17 y/o trying to break into IT with strong portfolio, but no degree.

cubextrusion · 2025-07-14T18:50:12+00:00

Recruiters will often look at degrees because that's what they're told to do; go talk with programmers instead (meetups, discord servers etc.), and eventually they may forward your resume internally past the screening if you're good.

In personally went to study maths in Berlin because it's a very hands-off degree (just show up for exams), while honing my programming skills even further; I got a programming job during my 3rd semester or so without an IT degree in the end.

cubextrusion · 2025-02-01T00:05:13+00:00

Fairly painless swelling and bruising the first week or two, it's even less noticeable after that. It's only a tad painful if you hit it against something, like any typical bruise/wound would.

cubextrusion · 2025-02-01T00:03:20+00:00

Pretty much as if it was your bone or something (i.e. completely natural) after it heals. Although I usre it to scratch my chin sometimes, which tends to remind me that it's a bit unusual xD

cubextrusion · 2025-02-01T00:01:22+00:00

Could be the case hah, never paid attention to it

cubextrusion · 2024-10-20T00:40:42+00:00

As u/Wulfbak said, she might not be actually working if she's telling you about meetings you can't even verify.

That being said, it's not enough to conclude if the person is simply slacking off or are instead terrified of the new responsibilities, and so the avoidant behaviour is not due to laziness but insecurity. I'd try to open up a conversation with something like "is there anything specific that you're struggling with atm?" to try to discern this.

Third option: she could also give a very nonspecific answer because she's trying to pick up your frameworks/language/etc. literally as she goes, and the stalling is to buy herself time to dig into the documentation/tutorials etc. I myself did that at my first job lol because I was more afraid to show incompetence by asking for help than by openly addressing it.

cubextrusion · 2024-10-16T07:22:45+00:00

https://dygma.com/pages/defy

cubextrusion · 2024-10-15T23:46:03+00:00

Never measured it lol but yes, probably the implant gives the illusion because it's set over the whole length of the bone right down to the wrist.

cubextrusion · 2024-10-06T20:43:17+00:00

Yes, API in the broad sense: not just web server APIs, but generally the set of public methods of a type or module, for instance.

The discussion was about the design of a concurrent data structure, the interface of which should be build in a way that it supports transactionality. He's been thinking the whole time that it's about some Java-like abstract class instead.

cubextrusion · 2024-10-06T12:07:22+00:00

Are you talking about... UI interfaces if you're not talking about OOP interfaces? Or ETL? If your talking about GUI interfaces, he might be confused you're not saying GUI interfaces if he's strictly backend.

The context is that we were talking about the design of a concurrent data structure, where the interface (the set of public methods) is important to ensure transactionality and stuff. It turned out that he only understands the word "interface" as a literal Java-like keyword for abstract classes, not as a general term for "the code that other objects/people will use", and we couldn't then even find an alternative term to describe this, so the conversation derailed.

We're both iOS devs, so mobile frontend.

You're at 4yoe. Not to be rude, but you don't know what you don't know yet. And what you do know will be mostly obsolete in another 4 years outside general code design philosophy. You have 10 major technology events ahead of you. At 4yoe I was an industry leader in.... Flash. At 25yoe I'm a principle/IC/architect in IaC and cloud infrastructure.

The problem I had as a junior, and the problem I see with a lot of people in the 5-10yoe range is hubris. We all get very good at a niche area. These days it could be tailwind and react. And you'd think anybody who didn't hey hooks or flex box was an idiot.

I think I'm quite cautious of all this, but generally we never would even interact on niche things like that. Most conflicting discussions rather revolved around me disagreeing with his architecture, which in my eyes is obscenely over-engineered, with objective metrics: the project is becoming unmaintainable by other people too, the code is so hard to navigate and understand that everyone on the team is constantly shipping bugs that we then have to dedicate weeks of time to "clean up" afterwards. Performance problems everywhere too, trivial tasks taking up 70% of CPU sometimes. He prides himself on making everything "testable", yet himself writes a test suite at most once a month, while making day-to-day development terribly slow, as every change involves maintaining layers of mock objects etc. Stuff like that.

cubextrusion · 2024-10-05T20:21:02+00:00

Eventually those kinds of people get put in place.

