Steven Allan

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since Mar 25, 2015
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Recent posts by Steven Allan

Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:Cracking into programming has a high barrier to entry. You will be competing against people who have 4 more years of college than you and 20 years younger than you.

Programming is an applied science. It's not enough to learn programming. WHen you become a programmer, you have to understand the domain that you are trying to write programs for. This means, if you are succesful, you end up learning enough to get a assosciate's level degree some other domain. Being able to learn the domain is a skill that many programmers out of college don't have There is a huge demand in the industry for people who can blend programming knowledge with other kinds of knowledge. That is where your strength is. Yes, it's 10 years old. But I bet you can catch up on genetics much faster than a 22 year old with a BE can!



Indeed! I realise I've set myself a challenge. Challenges I like, and and am prepared to take on. Huge challenges I'm equally happy to take on. However, I'm grounded enough not to embark upon exercises in futility so I'm happy to listen to advice and make sure that my chances are realistic, even if they are difficult.


Even if you don't want to go into product management, you might want to think about using your strength to your benefit.



Definitely - good point!


Based on your description of your demo application, you definitely qualify as a junior programmer. Perhaps somewhere between Junior and mid-level. If you have used the technologies well, you can definitely say you are a mid-level developer. You might want to have that project critiqued by someone in the industry. Generally, mid-level developers are "individual contributors". You can give them a design, and expect them to bang out code. Junior programmers need hand-holding. If you have done all that without help, and done it well, I would consider you mid-level.



That's certainly encouraging! Aside from some of the JQuery, as I'd only skimmed through the Heads First book on the matter, it was all my own work and I managed to figured it all out myself. Not especially quickly though I have to say - but I managed to be able to look at the problems, the functionality I needed and work out how to implement it all.

Other than web applications I can trickle along quite nicely - for example on Stackoverflow I can understand and answer all beginner and homework questions of CS students! :-D And also many intermediate questions as well, and if I can't I generally manage to think of a way that I might tackle it - just as an exercise in getting used to problem-solving and thinking things out.
9 years ago
Chris:

Definitely food for though, and thank-you again for all your ideas.


Jayesh:

Thanks for your reply. Interesting suggestion, but I decided to cease work as a doctor a long time back as I found the culture of the National Health Service in the UK quite unbearable, although there were many other more-important reasons. Also, this was ten years ago, and my science degree even longer so I couldn't possibly claim to be at the top of my game here and remember all that much about either field. However, I suppose it boils down to a pretty grim determination to take a crack at trying for a entirely new career in programming. That said, thanks again and it's not a suggestion that I will automatically discount :-)
9 years ago
Interesting. I'd actually not thought of that kind of area, which possibly seems a little slack of me - certainly a possibility, so thanks.

I guess I was viewing web application work as a favoured field, but then I'm certainly not looking to limit my options at all - anything goes really!
9 years ago
Thank-you Chris - I appreciate your post.

My degree was in Genetics and Microbiology, and I worked in a couple of laboratories and as a field researcher, followed by starting a degree in Medicine at Barts and the London. So, yes, I can certainly demonstrate experience in fields that absolutely require accuracy, good data-handling skills and numeracy.

I moved on from that and ran my own medical videography company, and then later on a medical supplies company. A mixture of recession and (genuine) bad luck killed this off - so hence needing a career change. Having tinkered on-and-off, to a minor degree, since the age of 8 with computer programming I figured that this is what I would most enjoy doing.

I'll check your suggested link, and, thanks again for the suggestion and your help :-)
9 years ago
Hi all. I'll try to keep this as succint as possible, but I'd really appreciate any advice that you are able to offer regarding how realistic it is for me to attempt to apply for a junior position, or if not, what other steps I should take?

I'm a self-taught programmer - I started 8 months ago, which I grant you isn't particularly long, but due to personal circumstances I've been able to devote an average of about 7-8 hours per day, pretty much every day.

Formal qualifications:

I've no CS degree - mine is a science subject, so the only thing I can offer up is the OCAJP V8 which I've just recently passed. I do intend to take the OCJP, but I'm not sure I can face it quite yet!

Experience:

Sadly none.

Factors against:

Im 41. I realise that there is some ageism abound, however I have no intention of dropping dead quite yet, and the way the UK is going the retirement age will probably be 307 before too much longer anyway.

Project:

Obviously I realise that I need to have something to showcase so I decided to write a web application that is a media server. The fictious scenario is that it could be used by a chain of pubs / restaurants etc to play their music to customers.

I've used Spring, Hibernate and JQuery

Functionality:

Users can create profiles, login and edit their profile.
Upload single songs, or entire albums.
If the latter then cover art is automatically downloaded from the MusicBrainz cover art archive.
Simple search function for searching songs, artists, albums
Pagination of returned data from search and profile pages that organises the returned JSON data into artists, albums and genres.
Play songs (or video for that matter) using embedded JPlayer
Friend system that allows users to access other's music collection - i.e. imagine two pubs / bars with similar clientele can share songs.

Does this seem reasonable enough?

I realise there's a lot of similar posts about the level required to go for a junior position, so I hope this isn't too cheeky to ask whether I'm at that level, still have work to do, or whether I'm just plain kidding myself!
Anyway, I'm rambling so thanks for reading!
9 years ago