Official Programming & Development Thread Vol. ASP.NET, C/C#/C++, HTML, Java, Etc.

[elderwatsondiggs]

JavaScript for some reason is so difficult to me and it sucks because I know I need it. Sure JQuery and the other libraries are coo but w/o JS, it's a moot point.

And you're right about focusing on a lang like JS, that's why I'm looking more into web app development instead of native app development; having to learn Java, Objective-C, and C#/ASP.Net all to develop for mobile phones is ridiculous and time consuming.

Of course I still will need C#/ASP.Net if I want to code less when developing apps but for the time being, learning a back-end language like JS,PHP, Python, and even SQL for database purposes, I think I should be good.

Bro, if you sat down and concentrated and focused you can get JS. Trust you can, I picked it up fast and I know you're more experienced than I am by far.

 

[dathbgboy]

JavaScript for some reason is so difficult to me and it sucks because I know I need it. Sure JQuery and the other libraries are coo but w/o JS, it's a moot point.

And you're right about focusing on a lang like JS, that's why I'm looking more into web app development instead of native app development; having to learn Java, Objective-C, and C#/ASP.Net all to develop for mobile phones is ridiculous and time consuming.

Of course I still will need C#/ASP.Net if I want to code less when developing apps but for the time being, learning a back-end language like JS,PHP, Python, and even SQL for database purposes, I think I should be good.

Bro, if you sat down and concentrated and focused you can get JS. Trust you can, I picked it up fast and I know you're more experienced than I am by far.

I doubt it experience wise bruh but I might be, but it don't feel like it.

Being able to sit down and focus is my main problem w/ so much going on at home w/ kids and then work. Then my laptop is crap

For any of you dudes trying to get into it, I suggest signing up for Free Code Camp and joining the local Facebook groups. I'm an Admin in the Pittsburgh group for any of you in my area, holla at me. We try to meet up once a month though the weather has kinda threw things off. I've noticed that the environment you're in definitely helps w/ understanding and getting w/ people on the same journey as you gives you a boost in knowledge.

 

[4318michaeljohnson4318]

JavaScript for some reason is so difficult to me and it sucks because I know I need it. Sure JQuery and the other libraries are coo but w/o JS, it's a moot point.

And you're right about focusing on a lang like JS, that's why I'm looking more into web app development instead of native app development; having to learn Java, Objective-C, and C#/ASP.Net all to develop for mobile phones is ridiculous and time consuming.

Of course I still will need C#/ASP.Net if I want to code less when developing apps but for the time being, learning a back-end language like JS,PHP, Python, and even SQL for database purposes, I think I should be good.

The syntax is a little different but when you go from JS -> angular and you start using real stuff like routing, data services, views you will be happy. For me I am no angular pro but for learning I went code academy's js->jquery-> angular. Jquery also helps a lot when developing with bootstrap. There's so much to learn I kind of giggle at the term full stack engineer/developer because I don't even know how someone can stay that relevant

 

[dathbgboy]

JavaScript for some reason is so difficult to me and it sucks because I know I need it. Sure JQuery and the other libraries are coo but w/o JS, it's a moot point.

And you're right about focusing on a lang like JS, that's why I'm looking more into web app development instead of native app development; having to learn Java, Objective-C, and C#/ASP.Net all to develop for mobile phones is ridiculous and time consuming.

Of course I still will need C#/ASP.Net if I want to code less when developing apps but for the time being, learning a back-end language like JS,PHP, Python, and even SQL for database purposes, I think I should be good.

The syntax is a little different but when you go from JS -> angular and you start using real stuff like routing, data services, views you will be happy. For me I am no angular pro but for learning I went code academy's js->jquery-> angular. Jquery also helps a lot when developing with bootstrap. There's so much to learn I kind of giggle at the term full stack engineer/developer because I don't even know how someone can stay that relevant

Word up . There are so many languages and variations and what I did that hurt me was trying to learn so many of them to get a job that I didn't really learn them; I bounced from one to another.

If you check my sig, those are the languages I feel more confident, but I also know SQL, PHP, Python, and some C#. I spread myself thin for jobs that don't know what they want themselves and it hasn't paid off, so now I'm regrouping.

