The Treacherous Road to Employment!

Ronald Rowe — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 19:12:06 +0000

The twists and turns we all experience while looking for that new gig. Let alone a new career, it can be overwhelming.

Currently, I'm attempting my third shot at finding an open door into the programming world. The third time is the charm or so they say LOL! 🤞

My first experience emboldened me. I got quite a few offers right out of college, although the majority of them required relocation. They were to states that I didn't know anything about or anyone. It was hard to turndown, but with a young family it was too risky.

Then low and behold the "too good to be true" job! A remote position with just a few in-office meetings. 🥳️ I completed the phone interviews and simple code review (not a test). Everything was falling into place.

The code review was explaining what a couple of pages of code were doing. It was written in a language I was unfamiliar with and without any comments, but the variable names were enough. It accessed a database to check usernames for birthdates to confirm age verification. My response was met with satisfaction!

Then the BIG BLOW...

Due to fears of an economic recession the company decided to downsize the project, eliminating the need for ME. ☹️ Fortunately, I had a separate career opportunity present itself.

Fate???

It has supported my family and allowed me to have a stable lifestyle. Though it has shortfalls, mainly little room to grow and lack of testing mental aptitude. I'm eager to grow and put my mind to use!

Then I jumped into a Google Python course through Coursera. It was a great interactive program that got me excited about programming again.

So I was back on the road to finding that developer job. I pulled back onto the road just to get T-boned by Covid-19. Well, we all know what happened to the job market during 2020.

It did open quite a few more remote jobs after things started to stabilize. Only to be flooded with resumes from 100s of hopeful developers. Yikes! Impossible!

I received a few of the generic email responses from places that I applied to, but not much interest. I was stumped. Yes, there were hundreds of great resumes but mine got me to the proverbial door before, what's changed?

Life kept me busy and I gave the job hunt another break.

Then I woke up one day and realized it is time. So I started to look at my resume and online presence. My resume looked bleak and my GitHub was simply a disaster. No wonder there was no interest in my last attempt.

I have started to expand and improve my online footprint so that it will be easier to see what kind of programmer I am. Also, I have started to research cities with greater tech opportunities.

What challenges or roadblocks have you encountered battling the job market? How have you been able to succeed? Feel free to share your experience or leave words of encouragement to everyone on this journey!

#Commenting Code... Before, During, or After?

Ronald Rowe — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 18:16:47 +0000

I'm not here to give a lesson on commenting code, rather I'm hoping to learn a thing or two. Comment at will!

Commenting code, oh all the things we have heard about this topic. No matter how many different thoughts or ideas there are on this subject, we can agree on a few main points.

Comments should explain what and/or why, not how.
Good comments don't excuse bad code.
Comments need to be brief but informative.

Utilizing the During method of commenting code must be for the experienced developer. The ability to maintain concentration effortlessly while breaking for only a moment to efficiently comment where needed is quite impressive. I get so focused on the task at hand, I'd worry breaking my concentration would cause me to lose my train of thought. This would be ideal to complete projects with as little backtracking as possible. The things I have to work on and look forward to!

Commenting After getting the function working is what I find works best. This makes me take that second look at my work before moving on. As being a newer programmer it is advantageous to self-review your work. You have to backtrack through your code, but you more than makeup for what you lose in efficiency. You often catch easy mistakes, redundant code, or errors that will lead to issues in the future.

The other day I decided to create a little program in Python to find prime numbers in a range with a user inputting the maximum. After getting it working I decided I better practice commenting as well. Redundant Code! Well, that was just the first thing I noticed and fixed. I also had forgotten to check the input value, negative numbers cannot be prime. This was accomplished by just commenting on my code using the After method.

primeList = []
numerator = 2
#loop through numerators to be checked
while numerator <= maxNum:
    z = 0
#Redundant Code!
#    if numerator % primeList[z] == 0:
#       numerator+=1
#    else:
#         z+=1
#loop through prime factors
#should have iterated using for loop
    while len(primeList) > z:
        if numerator % primeList[z] == 0:
            numerator+=1
            break
        else:
             z+=1
#add prime factor to primeList
    if z == len(primeList):
        primeList.append(numerator)
        numerator+=1

Finally, the Before method is more of creating an outline for your code in comments. Usually based on tech notes or steps you have come up with as they often contain the what or why. These can assist you in starting to create good comments. I can see this being an option as I progress on my journey. It will allow me to maintain focus and have a guide as I code. Now that we got the boring but necessary comments out of the way we can get to work! It will take some practice to be able to prewrite all necessary comments. So I can see where this style might need the help of one of the others to truly work.

Commenting our code can seem tedious and pointless, but it will help future developers. It will help the less experienced most, but may even be helpful to the original developer one day. Finding your style or combination of styles is key to success in reducing the dread of commenting. Feel free to let me know what works best for you or any tips or tricks you might have found along the way.

DEV Community: Ronald Rowe

The Treacherous Road to Employment!

#Commenting Code... Before, During, or After?