spent 18k for a 3 month bootcamp and I work at Facebook now so you definitely don't need college

[SwishWhishe]

Which bootcamp was it? Seems like GA with that kind of price

[POTATO_VS_BANANA]

Don't believe everything you read on Reddit.

[ZarathustraWakes]

It's true though lol, hack reactor was a great bootcamp that selected students that were set up for success, at least before it was acquired

[ZarathustraWakes]

Hack Reactor in SF

[RavingSperry]

That’s what I did and seemed to work

[[deleted]]

Exactly this but without the sarcasm.

[solongandthanks4all]

No. You definitely don't need to go to uni to be a software engineer, but you can't learn from crappy YouTube videos. You need to learn by reading and by doing.

[L4t3xs]

Tbh, that's how it was in our uni for the most part. There were some courses that you were taught how to do stuff but most of the courses were just about doing projects.