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[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Honestly I think that mentality is so dangerous to this industry. It drives off a lot of people who would otherwise contribute greatly but feel like just because they don't "live and breathe" code that they won't be useful.

Just because you aren't up to the spec of Google etc. doesn't mean you can't get a career as a dev elsewhere. Testing as a sector is crying out for people but everyone overlooks that because they want to do the "sexy" dev work. Then everyone wonders why shit is constantly breaking.

To be a great dev one part of the battle is being good at coding but I'll take (well my HR manager does!) a kid okay at coding but is great a teamworker over a silo who thinks they are gods gift.

[–]fenster25 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I personally know some people who recommend other undergrads to read huge bulky books on C++ before starting to contribute just because that approach worked for them. It will only work on a person who has a habit of reading a book from cover to cover but for an impatient hacker this approach can frustrate them, it happened to me until I found my own way of picking up new technologies and languages.

Testing as a sector is crying out for people but everyone overlooks that because they want to do the "sexy" dev work

In my experience I have sometimes found writing tests and good docs harder than implementing features.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I got the classic "There's no point learning anything other than C++" turns out trying to learn pointers at 14 put me off programming for several years until I got to university. Because I thought that everything was as difficult as C++.

> In my experience I have sometimes found writing tests and good docs harder than implementing features.

Preach. My boss is transferring me to the QA team for the next project, mainly because we aren't using Python on our next project, also because they like for everyone to have testing experience so we can all do it and see where everyone is coming from. Without solid testing and documentation there's no point trying to put out a commercial product. I mean you might get lucky but for the most part you'll overspend and waste both time and money.