I started the Angular.JS course on Code Cademy but stopped once I learned about FCC.

 

[vladimir dinero]

 
Congrats ! Mind explaining your process for other people that are looking to get where you are?

saw this video in my facebook feed and got inspired to start code academy: 

i used to think that coders were the dudes with the ponytail in his mom's basement, turning his servers on with the end of a broomstick and had a tall stack of $5 little ceasars pizza boxes on the desk, but after doing some research i realized you don't have to have a cs/stem background. just gotta have tenacity and perseverance because this is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. 

after doing code academy and code school, i learned more about javascript but i still couldn't build anything. i found out about bootcamps and researched the top ones. i told myself if i couldn't get into hack reactor (they only accept about 7% of applicants every cohort), i wasn't gonna do it at all. studied my *** off and got in. the program itself is 6 days a week, 11 hours a day but i had to work a lot harder than everyone else because i had the least experience of anyone in my cohort. i would say i put in at least 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. there were ivy league stem majors and cs grads from big programs so i was at a huge disadvantage there. i knew i wasn't as talented as everyone else, but no one was gonna out-hustle me. 

even when it came to the job search, i wasn't gonna let others out-hustle me. i ended up being the 2nd person in my cohort to get a job, but only cuz the 1st person went back to his old job but as a software engineer (he worked in qa previously). so yeah, you don't have to be this cs genius, but you have to be willing to work harder than you ever have in your life and learn how to deal with failure and impostor syndrome.

 

[yanky]

 
Congrats ! Mind explaining your process for other people that are looking to get where you are?

saw this video in my facebook feed and got inspired to start code academy: 

i used to think that coders were the dudes with the ponytail in his mom's basement, turning his servers on with the end of a broomstick and had a tall stack of $5 little ceasars pizza boxes on the desk, but after doing some research i realized you don't have to have a cs/stem background. just gotta have tenacity and perseverance because this is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. 

after doing code academy and code school, i learned more about javascript but i still couldn't build anything. i found out about bootcamps and researched the top ones. i told myself if i couldn't get into hack reactor (they only accept about 7% of applicants every cohort), i wasn't gonna do it at all. studied my *** off and got in. the program itself is 6 days a week, 11 hours a day but i had to work a lot harder than everyone else because i had the least experience of anyone in my cohort. i would say i put in at least 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. there were ivy league stem majors and cs grads from big programs so i was at a huge disadvantage there. i knew i wasn't as talented as everyone else, but no one was gonna out-hustle me. 

even when it came to the job search, i wasn't gonna let others out-hustle me. i ended up being the 2nd person in my cohort to get a job, but only cuz the 1st person went back to his old job but as a software engineer (he worked in qa previously). so yeah, you don't have to be this cs genius, but you have to be willing to work harder than you ever have in your life and learn how to deal with failure and impostor syndrome.

Congrats man. I'm kinda in the same boat as you, no cs experience so I'm taking an intro cs class my last year of college. Trying to soak in all the info and see what my options are right now. Your story is definitely inspirational to me and looking at the hackreactor's site it's intimidating when they say their students are willing to work 80+hours a week. Does hackreactor have a career center or something of that sort to help students find jobs after graduating?

I saw a video of the work environment at google and facebook and since then I've always wanted to work there but I know it's going to be near impossible getting a job there. I need to put in a lot of work to get to where I want to be.

 

[luckyluchiano]

saw this video in my facebook feed and got inspired to start code academy: 

i used to think that coders were the dudes with the ponytail in his mom's basement, turning his servers on with the end of a broomstick and had a tall stack of $5 little ceasars pizza boxes on the desk, but after doing some research i realized you don't have to have a cs/stem background. just gotta have tenacity and perseverance because this is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. 

after doing code academy and code school, i learned more about javascript but i still couldn't build anything. i found out about bootcamps and researched the top ones. i told myself if i couldn't get into hack reactor (they only accept about 7% of applicants every cohort), i wasn't gonna do it at all. studied my *** off and got in. the program itself is 6 days a week, 11 hours a day but i had to work a lot harder than everyone else because i had the least experience of anyone in my cohort. i would say i put in at least 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. there were ivy league stem majors and cs grads from big programs so i was at a huge disadvantage there. i knew i wasn't as talented as everyone else, but no one was gonna out-hustle me. 

even when it came to the job search, i wasn't gonna let others out-hustle me. i ended up being the 2nd person in my cohort to get a job, but only cuz the 1st person went back to his old job but as a software engineer (he worked in qa previously). so yeah, you don't have to be this cs genius, but you have to be willing to work harder than you ever have in your life and learn how to deal with failure and impostor syndrome.

