Caporegime
Then a small comment is sufficient, not "annotate the crap out of it"
Any programmers here...?
- Thread starter rz30
- Start date
Not really because you don't know who will have to look at it down the line and what you think is obvious may not be. Commercial code is going to get changed at some point generally and often by someone else so a good developer will ensure a decent amount of comments.
That sort of QA stage isn't common through, at least looking at the companies I've worked for.
I kind of agree that you shouldn't really need comments to tell you what code does, if you have something that's too complicated to understand reasonably quickly then it can probably be refactored.
Comments should be used to tell you why code is doing a particular thing though.
Caporegime
Not so. I am both a commercial and open source developer. Developers would much rather see self explanatory code than a comment fest. Especially so when there are tests/specs, as these will document the code far better than any comment could.
Usually if a comment is absolutely essential, it's because you have nondescriptive function/method/variable/class names, or you are doing too much in one place. Factor your code into smaller pieces with descriptive naming and comments become non-essential.
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Your unit tests should form the basis of code-level documentation. Acceptance tests form system-level documentation.
Only comment your code if it isn't obvious how something works.
Teaching yourself is fine, but spend the time to learn about things like Test Driven Development, Unit Testing, agile practices etc.
Only comment your code if it isn't obvious how something works.
Teaching yourself is fine, but spend the time to learn about things like Test Driven Development, Unit Testing, agile practices etc.
I see what you did there.
generally 2 yrs is the equivalent of a junior programmer, its not really a hard and fast rule that you have to have 2 years exp, companies don't really want to take on a novice and train them in the basics of development, you won't be expected to know everything.
There is usually always a technical test,to check that you at least know something about a particular language.
You got nothing really to lose thanby sending in your cv with a good cover letter.
There is usually always a technical test,to check that you at least know something about a particular language.
You got nothing really to lose thanby sending in your cv with a good cover letter.
Caporegime
Comments.
For the OP; what code are you comparing yours against to judge how good it is? Paste some examples here and I'm sure you'll find some people to pass critical comment on it.
Well you tell me how advanced you should be, OO programming fine, the ideas of Inheritance and Encapsulation are supposed to be advanced programming but are more of a philosphy or a structuring never-the-less i think i understand them fine....
Writing classes / dll's, activex, database apps, desktop apps is in VB.NET / C# is about as advanced i would get in these languages.
What exactly would you be programming, would you be bug testing, sifting through 100's of lines of code looking for errors or would you be writing desktop app's from scratch?
Would you be expected to do any low level programming, although you can't exactly go low level in .NET.....
I mean i could clone Mircosoft word in VB.NET, might take a while but... i could write a virus scanner in VB.NET. I could write a MSN messenger clone network type of app....
Pretty much anything desktop is that is doable in .NET i could do, i would need to refer to documention a bit though ...
Interfaces?
Design patterns?
Test-driven design?
Domain driven design?
OO concepts such as inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, etc are not advanced concepts, they are the basic building blocks upon which everything else depends.
Writing software isn't about your ability to get things working, it's doing it so that it is 'able' - flexable, maintainable, etcable
Get some code you've written and run some code metrics on it and you'll soon see what could be improved.
Design patterns?
Test-driven design?
Domain driven design?
OO concepts such as inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, etc are not advanced concepts, they are the basic building blocks upon which everything else depends.
Writing software isn't about your ability to get things working, it's doing it so that it is 'able' - flexable, maintainable, etcable
Get some code you've written and run some code metrics on it and you'll soon see what could be improved.
Caporegime
I was in exactly the same boat, no commericial experience, only self taught and open source. I applied, had a telephone interview with questions like "Describe what an interface is" "What is encapsulation?" "Can you tell me what benefits using a class hierarchy has?" then an interview with 10 minutes of discussing my previous employment and why I want to move to development, 10 minutes of questions (I had to draw object relations and class diagrams - not UML but human readable) about half hour on the application of design patterns, agile development, working in team development, and then 3 hours of my personal interests.
But in short, apply for the damn jobs already.
But in short, apply for the damn jobs already.
Caporegime
*firm handshakes*
I hate it when people consider just writing code to be advanced. Well, hate is too strong a word. Pet-hate maybe.
3 hours on personal interests...?
How does that work, you basically tell them your life story....?
Caporegime
it was a pub chat, but without the pub or beer. By that stage of the interview, they were satisfied I was technically skilled enough for the job and just wanted to make sure I would fit in as a person.
Should i put on my CV that i have been an amatuer prorgammer for about 3 years and i daily answer questions on a certain programming forum....or is this a bit naff?
Take this job for example, this looks ok to me, part of it is that they want their VB6 code ported to VB.NET, which would be an ideal job, just plough away at it, and you could do some at home as well...... Would they say to yuo , "ok here are 1000's lines of VB6 go and chaneg that to VB.NET" ?
Or would you have to sit down in a team for hours on end discussing what would be the best aproach to go about it etc etc, flow charts, system diagrams, OO, TTD...
It says experience with VB6, not commerical which i have...
What worries me though is that i may not fit into the team system, i tend to be quite independent and work best when i have the freedom to do what i think is best....
Take this job for example, this looks ok to me, part of it is that they want their VB6 code ported to VB.NET, which would be an ideal job, just plough away at it, and you could do some at home as well...... Would they say to yuo , "ok here are 1000's lines of VB6 go and chaneg that to VB.NET" ?
Or would you have to sit down in a team for hours on end discussing what would be the best aproach to go about it etc etc, flow charts, system diagrams, OO, TTD...
It says experience with VB6, not commerical which i have...
What worries me though is that i may not fit into the team system, i tend to be quite independent and work best when i have the freedom to do what i think is best....
Caporegime
Other than it's a VB programmers job p) go for it. And yes, put down that you have had a "personal interest in programming", and "are/have been participating and contributing to open source projects for the past 3 years and counting" 
p) go for it. And yes, put down that you have had a "personal interest in programming", and "are/have been participating and contributing to open source projects for the past 3 years and counting"