

How did you break into the programming industry? - CodeJustin
http://codejustin.com/how-did-you-break-into-the-programming-industry/
Tell us how you broke into the programming industry by leaving a comment on the blog post and also see what other programmers had to say!
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jrockway
By programming. Do enough of that, and other people will become aware of your
existence.

IRC and mailing lists are good places to hang out if you do the open source
thing -- every job I've ever gotten has been via IRC. (This probably works
only if you are an active participant in a smallish community. I wouldn't join
#java on Freenode and ask for a job, or expect someone to offer one.)

Actually, I'm wrong -- presenting at local user groups (and conferences) is
also a good idea. That is how I got started teaching training classes (and
writing).

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swombat
To be honest, I think the story of how I broke _out_ of the "programming
industry" is far more interesting. Then, the story of how I broke out of the
consulting industry.

How I "broke in": started programming age 9. After university (physics
degree), in a dead market (2002), the best option that I found was to start
working as a Java programmer for a large consultancy's software engineering
arm.

How I broke out of that, into consulting: quickly realised that being just a
programmer wasn't enough to satisfy me, so tried to transfer to the consulting
arm of that corporation. Was told it was impossible. Did it anyway, through a
combination of doing awesome work and convincing the right senior people to be
on my side.

How I broke out of consulting: worked my bollocks off to start my first
business - 9 months of waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, working till 7,
napping for an hour, then off to work for a long (and challenging) day of
consulting work.

What happened next: First business slowly tanked for a number of reasons (main
one detailed at [http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-
friend...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-
friend.html)), but I managed to hop onto the second one
(<http://www.woobius.com>), which is going great for the moment.

Don't try to break into the programming industry. You might find it's not so
easy to break back out of it...

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wmblaettler
I have always had a thirst for knowledge, especially electronics and
computers. I started programming quite young on Atari Basic, got into
HTML/Javascript when I was 12 or so, took 2 C++ courses in high school.
Graduated but did not go to college.

At 19, I found a posting on a local college bulletin board for a full-time web
developer position. The pay was low for a web developer, but good enough for a
19-year old. I have been absorbing knowledge from peers and internet sources
ever since. I learned Coldfusion, ASP, SQL, PHP, regular expressions, server
administration, AS2, C# .NET and AS3 through the 8 years I've been there. I
have since advanced to Senior Web Developer and my salary has too. I am now
focused on learning Python/Django and Cocoa/Objective C for iPhone
development.

I just skimmed your article and your portfolio. I was, in fact, very much like
you. I am not saying you should not go to college, if you have the ability.
But college is not necessarily a requirement to get into a programming job. I
learned a ton once I was in a professional atmosphere.

Two recommendations, take them or leave them: (I am not a professional resume
writer) Remove your age from your portfolio, I think some companies may shy
away from hiring someone so young (just from reactions I've gotten when I've
told people my age). And remove "one day" in the line about where you want to
become a programmer. You want it, right? If your are a senior, you must be
graduating within a month or so. Start looking.

Go check your local college's bulletin board (the real one in the commons).
You might get the opportunity to get your foot in the door. Never stop
learning.

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abyssknight
Cross post from the blog to here:

To be honest, I worked for next to nothing. When I was in college my parents
nagged me to death about getting a job. I didn’t want just any job, and I kept
getting rejected from the lowest of the low end positions. I stumbled across
an ad at my university looking for web developers at a small company called
Cloudspace. I shot them an email with my resume and had an interview that
week. The interview was with the owner, and he just asked me to brush up on my
PHP and MySQL and come in for a quick test the next week. I crammed my head
full of PHP and MySQL tutorials and went in the following week. I had to write
a simple page that would query out data for a select box with option groups,
each with its own set of options. The task was to select out the data with one
query, allow the user to select an option and send a message to the database.
I finished it all in about an hour, but hadn’t thought about SQL injection.
One single quote and a press of enter and I was done, but they let me take the
job anyways. I met the other candidate on the first day we started, and we
worked together pretty closely. He had an edge on me, as he knew quite a bit
more, but I caught up in the following month.