Dope, literally my first time hearing about this. This is like a bootcamp that is inperson and in various cities or something? From the sound of it this is pretty much like getting a legit Cert that can go on your resume opposed to mentioning you did some kind of self study thing.

 

[vladimir dinero]

Anyonw dive into the swift language apple dropped a yr or two ago?

just started yesterday actually. any resources in particular you guys are using for swift?

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

even when it came to the job search, i wasn't gonna let others out-hustle me. i ended up being the 2nd person in my cohort to get a job, but only cuz the 1st person went back to his old job but as a software engineer (he worked in qa previously). so yeah, you don't have to be this cs genius, but you have to be willing to work harder than you ever have in your life and learn how to deal with failure and impostor syndrome.

This whole block of text needs to be highlighted!

This is EXTREMELY true. Let's talk about imposter syndrome....quit that BS immediately if you "suffer" from it. You must be confident...even in the beginning. A person might say "how can you be confident when you are just starting and don't know anything?" The answer is you can still be extremely confident that you will be great and that's because you already know you're going to put in the work to make that a true statement.

I literally had myself convinced before I took my first course that I was going to own it. So when I was learning and understanding both concept and code it was merely an affirmation of what I believed in the first place. To test my understanding I'd read new code examples and figure out what was being done before I even got an explanation for it.

Also I learned that it's not always the smartest guy that becomes successful, but the one who works the hardest while still being smart about it. You should also encourage failure to a certain degree...because it's one of the best motivating forces to try again and to try harder. Be quietly competitive but not an ahole. Tell yourself that the only difference between yourself and that great programmer that you know is that he started before you did, but that you're going to be just as good if not better and believe it. Don't be an ahole about it though, these are just internal motivators to keep you going even when things get tough.

 

[capital sb]

@VLADIMIR DINERO thanks for sharing your story man. Glad it all worked out for you hard work pays off ten fold in this field. I assumed it took a ton of hard work and long hours for you to get where you are.

I will never forget the days of working on programming assignments for 12 hours straight for multiple days during UG. I noticed in UG that the kids I thought were nerdy and smart, I was doing better than because I out hustled them. It is definitely about how hard your grind is. Can't ever stop working or settle when it comes to software, you will be left behind. I hustled my way to 7 full time offers months before graduation, while most of my other classmates had none. Smartest guy I know still doesn't have a job a year after graduation.

 

[vladimir dinero]

@yanky

a lot of what you're paying for are the career resources. they have two departments on payroll whose jobs are literally to get you a job. they do everything for you except go to your job interview for you. they didn't get me my current job, but i feel like i aced my phone screen/technical interview because of how they prepared me. there are still a few people in my cohort who are still unemployed though so nothing is guaranteed

@LuckyLuchiano  hack reactor is in SF, but they also have an online version called remote beta. they also have a network of partner schools - telegraph academy and makersquare. all the schools use the same curriculum as far as i know - javascript, jquery, backbone, angular, node, etc.

 

[HankHill]

vladimir dinero Is it similar to The Iron Yard? I met a guy who teaches at a location near me and invited me to sit in at some point.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Xcode is awesome for building apps. Once you learn the basics the possibilities are endless. It's not so much a WYSIWYG, you place the elements and then write the code yourself to make the elements "come to life". Once I get the API management down I'll have my first real app ready in about a week.

Next up is app dev on Android using the Android Studio IDE which uses Java as the programming language. Supposedly it's a bit more challenging that iOS app dev, but it can and will be learned.

 

[luckyluchiano]

@VLADIMIR DINERO
thanks for sharing your story man. Glad it all worked out for you hard work pays off ten fold in this field. I assumed it took a ton of hard work and long hours for you to get where you are.

