All the companies that I have worked for over the years, have no concept of a technical career path. By that I mean one in which a designer/coder/architect as myself can continue to advance his career, yet stay doing what they love. Instead, they expect you to become a manager, pushing paper (or emails these days), managing budgets, go...
I've been programming professionally for about 8 years now. I started back in the 2001 working in c# and .net development. The past few months, I've found myself in what I would describe as a slump or rut. I'm having a hard time working up the level of passion I used to have for programming. Instead of wanting to stay up late figuring ou...
Skip paragraph for questions. I don't know if this is appropriate for this site, but here goes. I majored in CompSci in high school, which required me to take some basic computer classes(html, javascript, java, vb.net, networking, circuits, database management). I enjoyed my time in those classes and really liked coding. I cannot see my...
I've already read through a number of related questions about whether a Masters degree increases a developers ability and awareness, but one of the things I've struggled to understand is just how a Masters degree would help me. I'll be graduating in 2010 and with luck will have landed a place on a Masters degree course at a decent unive...
Hi all, I am a developer of about 2 years, who is looking to progress my career. I've mainly worked with Java up to now on various projects, and was considering trying to take the Sun Certified Java Programmer / Developer exams. Are these a useful thing to have on my CV and what are people's experience of them? Any opinions would be we...
As a college student, I've come to embrace Linux and the FOSS movement in general. I currently work at a small company which produces open source software for large-scale scientific computing. As I look to graduate school and beyond, how can I prepare myself for a career in FOSS development, and what are some of the leading companies t...
Let's say, for example, that a marketing group in your company asks you, a sole web developer, to build a widget (some type of web application, web feature, etc.) in 2 weeks. Given the following hypothetical facts: Your normal work duties involve building web pages in HTML and CSS and with a very limited knowledge of JavaScript. Buil...
I need to have a better understanding of cryptography, specially the mathematics behind some of the core concepts. However, my High School Maths knowledge has gone a bit blunt, and so I was wondering which topics I should revisit for this purpose? ...
Many are I'm sure familiar with the fact that lack of work experience with C# and .NET can create real career advancement impediments for Windows programmers. .NET was designed with the intention of making software development easier. The runtime's event model makes GUI programming more convenient than using MFC, WTL, or VB. ASP.NET o...
Recently I have been looking at jobs, and all of them require "X Years Experience in Y technology". If you have experience in Z technology (or multiple Z technologies) how can you get into jobs for Y technology? It seems they use this requirements as a filter and you must have this on your resume before they even look at you. Do you jus...
Hi All I am a developer with a BS degree in Computer Engineering, with around 6 years of chronological experience. I have been in a company which has seen changes and twists and turns. Unfortunately all of the projects I have been involved have either remained incomplete due to change in focus of the group or have been abandoned becaus...
I’m a telecommunications major who has taken the two intro programming classes as well as a data structures class. I’m not sure if I want to do networking or software development. Although I know several languages and am able to throw together quick and dirty solutions I don’t have a strong theoretical backround. What topics would you re...
One of my peers who reluctantly entered management is very technically capable, but an expert of an older platform. He is planning to get back into the Software Engineering side of things, and asked for my opinion on the most marketable platform to be an expert of for the next few years. I'm a Microsoft expert, so I offered up speciali...
There are many programmers who come from other backgrounds like engineering, physics or even social sciences. I have found myself programming more and more during my post graduate studies in the field of manufacturing and I am thinking about taking a programming job when I finish, because I find programming very creative and intellectual...
Here's a bit of a career-oriented question I've been pondering for a while. Have you thought about making a radical career or lifestyle change away from programming, some time in the future? If so, what? Or even better, have you or someone you know already done this? The way I see it is this: Programmers like challenges Many start o...
I know there is lots of question with the same sort of subject, but this question is specific to the IEEE CSDP Certification As I am currently living and working in Australia,I found that the IEEE CSDP is quite hard to see on people's resume. Most people just don't know what you are talking about. I've got some doubts whether is worth ...
Does anyone have any good suggestions, based on experience, for dealing with a VP/CTO who doesn't come from a Software background, but is very self confident in the ability to architect software and software development processes, even though all of the experience and recommendations are against industry standards, and often technically ...
I am currently having a bit of an internal war with myself. I am studying for the MCAD, and for reasons which I won't go in to here, the course has been dragging on for a few years now. The course expires in March of next year (2009) and I am very close to sitting the exam for the Web Developer cert. (70-315). Now, I think I can get th...
The last couple years have placedme in charge of system administrator at a couple of small companies I work at. Mostly on small dev machines running Linux, but a couple of times in the full spotlight of internet facing large scale systems. I am a strong developer, but a weak system administrator. I can run a basic LAMP stack, keep it ...
I do C# & ASP.NET programming for a large company. I'm a new employee who's only been here a few months - this makes the goal concept a bit hard to pin down for me. I'm not trying to trivialize the concept, I just really have no ideas. ...