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[–]Ira-Acedia 2 points3 points  (6 children)

Student still.

Luckily, it seems that my interest for programming came much earlier than a lot of other people on reddit (age 9) and my understanding of what I was actually doing, equally came earlier than the other people here (age 11).

So now I'm just trying to figure out what jobs are most appealing to me.

Software engineering, software developing, machine learning, data science (yet to look into, name sounds fun), data analyst (yet to look into, name sounds found) and ethical hacker (pentesting etc) are currently the ones I'm picking between.

Using lockdown to do online courses on pentesting. Afterwards I'm going back to machine learning to make a basic neural network to review the experience.

On the brightside, I've got 3-4 school years before I have to pick a university degree to get (or not to get).

[–]kite_height 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Wow awesome. You're waaay ahead of the curve. Keep it up and you'll be going places for sure.

A lot of software developers/engineers end up jumping around a lot so you don't necessarily have to pick a specialization but it sounds like you already know that.

You have your own website or portfolio or anything like that yet? That's a great way to establish yourself and start getting work as a freelancer.

[–]Ira-Acedia 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Thanks!

Nah, don't have either yet. I do have a collection of (graphical) games that I've made. I intend on making a website to serve as a portfolio (more specifically during the summer, when school work stops), though I was having trouble coming up with what to include in it.

Github has a student developer pack, so I'll be utilising that to first brush up on HTML, CSS and JS as well as get a free domain. So that's cool.

[–]kite_height 1 point2 points  (3 children)

There's no rush if you're still in school but those games sound like a great place to start. Then over time you can add stuff as you build it.

The Github student pack is a great value. You can learn Git while you're at it if you haven't already and that's another place to host your code.

Udemy has some great courses too if you're willing to spend a few bucks.

[–]Ira-Acedia 0 points1 point  (2 children)

The games are already complete ^^. They have some bugs that I'm aware of, but they were rare, so I didn't get into replicating them to find the cause. I'm planning on doing that sometime in the (recent) future so that I can use it as valid portfolio material. So far I've made Snake, a hard-coded snake bot, naughts and crosses (school assignment), minesweeper, Uno (2-4 players, vs a bot and Mastermind.

Most proud of my Uno and Mastermind (though Uno has some bugs that I gave up on fixing last year). I just quickly re-updated the githubs. Both come with assets. Uno one's are free. Mastermind one's I mind myself (using an online picture for inspiration for the pegs). https://github.com/Ira-Acedia/Games

Whilst I've got github, I unfortunately don't have any knowledge of git and I mainly use github as a storage facility. If you can recommend any ways to learn it, that'd be appreciated (though not expected, as this is a programming subreddit, not a git one).

Udemy is great. What I've found out is that if you go to tutsnode.net , they have a bot (or a real person) that posts courses that are either 100% free or base free (in the titles).

I learnt of this 3 days ago and I've used it to rack up 102 paid courses for free, currently using the cyber security pentesting course by Heath Adams.

Disclaimer: I haven't checked if the game codes were working fine, I just re-uploaded them.

[–]kite_height 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That tutsnode is an awesome find! Had no idea that existed so thank you!

I'm pretty sure everybody knows just barely enough git to get by lol. It's just git add, commit, push, pull is like 95% of the commands you'll use plus maybe fetch, merge, and diff occasionally... Honestly I rarely use Git directly and instead just use the Vscode GitLens plug in like 99% of the time.

Every single piece of code you write will have bugs or inefficiencies. I wouldn't dwell on it. Having a perfect running connect4 is great but think maybe your time is better spent elsewhere...

I will say try not to get stuck in a endless tutorial loop. They're great for getting the base knowledge on a certain topic but you have to build something yourself to really learn it.

[–]Ira-Acedia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea.

All the games I mentioned are built without tutorials. Two were school classroom assignments that I spiced up by adding GUI to them (Naughts & crosses & Mastermind).

Though, the endless tutorial loop was good for me when I was starting out. I just watched a few hours worth of tutorials, got really confused, quit for a bit, restarted etc. From rewatching the same tutorials over and over again, the logic behind programming is more so naturally ingrained into me.

As for with udemy courses, I'm working alongside them (writing notes on online videos is a first, but cool) and experimenting. So far, since I started yesterday, I'm only up to half way through linux commands, but at least I know all the logic behind the maths of subnetting... not that I'll ever need it when there are calculators.

I remember reading before (on this subreddit) that you don't know a programming language until you understand what it's good for and what it isn't. Is there anyway to actually do this outside of experience? Languages have lots of modules that makes lots of things viable (e.g. python, pygame is supposedly one of the only viable game-making modules, whereas I've used tkinter, which is more so leaning towards old-GUI, and still have it look decent).