DEV Community: QAvsDEV

Programming Myths vs Facts

QAvsDEV — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:38:36 +0000

Introduction

Time to dispel some pesky programming myths. You may have heard - or even believe - some of them. Well, you're in luck, because they're simply not true.

Let's go

Do you need a degree?

Myth: You need a computer science degree to get a job as a developer.

Fact: This just isn't true. Period.

There is so much demand for developers that companies can't afford to overlook people without CS degrees. And why should they? As with any job out there, having a degree doesn't guarantee that the person will perform well at their job. That's why most companies rely on coding interviews and sample tasks to check your skills. If you can deliver the goods, you'll get the job. BTW here are some useful free resources that will help you learn programming on your own.

Do you even google?

Myth: Real developers don't use Google to solve problems.

Fact: All developers, regardless of experience, google stuff all the time.

If you're fresh out of school, you'll be used to memorizing stuff for exams. Having a job isn't like that at all. No one expects you to know everything or to have some topic completely memorized. Most of the time you'll just have a vague idea on how to approach a task and then you'll google the hell out of it. Google will probably lead you to Stack Overflow. So, if you look over a programmer's shoulder and there aren't at least 10 Stack Overflow tabs open, he's probably not doing any important work at the moment.

What about math?

Myth: You have to be good at math to be a programmer.

Fact: In most applications, there's very little math required.

Sure, if you're building you own physics engine or writing machine learning algorithms, you'll need some serious math. However, 99% of development jobs require just these two: check if a number is even or odd and calculate some simple percentage. Even if you encounter something more complex, there's a very good chance that someone's already written code to do it. Just google it.

Is one programming language enough?

Myth: You need to be 'fluent' in several programming languages to get a good job.

Fact: You can make big bucks writing Rust. Or you can be a full-stack developer with JavaScript. Or you can develop apps for Android, iOS and Windows using C#.

It's better to know one language really well than to be mediocre at multiple. However, you'll need to be familiar with various different technologies and know how to connect them in a meaningful way. For frontend development, JavaScript is useless without HTML, CSS, and some frontend framework like Angular, Vue or React. And almost any language is basically useless without technologies such as HTTP, RESTful APIs, JSON, databases, Git etc. But the good news is that you don't need to know how they work under the hood. You just need to learn to use them.

How to get to 10X?

Myth: Learning some magical programming language will make you a 10X developer. Other languages are too slow / built poorly / not strict enough.

Fact: Solving real-world problems in a maintainable, efficient and scalable manner is what makes you a 10X developer.

As long you don't pick an esoteric language like Brainfuck or Piet, you can get the job done. When starting out, however, it helps to pick a popular language. This will make it much easier to google your way out of problems when you get stuck. If you can't decide which one to pick, check out this post.

Any other programming myths?

If you have some other beliefs that are holding you back from jumping into learning programming, feel free to leave them in the comments. We'll do our best to answer your questions and give you honest feedback.

What programming language should I learn first?

QAvsDEV — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 14:58:48 +0000

Introduction

Are you feeling overwhelmed and don't know which programming language you should learn first? Well, you've come to the right place.

In this post, we'll list some of the most popular programming languages and explain what you can do with them. The goal of this post is to help you pick one of the languages and start coding.

Learning programming concepts is much more important than learning any specific programming language. That's because the concepts are independent of programming languages. If you'd like an intro on that, feel free to download our e-book.

Let's start with the list.

Note: All the code examples represent roughly the same program written in different languages for easy comparison.

Python

Python is one of the most popular programming languages in the last decade, especially for beginners.

It has a large number of libraries that can be used for various branches of the industry. It's also extremely popular for QA automation tasks.

It's a very easy language to learn: it uses indentation instead of curly braces and it does not need to use semicolons. Since it's easy to learn, it's often the language of choice for people that are not programmers - like scientists, mechanical engineers, accountants, etc.

What it looks like?

import json
data = json.loads('{ "foo": 1, "bar": [10, "apples"] }')

sample = { "blue": [1,2], "ocean": "water" }
json_string = json.dumps(sample)

print(json_string)

What's it used for? data science, data visualization, machine learning, task automation, web development (server-side), game development, etc.

Where can I learn it? Automate the boring stuff with Python - a great online resource to learn Python from. It has an introduction to Python after which it shows you how to solve some everyday tasks.

JavaScript

JavaScript or JS is the programming language that some people love and some people hate. It's used to develop interactive web pages or applications. About 97% of pages use JS on the client-side to control web page behavior. It's usually used in combination with HTML and CSS.

It also has a large number of libraries that help you easily solve various types of tasks.

