Quote: Original post by superpig
One should learn to solve problems, be rational, and explain things well. If you've got those, you'll find you can program anyway.

But in fact I think that for most people programming, if pursued at an early age (say junior high), is a fantastic route that leads to the ability to solve problems and be rational. In addition it is a totally useful skill to have whether one is a programmer by trade or not.

Quote: Original post by shuma-gorath
Learning to program can provide one a partial understanding of why it takes a certain amount of time for games and other software to come out.

It would be especially nice if project managers for software projects had this kind of understanding...

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
Through my previous work in tutoring math, computer science, and physics, as well as micro-consulting on home PC systems, I've learned that, for most computer users, they think A) the computer does what it does by magic, B) the computer is smarter than them, and C) if they "do something wrong", they will make the computer catch on fire. Learning to program exposes each of these as the myths they are.

but I did something wrong and then my computer started on fire...

"Why should learn to program?" - Its a very good question many may ask why to learn programming? well u could give one reason - "If people want to create games they should learn to program " other reasons may be
"You create something when you program aren't there creative people in world who want to do something creative but just don't know what .Wouldn't everyone be interested to create something??Like a game or a graphics software or something
Do u want to create things which others might use?

Alright if this is boring u lets take another angle to look at it.
Why do people don't want to learn programming?
ok lets see some say its a very boring task
its a waste of time
its not necessary
others say
only nerds and stupids do it
its very hard

okay for question:-

1) It may seem boring but its not always some times the things that u porgram are rewarding and wonderful

2)its not a complete waste of time. U are making something or creating it. It can be done as a hobby.

3)Well its not always necessary but like many other things like watchig tv etc. etc. Are they really necessary?You can always pursue it as a hobbyetc.

4)Only nerds and Stupids do it thats not true in thefield of programming there are many intelligent people like Microsoft Game Studios,EA Sports Game Developers,IBM,Apple and lots more.........
Anyway specific parts of programming like game design require alot of logic and understanding

5)Well some languages are hard but ommit programming because some Big C++,C,COBOL,Assembler,Delphi or any other tlanguage like it seems tough try starting with extremely easy ones like BASIC,VB.............etc.
then if u want or need to do it go for the tough ones(C,C++,JAVA,.. or whatever it is)

Quote: Original post by RivieraKid
what is fun about being a security consultant or a solutions architect?

It's fun for me because that field genuinely interests me. It's something I can analyse and look into, gets me thinking about things. Not just banging out Java, creating an app I'll never use for customers I'll never meet (because the managers deal with the clients), for £pisstake.

What's fun about being a developer again?

Quote:
Senior Software Engineer is a great job and you can definitely get more than £50k.

Yes, if you're in a high(ish) flying, non-coding role at a company with more money than sense (a multinational bank, for example); don't expect a decent salary if you're actually writing the code.

Quote:
If your a crap software developer then it probably is stale drone work.

*you're

It's also to do with the dumb culture and politics that seems to surround software development. Most of the software engineers I've worked with have been unpleasant, unprofessional and have overinflated views of their own ability and an "I'm always right because I write code" mentality. A lot of them go on about "I know how to use awk", "Perl is really easy", "We use Java because I prefer it", they were just full of it. Don't even get me started on the managers, that's a whole other thread in itself.

In contrast, all of the sysadmins, DBAs, solutions architects, QA... absolute diamonds - great people to work with and I'd far rather be one of them, which is advantageous as I'm interested in their respective lines of work. A lot of developers aren't very bright, aren't from auspicious academic backgrounds (and sneer at those who are) and it just proves that any nugget can write a few lines of code and get a job.

Stuff like security consultancy and solutions architecture actually need someone who is capable. There are too many mediocre to bloody useless programmers in this world, and each year thousands more march out of Universities and straight into the entry-level code monkey positions, because that's all they know and all they've been taught near regardless of the institution they went to.

No way I'm getting involved with people like that. By all means go back to your code, but I won't be joining you.

Quote: Original post by ukdeveloper

Quote:
Senior Software Engineer is a great job and you can definitely get more than £50k.

Yes, if you're in a high(ish) flying, non-coding role at a company with more money than sense (a multinational bank, for example); don't expect a decent salary if you're actually writing the code.

£50K comes to about $75K USD according to Google today. $75K is about an average salary for a decent coder with a couple years' experience around here, and it's quite a bit higher some places in the US. I'm actually hunting for a few good employees in that salary range right now.