About 2 years passed, and I had went from making minimum wage to making $10 an
hour. It wasn’t great, but the experience was well worth it. I left Cloudspace
and took on my own contract job. From there, I graduated and went to work at
another small company writing ColdFusion (and 12 other things), and from there
on to where I work now at one of the largest defense contractors in the world.

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tom_b
The old traditional path I suppose . . .

Years ago, began hacking on home computer (not a PC, but something called a
C64, for the curious). Went to college, wrong major, quit . . . bounced
around, bad jobs. Started doing some db hacking in Excel (don't ask).

Decided to make more than $8 an hour, went back to college, got a BS in comp
sci. Loved undergrad this time around, jumped into internships and co-ops with
companies as an undergrad.

Finished undergrad with a good GPA and did well on GREs, realized I could go
to grad school via research assistantship. Cool. Hung out with really smart
hackers there. Finished year 1 with absolutely zero interest in staying for
PhD (never found really good research/advisor match, would probably do
differently now). Finished 2nd year, got a job out in the IT industry,
escaping grad school with a MS in comp sci.

Almost all my really relevant experience in breaking into the industry came
about by internships or deep project work at the undergrad/grad level (usually
not classes, but research efforts on the side). These days, I get the
impression you can get all the same experience without college. Beware that
some big industry players will hold the lack of a CS degree against you (this
seems mainly to be a "getting in the door" problem).

Mainly, I got into industry by really enjoying coding and grabbing every
opportunity to do so where someone was willing to pay me for it. Everything
else was a means to that end.

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gaius
True story: I walked into the front door of a startup and said, Hi, I'm X and
I can do Y, are you hiring? And they were. This was April or May, technically
I hadn't actually finished college but exams were over. Only stayed there 7
months, they changed direction and didn't do what I wanted to do anymore, but
that experience was enough to land me my next job.

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hvs
Started programming when I was about 10, went to college and got a CS degree,
got a job.

This question is worded strangely. The "programming industry" is not like the
"movie industry" or the "music industry." Just start coding. It'll be easier
to get a job with a CS degree, but plenty of developers can get jobs without
it if they are good enough.

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jasongullickson
Start with an idea you love and then learn how to write it. Repeat this enough
times and you'll either develop a marketable skill (a particular programming
language, platform, etc.) or you'll write something that others can use and
you'll just have to put a pricetag on it.

Things like iPhone apps, Facebook apps, etc. have made it allot easier, in my
opinion, for a developer to bootstrap their own business, but I would focus on
writing something you're passionate about because you won't require the
financial motivation (which is unpredictable) to keep at it.

If you truly desire the results of your own work, nothing (including any
classical definition failure) should be able to stop you from completing it.

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pistoriusp
When I was 17 I was playing games at a private computer college. We had a beta
copy of Tribes 2, which would crash on startup. I opened up some files,
modified a few scripts and eventually got it working.

The owner of the college asked me if I could code PHP. I had done a PHP
tutorial a week before, so I told him that I could.

I worked for them in my final year of high school and got a full time position
the day after I matriculated. I've been programming ever since.

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jrbedard
Built a couple of DirectX/OpenGL c++ demos and showed them to Ubisoft. First
thing I know, I was working on the Myst IV production, and then Assassin's
creed at Ubisoft Montreal. The game industry is a lot of fun when you are 21.
Of course things change afterward if you are slightly entrepreneurial,
independent or self-starter...

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teej
I built a college class scheduler app in Rails & Javascript on the side while
working at a tech support job. I taught myself everything from sites online. I
finally applied for a web developer job and showed my app as my "experience".
I got the job and doubled my salary.

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brg
The one thing I've noticed about all successful programmers is that they
incubated their interest and skills outside of academics.

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apstuff
Opened the manual and taught myself BASIC on a PDP 11/44 running RSTS/E. Then
Pascal and C. I still enjoy writing code.

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CodeJustin
Dont be shy! Tell us your story!

~~~
knightrider
Using a crowbar, I shattered a window at Redmond, Washington and then threw a
pie at Bill Gates's face.