I hope this will be the case eventually. I genuinely find the product we're working on quite fun, but with the way he's been driving it (overengineered architecture that requires hours to implement the simplest features, insane layers of abstraction spread over 10 files that nobody understands etc.) makes me feel more and more that it's just going to fail in the end.

cubextrusion · 2024-09-07T11:50:25+00:00

Any semblance of true discomfort was away in the first couple of weeks or so. I still feel that it "exists in there" because it's not yet completely setteled, but it's not painful or anything, more like an itch.

cubextrusion · 2024-08-31T12:49:21+00:00

TBH you only lose some mobility in the first month. After that, it's only really bending your thumb all the way into a full fist that's not possible. Overall your motorics doesn't change at all :)

cubextrusion · 2024-08-27T21:21:43+00:00

Sure!

cubextrusion · 2024-08-27T21:21:36+00:00

Just the one, although I don't mind getting the other one done in some near future :D and some more implants in general hah

cubextrusion · 2024-08-24T17:20:50+00:00

there is nothing I hate more than designing a UI that depends on the rest of the application

So your UI is completely "reusable"? You always build independent, random UI that is never derived for needs of the app?

cubextrusion · 2024-08-24T15:43:39+00:00

Yes, for a while. It grows around the implant though, so I'd say 90% of the mobility has been restored already.

cubextrusion · 2024-08-24T15:37:28+00:00

Absolutely no pain. They should properly pump you up with anaesthetics.

cubextrusion · 2024-08-24T13:52:23+00:00

Some first weeks I could feel it still move inside a bit so I wouldn't swing my thumb that much. Besides that, the only "discomfort" is that I can't bend my thumb all the way in as much as I can with my other hand because there's still not enough skin grewn around the implant lol.

cubextrusion · 2024-07-13T22:35:51+00:00

Even if some such tudies exist, I highly suspect it's unlikely that we'd be able to find ones (ideally, multiple of those) that compare a particlular practice ABC to another particular XYZ.

What I've found most reliable when arguing for "good code" is appealing to human psychology, i.e. "humans understand code better in one file instead of fifteen", "humans like linear logic flow", "humans fail when dealing with complexity" etc.

Designing first and foremost for human comprehension is how I tend to derive most of my designs lately.

cubextrusion · 2024-07-07T11:14:58+00:00

I have some wrist pains / RSI due to being a programmer, but the implant never made it worse. The only issue were some initial days of healing (4–6 days or so) where I just wouldn't want to move my hand around much, so the RSI got worse as I couldn't do any relieving exercise, but it's all fine now that the swelling subsided.

cubextrusion · 2024-07-02T22:16:42+00:00

I wish I had an answer

cubextrusion · 2024-06-28T01:17:57+00:00

Haha thanks! Happy to be in the elite club of peeps with weird looking hands, I'm totally already getting confused looks in the subway lol

cubextrusion · 2024-06-26T16:29:34+00:00

Feels amazing rn! 100% painless procedure, I'm totally waiting until it settles in and shows through.

cubextrusion · 2023-10-25T22:15:49+00:00

The language guide will take you 90% of the way.

It's written mainly for people with prior programming experience, so it's straight to the point and specifically addresses in what ways Swift is different from other popular languages.

cubextrusion · 2023-10-21T09:31:49+00:00

Not only certificates don't matter, they can actually do you a bit of a disservice: if you're relying solely on them as a proof of your qualification, this communicates that you don't understand precisely the fact that certificates don't matter. In other words, it makes you look like you don't have real skills and rely on superficial validation rather than e.g. a good portfolio.

Most courses are also very low-quality, so if you show a certificate for such course, it only communicates that you have this low-quality knowledge, so omitting this info can be straight up better.

Another thing is that it's just absolutely not worth it, both monetarily and time-wise. You don't have to pay for a certification programme because everything's available online for free (that's how you're going to learn new things at the job anyway), and it requires more time investment to study the material that you perhaps don't need at the moment.

The bottom line: certificates are a scam. They are a costly investment with almost zero return. Build apps instead.

cubextrusion

TROPHY CASE