Quote: Original post by ukdeveloper
[...]Indeed. Not only is software development stale drone work, it's also pretty badly paid. If you're considered to be good at it, your salary will probably cap out at £50k. Considering the security consultants and solutions architects who can earn £85k+ without a sweat, it's pathetic pay for a truly crap job.[...]

If software development is stale drone work for little pay, you're working on the wrong project at the wrong company. Also, paper qualifications don't mean anything. I know many productive geniuses with no paper qualifications and plenty of unproductive idiots that have more paper qualifications than they have sense or shame.

Quote: Original post by BeanDog
£50K comes to about $75K USD according to Google today. $75K is about an average salary for a decent coder with a couple years' experience around here, and it's quite a bit higher some places in the US. I'm actually hunting for a few good employees in that salary range right now.

I won't claim about pounds, but as far as EUR goes, the realistic conversion is 1:1.

All tech stuff that costs USD X costs EUR X. And in US there are other discounts, so it's often cheaper than that. Cost of housing, excluding some hotspots in West and East of US is usually higher in continental Europe (lack of space, old cities, supply/demand and such). Gas prices - enough said. Taxation - with various social benefits, mandatory taxes in EU can approach 50%, but not in single claim, and often calculated in a very convoluted way. Then there's the whole topic of creative accounting that is unspeakable of.

So currency differences simply aren't relevant, wages should be considered 1:1.

Quote: Original post by ukdeveloper
Stuff like security consultancy and solutions architecture actually need someone who is capable. There are too many mediocre to bloody useless programmers in this world, and each year thousands more march out of Universities and straight into the entry-level code monkey positions, because that's all they know and all they've been taught near regardless of the institution they went to.

No way I'm getting involved with people like that. By all means go back to your code, but I won't be joining you.

Oh come on, there isn't a single profession that isn't made up primarily by incompetend idiots with nice paper qualifications but no real competence. The fact that you happen to work with people in another field who aren't is good for you and all, but says just about nothing about the relative competence required for or present in either field.

Quote: Original post by ukdeveloper
Now, you have to remember that a UK "computer science" degree is four years of programming at basically all but the top two or three elite Universities in the country. Even if you do get a temporary break from the code, it'll come crashing back round at some point.

"Today, we're going to learn about DNS"..."here's some Java code that implements a DNS lookup"

"Here's a red-black tree"..."Your assignment for Thursday; write one from scratch"

"Time to start your final year project"..."lots and lots of perfect code, make sure you're following the proper software development lifecycle rigidly. No, you're not allowed to do a research based project - code code code code code"

Is this really the case? How are you so sure of this?

I can only speak from personal experience, but the University I attended and the handful I visited when considering where to apply all had a varied and research-led syllabus.

Of course there were a few SE and programming classes (which are obviously necessary and valuable), but the majority of the course focused on "real" computer science like computability and complexity theory, algorithms and data structures (would you rather a CS graduate had never implemented a red-black tree?). There were also some classes which were more applied and included a wealth of current research relating to AI, computer vision, visualisation, NLP etc.

Final projects were all research based (including my own), with the rare exception of someone simply producing a software product (who were usually people on split degrees e.g. computing for business).

Maybe I was just lucky enough to see only what goes on at these "top two or three elite Universities in the country" and the rest really are all teaching Programming 101 disguised as CS - perhaps you could name these elite establishments and see if I can expand your list by another two or three?

Quote:
The developers were generally the only people with no postgraduate qualifications. The infrastructure/sysadmin guys all had MCSEs, CCNAs etc. and one even had a LPT (License to Penetration Test); at internship #2, the lead DBA was Oracle certified. At both places the development team, while all high-level graduates, had no extra qualifications or certifications whatsoever.

I'm surprised that you place such value on these certifications but decry basically every CS degree in the country - many such certifications are little more than a way to make a few hundred pounds for the company offering the award. I have met several people who hold such certifications (not MCSE or CCNA specifically, but Oracle certified among others) and are nothing short of incompetent - some learn course content by rote without understanding the underlying principles of the systems they are dealing with. While they can definitely help you land a job, many of these certifications aren't worth the paper they're printed on in terms of actual competence. You also talk about the culture and politics around development as opposed to system/database administration, security and so on - I think a cursory bit of investigation will reveal that this culture is far from unique to developers.

You compare your experience of developers and their personalities to DBAs, sysadmins etc. But even if the divide has, in your experience, been as clear-cut as you describe it this doesn't say much about the situation nationally or globally - my own experiences certainly differ considerably. Your posts seem to alternate between saying that software developers are all stupid, unfriendly and unprofessional and claiming that they don't get paid enough. Really, it seems that there is likely to be some other, more specific reason why you are so disillusioned with software development.