I will never forget the days of working on programming assignments for 12 hours straight for multiple days during UG. I noticed in UG that the kids I thought were nerdy and smart, I was doing better than because I out hustled them. It is definitely about how hard your grind is. Can't ever stop working or settle when it comes to software, you will be left behind. I hustled my way to 7 full time offers months before graduation, while most of my other classmates had none. Smartest guy I know still doesn't have a job a year after graduation.

bruh who are you telling.

Its NEVER about being the Smartest when it comes to corporate America, because 9 times out of 10 the Smartest never make it to the top its the ones with the best hustle. I went to a small HBCU state school that lacked the resources of other state schools like G Tech, Emory, UGA which are some of the best Universities in the nation, where the talent is amazing but they dont teach kids how to HUSTLE and get what you want. I beat out people from top universities for my last two jobs, because I knew what it was like to be at the bottom and coming from an environment where people dont expect you to become anything because you dont have the big name school on your resume.

I really feel that if you have the hustle in your heart, you will make something shake with whatever resources you have. outside of the situations where you have to compete against Good Ol Boy circuits ie. Interviewing at Google when they tend to only hire Stanford Grads.

This is why earlier in the thread I stressed setting expectations, because its real out in the field and folks have to realize you are competing in a GLOBAL market. You might have been the best thing smoking in your UG class but what about that cat in Ghana,London,India or Japan who came from nothing and is trying to make it, the grind is real.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

bruh who are you telling.

Its NEVER about being the Smartest when it comes to corporate America, because 9 times out of 10 the Smartest never make it to the top its the ones with the best hustle. I went to a small HBCU state school that lacked the resources of other state schools like G Tech, Emory, UGA which are some of the best Universities in the nation, where the talent is amazing but they dont teach kids how to HUSTLE and get what you want. I beat out people from top universities for my last two jobs, because I knew what it was like to be at the bottom and coming from an environment where people dont expect you to become anything because you dont have the big name school on your resume.

I really feel that if you have the hustle in your heart, you will make something shake with whatever resources you have. outside of the situations where you have to compete against Good Ol Boy circuits ie. Interviewing at Google when they tend to only hire Stanford Grads.

This is why earlier in the thread I stressed setting expectations, because its real out in the field and folks have to realize you are competing in a GLOBAL market. You might have been the best thing smoking in your UG class but what about that cat in Ghana,London,India or Japan who came from nothing and is trying to make it, the grind is real.

I went to an HBCU as well for UG, knowing it wasn't the biggest name I made a name for myself by getting the really competitive internships and outdoing the people from the premier institutions. By the time I graduated it didn't matter what school I went to, what really stood out was the top level internships.

I'll say this though, when you bring that same hustle to a school that does have resources you're unstoppable. For me that was Texas A&M. Their engineering career fair is so big that they have to hold it in the basketball arena on the actual floor and the upper deck area. Literally my 2nd week of being at A&M is when I got the job offer from Apple. You go from trying to get noticed to having to turn down opportunities because you can't take them all. Samsung, Apple, MS, Space X, Sandia Labs, Rolls Royce (not their car division), Lockheed Martin, all the spy agencies, Google, etc.

College doesn't necessarily make you smarter, but if done strategically it can put you in an excellent position to absolutely thrive. As a matter of fact my next major move involves college, but it's going to be at the Ivy League/Stanford level and that's to take advantage of the global connections and to team up with other motivated students looking to go a level above working for someone. I have my applications in, I'll know more in the coming months, until then it's coding 5 days a week for 6-8 hours a day.

 

[4318michaeljohnson4318]

I will say from my experience in Florida my college made a difference because where I decided to work for does not recruit at USF, FAU, FIU. Only FSU(technically includes famu I believe they share same engineering career fair along with college), UF, UCF. It's how you use your opportunities. I know classmates that made it to Silicon Valley just off their extracurriculars in school top rated programming team and back to back national champion hacking team. But as well I know people who graduated and went to work help desk for the school if not worse. Hustle will get you far but sometimes that door opening is only at certain locations. After underground tho it's all hustle.

Also don't underestimate the who you know aspect. At my last internship of undergrad two of the girls hired got there just off personal connections. Two of the girls in my grad programming currently got in by personal connections. Corporate world is funny like that

 

[capital sb]

National organization career fairs open the doors to companies that usually only hire to top university students and don't recruit at your school.

