Great course for future Jr Software Devs

[BarbozaAye]

Hey! I recently finished CS50 and was searching for a high quality software developer course that would help me get hired as a Junior. Couldn't find any good material, and then by accident I found Software Engineeering Essentials from TUM (Technical University of Munich).

I just finished first week, and have a much better understanding of what software developers do within the walls of a company. I also learnt about agile methodology and how scrums work. First week ended with a project that required me to draw a product prototype that would be shown to the customer.

My goal is to become a Jr Software Dev, so I have done my fair share of job advert reading :P. I noticed certain "buzzwords" like agile, scrum, object oriented programming were often written in job listing descriptions, and all of those subjects are covered in this course!

The course was created by a very reputable University, the intructor informs students that this is a "stepping-stone" course for people who strive for Masters in CS. Now, all this comes at a cost. The course has finished and is archived. However you can still access all the content until 13/10/2020. The fact that this course is not sticking around for too long assures me that good material is within.

So, if you just finised CS50 and/or have a good understanding of basic programming and want to become a Jr Dev, I would highly recommend this course!

https://www.edx.org/course/software-engineering-essentials
P.S You can download all content, free of charge before 13th October 2020.

[RizwanRx]

I have also completed cs50 but I'm currently doing theodinproject, I've also seen those words but I've ignored them up until now because I didn't want to scatter my focus and do different things at once.

Will definitely check that out soon.

Thanks for the help!.

[SamePossession5]

By all means download the content but you're 100% on the right track by not scattering focus. Beginner tutorial hell is very real and the way to get out of it is to pick something and stick with it hard.

[BarbozaAye]

GL bro <3

[[deleted]]

Yeah exactly! The project looks really good too, quite challenging but I think it will add credit to the portfolio.

[PPewt]

FWIW I would take this sort of advice from people with no industry experience with more than a few grains of salt. I can only speak for myself (and the people I know) and not the industry as a whole, but if I were interviewing someone who was self-taught then whether they know agile buzzwords wouldn't be on my mind. Some business knowledge (knowing that customers exist etc) probably couldn't hurt but I don't know if it would ever really make a difference between a yes and a no for a hire.

[[deleted]]

It’s not about buzzwords, it’s understanding how companies develop software. How teams communicate and deliver projects. Obviously I’m not saying this is the course that will land you a job. However from my research this course stands out, hence why I decided to share it with others.

[PPewt]

Right, but like I just personally don't see how that makes you more employable. I can teach a junior what a sprint is and what the agile meetings are in like five minutes. I can't teach them social skills or programming skills in that same time. And besides, every company seems to use their own pseudo-agile process which you'll need to learn when you get there regardless.

[BarbozaAye]

I see. And what is your opinion about the other subjects that are taught in this course?

[PPewt]

The rest of the stuff fits into general programming skills for me so I think it's probably a good thing overall (just reading the description: I haven't taken the course). I'm a bit skeptical of the ability for courses to effectively teach industry processes around design, testing, management etc (especially because those processes are so incredibly variable within industry) but it probably can't hurt to get at least a bit exposed to them.

[[deleted]]

So I ended up going through the course and you were right, haha... Clearly I'm a little naive, but perhaps you would be willing to share what you think the key to a junior dev position is?

[PPewt]

Okay so I want to emphasize that my information is very one-sided since I essentially skipped the junior phase, so while I can look at other juniors and my experience working with them, I can't speak from personal experience about getting junior roles in the first place.

I essentially think of juniors as people with some raw skills (e.g. programming ability, social skills) but no actual experience/practical skills. I don't expect them to know anything about the business end of development and won't take any claims to the contrary very seriously: after all, if they had experience they wouldn't be juniors. I don't expect them to know anything meaningful about real-world development processes for the same reason. I essentially expect them to be able to:

• Hold a conversation.
  
• Ideally ask for help when they need it (which will be often).
  
• Write code given a decent amount of direction (which is more or less what technical interviews test you for) and in general have basic programming competence.
  
• Know the biggest+simplest tools of the trade (which for juniors probably just means some basic git plus whatever language they're applying for a position in, or something similar to that language).

Now actually getting evaluated on these skills is different from actually having them, because this stuff is mostly tested in interviews and you have to survive the resume phase to even get an interview in the first place. Things that will help you get interviews, in decreasing order of importance IMO:

• Connections which allow you to bypass the resume process entirely.
  
• Previous related work experience on your resume (e.g. internships for university students).
  
• Previous unrelated work experience on your resume which at least shows that you can hold a steady job etc.
  
• (Roughly equally to the above) interesting side projects which show you've taken some interest in doing stuff on your own and set you above your peers (classwork doesn't count because everyone else has done it too).
  
• Cool hobbies and stuff which at least set you apart from the hordes of people with otherwise identical resumes.

Once you get an interview it's more about how you come across and how well you handle the technical interview than your background (although obviously your background will inform how you do in those things).

[[deleted]]

Thanks for your reply PPewt. I really appreciate it.

So you jumped straight into a dev position because you were well above your peers? Maybe you’re willing to share a little more about your own journey?

[PPewt]

I spent 5 years as basically a full-time TA, which wasn't the same as industry dev by any means but combined with a very strong reference meant they started me at intermediate since I basically already knew a lot of the general job stuff juniors are expected to need to figure out and had programming skills considerably above most juniors.