What it looks like?

var data = JSON.parse('{ "foo": 1, "bar": [10, "apples"] }');

var sample = { "blue": [1,2], "ocean": "water" };
var json_string = JSON.stringify(sample);

console.log(json_string)

What's it used for? frontend web development, backend web development (Node.js), game development (browser games), mobile applications (React Native)

Where can I learn it? The Odin Project - a page that offers a full-stack JavaScript path for free. Do we need to say more?

Java

(Do not confuse Java with JavaScript, they are not similar at all)

Java is another versatile programming language. It was and still is a pretty popular language, mainly because of the Java virtual machine that enables to run Java code on many different types of devices. Its syntax is similar to C and C++, but unlike them, it's not a low-level language, which makes it much more friendly to beginners.

What it looks like?

import com.google.gson.Gson;

public class JsonExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Gson gson = new Gson();
        String json = "{ \"foo\": 1, \"bar\": [ \"10\", \"apples\"] }";

        MyJsonObject obj = gson.fromJson(json, MyJsonObject.class);

        System.out.println(obj.getFoo());

        for(String bar : obj.getBar()) {
            System.out.println(bar);
        }

        obj = new MyJsonObject(2, new String[] { "20", "oranges" });
        json = gson.toJson(obj);

        System.out.println(json);
    }

}

What's it used for? web development (server-side) - good for large enterprise applications, desktop applications (Windows and Linux), mobile development (Android apps - however, Kotlin is now more popular for Android developers)

Where can I learn it? Programiz - a site that explains Java from scratch

C#

C# is a programming language developed by Microsoft. It's similar to Java and is considered to be its direct rival. There is nothing much to add without going into unnecessary details.

What it looks like?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var people = new Dictionary<string, object> {{"1", "John"}, {"2", "Susan"}};
        var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();

        var json = serializer.Serialize(people);
        Console.WriteLine(json);

        var deserialized = serializer.Deserialize<Dictionary<string, object>>(json);
        Console.WriteLine(deserialized["2"]);

        var jsonObject = serializer.DeserializeObject(@"{ ""foo"": 1, ""bar"": [10, ""apples""] }");
        var data = jsonObject as Dictionary<string, object>;
        var array = data["bar"] as object[];
        Console.WriteLine(array[1]);
    }
}

What's it used for? web development (server-side), desktop applications (Windows), game development (Unity), mobile development (Xamarin)

Where can I learn it? Microsoft's official page - it has a bunch of video tutorials and documentation

Go

Go or Golang is a fast and easy-to-learn programming language developed by a team at Google. It has the ability to support concurrency in a non-blocking way which makes it scalable when you need to run multiple concurrent processes. It's still a relatively young language, which can have its disadvantages. However, many people love using Go for its simplicity and more and more companies are starting to use it for some of their processes.

What it looks like?

package main

import "encoding/json"
import "fmt"

func main() {
    var data interface{}
    err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(`{"foo":1, "bar":[10, "apples"]}`), &data)
    if err == nil {
        fmt.Println(data)
    } else {
        fmt.Println(err)
    }

    sample := map[string]interface{}{
        "blue":  []interface{}{1, 2},
        "ocean": "water",
    }
    json_string, err := json.Marshal(sample)
    if err == nil {
        fmt.Println(string(json_string))
    } else {
        fmt.Println(err)
    }
}

What's it used for? infrastructure, web development (server-side), data science, machine learning

Where can I learn it? Golang BootCamp - a book that has everything you need to know to start with Golang

Ready to learn programming?

In this short post we gave you some directions which will help you choose your first programming language. Decide on one of the programming paths above and then pick a language to go with it.

If you can't decide, then we'd suggest you pick Python. It's the easiest one to learn on the list and you'll have a good chance finding a job with it.

If you're interested in the popularity of each language and what's the average salary of developers working in that language, then check out the StackOverflow 2022 survey.

What are you waiting for? Pick one language and start! Let us know in the comments which one you've picked.

Transitioning into development – a personal story

QAvsDEV — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 13:52:23 +0000

Why am I writing this?

Hey, there. I'm Jan, the co-author of QAvsDEV.

Transitioning into development from an unrelated background might be scary. However, I'm a living, breathing example of someone who landed multiple programming jobs without any Computer science background.

I hope my story will encourage you to be persistent in learning programming and not to give up on the job you want.

What the hell was I thinking?

Before focusing on IT, I was studying Philosophy and Latin. Yeah, Latin. Even though I was pretty good at it, it won't come as a surprise that they weren't many jobs lined up for me after graduation. Go figure.