 

[4318michaeljohnson4318]

National organization career fairs open the doors to companies that usually only hire to top university students and don't recruit at your school.

That is true we recruit from SHPE as well but the one person from it we hired went to Carnegie Mellon. Haven't heard of any black ones tho but I'm not in the loop on those organizations.

 

[yeah]

I will never forget the days of working on programming assignments for 12 hours straight for multiple days during UG.

I remember those days. Creating hashing functions from scratch, building binary search trees with no recursive methods..fun times. I was in the lab so much, other students thought I was the tutor.

Updated the application list. I'm going to avoid putting any paid learning resources in the OP, as those are more or less paid services rather than resources for all... Let me know if I missed anything.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

I humbly request less life coaching/expectation setting and more programming/coding/technical talk. We all know a crash course won't make you a legit, certified programmer, just like we also know that hustle and hard work will put you ahead of lazy competition. Pls stp the disserations and 2000 word essays. Pls.

 

[dathbgboy]

Who has personal websites that they've built, whether for school or leisure? I built my first site using a free theme from WordPress and tweaking it to my liking at the time, then I did a website redesign project w/ someone and went on to working on redoing mine but got distracted (story of my life man )

Anywho, here's a link to the struggle

 

[capital sb]

That is true we recruit from SHPE as well but the one person from it we hired went to Carnegie Mellon. Haven't heard of any black ones tho but I'm not in the loop on those organizations.

The best black engineering organization is NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers). NSBE holds the biggest engineering career fair in the US the last week of March annually.

I encourage all races to attend yearly . I owe everything to NSBE the connections you make, and seeing so many like minded people that look like you is life changing.

 

[HankHill]

^ Yeah I got my internships through NSBE.

To be honest I don't even know if hustle got me to where I am. I think it was the combination of work and me having the personality that does well in interviews. I knew I wasn't the smartest guy in the classroom, but I was still getting decent to good grades and they could see that. I saw I got positions over some really smart individuals during undergrad, and the only reasons I could come up with is that they have no interview skills and/or are just weird individuals that won't work well with position's team. Smart, Black, and handsome ftw

To fit on topic:

Try to find a development group in your community. You can search on meetup.com.

 

[yeah]

Who has personal websites that they've built, whether for school or leisure? I built my first site using a free theme from WordPress and tweaking it to my liking at the time, then I did a website redesign project w/ someone and went on to working on redoing mine but got distracted (story of my life man )

Anywho, here's a link to the struggle

Bruh Its actually not as bad as you think. Its not throwing any major errors and it doesn't have any "exposed code," so you're actually ahead of the game.

I honestly need to create a site like this so that I have something beyond LinkedIn. If you want some help updating your site, holla. I've created little profile sites to showcase particular projects, but nothing like a personal portfolio. Would be cool to shake the web design dust off while helping out.

 

[dathbgboy]

Who has personal websites that they've built, whether for school or leisure? I built my first site using a free theme from WordPress and tweaking it to my liking at the time, then I did a website redesign project w/ someone and went on to working on redoing mine but got distracted (story of my life man )

Anywho, here's a link to the struggle

Bruh Its actually not as bad as you think. Its not throwing any major errors and it doesn't have any "exposed code," so you're actually ahead of the game.

I honestly need to create a site like this so that I have something beyond LinkedIn. If you want some help updating your site, holla. I've created little profile sites to showcase particular projects, but nothing like a personal portfolio. Would be cool to shake the web design dust off while helping out.

No doubt, I'm working on one right now and I'm kinda cheating on it (using coding tools already created) just to get it up and then update legitimately once I get it up and running. I've never done a website using FTP where I was the one uploading it so it's going to be a learning experience for me.

You on GitHub, I'll add you to the respiratory so you can check out what I got so far.

 

[HankHill]

Who has personal websites that they've built, whether for school or leisure? I built my first site using a free theme from WordPress and tweaking it to my liking at the time, then I did a website redesign project w/ someone and went on to working on redoing mine but got distracted (story of my life man )

Anywho, here's a link to the struggle

I just sent you an invite on linkedin. If you need help with designing etc I can try to assist. I'll pm my portfolio I'm working on (I don't post personal link an the board).