Well Finally have a job in software development

davetherave2

davetherave2

davetherave2

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Joined
27 Mar 2003
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Well I have been working in IT for over 5 years now and have mainly had support jobs but finally a company has decided I might be suitable for their development team. I have always been interested in programming and have tried to keep my skills as up to date as I can.

Over the past couple of months I have been cramming like crazy and the suggestions of books that you fine people have made has really helped (who knew so much went behind a pretty front end) on all things .net. I have mainly been looking at C# to try and get a job. I have found it so difficult to get into this side of the computer world and it has paid off starting next week I finally can start following my passion and call myself a developer albeit a junior one but its a start. :D

So that I can try to continue my studies I have several books already for pursuing the various MS exams as well as building up on the basics that I have. I was wondering if anyone knew of any decent material for developing XML/web based systems as this is an area which I think I will need to invest some quality time in. It has been a while since I did anything serious in web dev so anything will help.

I certainly expect the next few months to be a massive learning curve for me but I just can't wait.
 
I too have recently got my first development job. Best thing I can suggest is keep attempting new things. Set your self a project and get it completed, you will learn so much more on the way.

Obviously do not attempt something you can already do! :p

TrUz
 
I wouldn't worry about the certification/exams too much. Employers look for one thing in development fields and that's experience.

C#/.NET is definately a future-proofed choice.

One of the most important concepts in programming you'll need to understand before anything really "begins to click" is collections a.k.a. 'indexing of data'. Do research on things like hash tables, binary trees, AVL trees etc - understand exactly how they work and why they are good.
 
Well done on getting your first development job.

I've always wondered how useful the Microsoft exams are and how much notice employers who know what they want take of them. I did the course work for Windows XP but never had time to do the exam. What I learnt was useful and it was enjoyable to do.

Consider learning some of the older stuff such as UNIX Shell and C as this always comes in useful.

For web/Java work I found the J2EE Core Patterns book excellent (the patterns could also be applied to other languages besides Java), and also the Wrox books by Rod Johnson if you're going to get into web/Java stuff. Can be quite heavy going though.

The best way to learn though is to look at other people's work and learn whatever you can from them.
 
NathanE said:
I wouldn't worry about the certification/exams too much. Employers look for one thing in development fields and that's experience.

C#/.NET is definately a future-proofed choice.

One of the most important concepts in programming you'll need to understand before anything really "begins to click" is collections a.k.a. 'indexing of data'. Do research on things like hash tables, binary trees, AVL trees etc - understand exactly how they work and why they are good.
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Personally i would read up on object oriented programming first. Especially if he is using an OO language.
 
NathanE said:
I wouldn't worry about the certification/exams too much. Employers look for one thing in development fields and that's experience.

C#/.NET is definately a future-proofed choice.

One of the most important concepts in programming you'll need to understand before anything really "begins to click" is collections a.k.a. 'indexing of data'. Do research on things like hash tables, binary trees, AVL trees etc - understand exactly how they work and why they are good.
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and noggin.
eriedor said:
Personally i would read up on object oriented programming first. Especially if he is using an OO language.
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and more importantly, expected to program with OO.
 
congrats :)

one day i hope i can say the same...but for now at least I'm still studying with only a placement to worry about in terms of work.

but anyway - if you need a decent book for computing i recently bought the latest edition of C++ How to Program by Harvey M. Deitel and Paul J. Deitel

now they do books for C#, Java and VB and if this C++ book is anything to go buy I'd definitely recommend you take a look at them :)

eriedor said:
Personally i would read up on object oriented programming first. Especially if he is using an OO language.
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aye deffo....OO programming is another thing I've recently started studying and its another reason i love this Deitel book...
 
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OO stuff I am fine with as I have finally got my head around it. It took a dummies book for me to finally get it. In the 4 years of uni I had I couldn't fully understand it, think that was more down to me not really caring and bored with my degree rather than not understanding the subject at hand. I have always tried to code stuff using OO principles even that languages that don't transfer over to OO properly such as VBA which I have done most of my coding in the last 6 months.

As for the Dietel and Dietel book I have the four edition of that but never really cared for C++ although it is a powerful language I didn't really get on with unlike I have done with C#. I'm sure when I finally start the role I will find out more info on what I am doing but can't wait to get my teeth into it.

The main bulk of the work I am going to be doing is debugging so that will help me loads with developing my skills and understanding the languages better. I'm guessing I won't be doing my own programs for at least 6 - 12 months and even then they will probably only be add on's to existing apps that they have. But everyones got to start somewhere.
 
After you mastered basic OO, I suggest reading Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Gang of Four book).

Then Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. These books improved me no end as a software engineer.

You should also learn how to analyse algorithms (What big O notation they are). The amount of programmers who don't know how to do this is astonishing, and this is where the greatest increase in performance comes from.

You never really stop learning as a programmer so its really an on going task.
 
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