When that fact dawned on me, I started expanding my horizons a little bit. Since I was interested in technology, I started looking into computer programming. I soon realized that I could automate various things related to text search, like counting occurrences of certain words and phrases.

Thankfully, a lot of Latin texts are available in digital format, so I started there. I found it mind-boggling that almost no one in my field was using this to speed up their work. They were still flipping through dusty pages of moldy books, relying on their own memory and hand-written notes to find patterns in texts.

Even though I just started learning programming, I was able to get pretty decent results out of simple text-search automation. I centered my entire Master's thesis around a few scripts I cobbled together - and it worked. Not only I was able to graduate, but it also opened my eyes to the world of programming and automation.

My first programming experience

My first programming language was Perl. This wasn't a result of deep research, not by a long shot. I found out that someone who was doing text automation used Perl, so I started using it too.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't recommend learning it. It has a pretty strange syntax and the code is often hard to read and understand, especially for beginners. If you're unsure which programming language is right for you, check out this post.

After this initial experience, I started my exploring spree. I was tinkering with all the languages and all the technologies I could get my hands on. I was doing tutorials left and right, barely scratching the surface of each thing before moving on to something else.

Looking back on it now, this was the wrong approach. In the beginning, it's far better to concentrate on only one programming language and then slowly expand to other technologies that surround it. For example, if you start with JavaScript, go on to learn HTML and CSS; if you choose Python, learn about HTTP and how to connect to a database; if you pick C#, learn about the .NET Framework. Don't learn other programming languages until you really need to.

I finally realized that I learned more about programming doing my Master's thesis than by going through an endless list of tutorials. That's because I was solving an actual problem I was interested in and not dealing with someone else's made-up examples.

So I picked one last project in my field of study - creating a website with resources about the Latin language. This forced me to deepen my JavaScript knowledge, learn about web development, and figure out how to deploy a website on a server.

Getting a job

Once I understood programming fundamentals and a few crucial technologies used in software development, I felt confident enough to start applying for junior developer positions. I don't remember how many applications I've sent, but I'm sure it was at least 20.

At long last, a small company gave me a chance. They were looking for a junior iOS developer with some experience in web development. Even though I didn't know Objective-C, I applied and got an interview.

The interview consisted of questions about various technologies and algorithms, as well as some coding exercises. They explained that, if I got accepted, my job would be to develop mobile apps for the iOS platform. Since I had no experience in that, I went home and didn't expect to hear from them.

To my surprise, they sent me an email inviting me to the second round of interviews the following week! I decided not to waste any time and started learning Objective-C right away. Since I understood programming concepts well, I got the hang of it fairly quickly and built my first iOS app. It was just a basic percentage calculator, with an input field, a slider and a text label. I wasn't asked to do any of this, but I thought it would improve my chances of getting the job.

On my next interview, I was hesitant to show them my simple app, but I did it anyway. This demonstrated two things - I was ready to take initiative and I was a fast learner. And this is what got me the job at the end, not some specific language or technology.

My academic background didn't matter; my inexperience didn't matter; my age didn't matter. I graduated in Humanities; I had only a few small projects to show; I was 27 years old.

What did matter was being curious, motivated and persistent.

Learn by doing

I stayed at my first job for a little more than a year. After my iOS days, I've worked as a full-stack web developer and a QA automation engineer. I wanted to broaden my skill set and gain first-hand experience in different facets of software development.

During these jobs I learned that there's no stand-in for real-life experience. Reading books, watching tutorials and going through courses will get you only so far. To gain real knowledge of a topic, you need to put in a lot of work, day in, day out.

That's why you'll learn the most on the job, where you need to complete each given task, where you can't just jump to something else when it gets hard or you get bored of it.

This also means you must NOT avoid job opportunities in technologies you don't fully understand. And the truth is that you won't understand them until you solve actual, real-world problems using that specific technology. You'll feel uncomfortable applying to jobs with insufficient experience, but if you wait until you feel completely confident, you'll never get a job.

Main takeaways

The most important thing is to just start. There's no perfect timing or language or technology - you can always change things later if you get serious about programming.

Also, don't worry about code quality early on. Start coding as a hobby, have fun, and try to solve problems which are meaningful to you. Maybe you will turn this into a career, maybe you won't. But, whatever you do, don't get discouraged before you give it your best shot.

If you're just staring out, check out the e-book that my colleague and I put together. It will help you go from having zero programming experience to writing your first program. There you can also subscribe to our newsletter which will help you build the tech skills you need to get the tech job you want.

Questions?

I hope this post gave you a boost of confidence to start your programming journey! If you have any questions about the process, leave them in the comments below.