So, I finally got my final assignment results and my degree classification, and that means I am officially a new Computer Science graduate. Now, I am expected to get a job.
I don't know who told the internet that though. Maybe its the hour I spent yesterday finally trying to fix my LinkedIn that has been essentially dead for months. Now, I am getting bombarded by videos of how LinkedIn is useless, most jobs are ghost jobs, entry-level are dead since everyone can just "do it with AI".
The remote work sphere doesn't look all to promising either. Fiverr is so full of listings that its practically impossible to be found, Upwork apparently expects you to spend money to make money and all other platforms I could find seem extremely shady, I'd rather find a gig on craigslist. There's sites with barriers to entry like Turing and Toptal, but I don't feel like the "top 1% of freelancers" that they advertise to their clients. I'll try these but I'm not all too hopeful.
I just feel tired. Every bit of me is scared of being unemployed but knows that that's probably my future for the next few months. I cannot bear to be one of those people who've sent out over 1000 applications. I don't even know what kind of role I am looking for. Am I an "entry level software developer"? What does that mean? How come those jobs seem to be literally nowhere? Why am I expected to have 5+ years of experience as a new grad? I've not even been in University for that long.
I don't have that typical tech-bro enthusiasm either. I am socially awkward, can barely go to those networking events where I'm expected to be excited about AI and I can't even do it online properly either (I have 658 useless LinkedIn connections for example).
It all just seems so bleak.
My thoughts are extremely fuddled right now and I mostly just want to go to sleep for a long time. I was so excited to be a coder, now I don't even know what being a coder means.
And if I hear one more boomer telling me about how in his day he was recruited for a job while still in university, I swear I'll lose it.
Top comments (10)
Okok came back after reading.
Now I kind of get the picture... a little?!
So I gave you a star on GH for that small-shop-owner-mini-erp.
Really be aware that I'm a dumb person:
I gave you the star for putting in work, but work+star without proper technical feedback is not really valuable.
I think the problem is that you are in vacuum (no talkie-talkie-showoff-reviewy)?!
Probably this is not the case, but if this the case...
I guess you need to break your questions into FE/BE
Your BE (Py+Fastapi) is popular, your FE part is a bit niche (Kotlin).
I'd not start first with Kotlin, because it is bigger and nicher.
I mean there's a vast ocean of React devlords, but Kotlin is small compared to that walmart.
Since BE is smaller, has less questions and more portable to other projects, it might be cool to start with that part. It is a smaller topic, so you can mentally hold it together easier, and due to the really limited scope: it is a good idea to try out with the small one.
Idk, I'm a dumbo. Might be good backwards. Your choice really.
talkie-talkie on other platforms
Are you still in contact with class mates (Discord idk)?
Did you look into forums (yes I know, Reddit, stackoverlow is a bad place but still places)?
You should talk to people about techie stuff, and even show-offs etc.
getting repo, questions, your state of progress together
If you prep up the repo a little, adding tiny READMEs (app, BE), then maybe formulating for yourself what kind of questions do you have, it might be cool.
I'd aim to find at least 3 questions, each about something you really really have a problem with it. The part which is messy and does not interest you, but you know it should (At least this is how my brain paints things that I do not fully understand. I'm scared of those topics.).
Maybe you won't even ask anyone, simply the act of housekeeping/cleaning and listing your internal questions can help.
I don't know about this dev.to platform, it seems to be ai-slop feed, but you can try connecting to people here.
For reaching people, I think there are 2 ways:
broadcast
Now if you take that list and turn it into a show-off/review-me and tag it accordingly, then it might reach people who are not as dumb as the person who is writing this comment.
Really tag it wisely, because this platform is really bad at keeping slop at bay.
It is highly likely that your stuff will be piled upon by ai slop.
direct message
I'd go guerilla. Doing a little bit of a favor for a person (reading article, constructive comment) then maybe asking if that person would be interested in talking with you about one of those questions perhaps. Maybe more. Maybe talkie reviewy whatever.
Now will come the worst part, for which I'm gonna be critiqued for...
You seem to be running this ok-boomer-world-is-bad vibe, so you are not entirely trustful of BIG ENGINEERS.
So maybe normal people like you might be more your cup of London Tea.
Here are some people I met days ago just by reading non-AI slop articles (as far as I am concerned they are not genAI... yes that's a thing... a user told me in my comment section that he's genAI-ing articles, likes, interactions jesus):
If you connect with them, tell them first it was my stupid idea, so they'll be angry at me instead of you.
Alexander Matveev, has a crazy article about benchmarking, but he's cool.
He was kind enough to share his story: He did that bench first in a kind of review-me way.
Got feedback, didn't give up, improved it, and now it is quite beefy.
He might be a worthy guy to at least ping.
here's his article
Please don't panic on the article, he was really cool on GH answering my stupid question.
Zamira Dzhatdoyev, is another person I read articles from.
I interacted with her about GH issues, was cool, even debugged a bit.
She does that exact same Python routine you do.
She's also into job-hunt post-university-trauma etc.
Her articles are more theoretical, pop-science-y, cultural.
My Cat Is Event-Driven and Honestly She's Better Architected Than Most Software I've Used
I think the title says it all, it won't be a profiling data dump.
These are just two people I met.
I'm quite a dumbo, but if I need some sort of connection to people to ask questions, or to reassure my understanding, I'd try them.
Worst thing that can happen is you get no answer, so it isn't exactly high risk.
Also... it might be good for them and you too if you just read their articles, maybe not fully, but they are funny people.
Once again: I'm dumb, maybe you are connected to friends/class mates on Discord and just posting here out of boredom. I do not know.
But in case you seriously truly need technical feedback, and maybe a little bit of friendly dev banter, consider them or whichever author on Dev.to seems to be relatable to you.
Conclusion
I cannot fully comprehend how bad the entire situation is.
But currently - based on commits - you are not giving up.
You are chiseling away at it, doing it, sometimes puting off, then coming back, but all in all hanging there.
I'm just saying that maybe a little bit of chit chat with people about techie stuff might give you a little bit of plus.
And... maybe you can listen to their gripes too about how messed up Python is or Kotlin is.
Maybe if you read their articles, like it, and have a cool feedback... that'll make them smile too for a sec.
This way of connecting to people is not a zero sum game. Capitalism is zero sum only imo, not human beings.
I'm a dumdum. If you want to vent you can talk to me, but don't expect me to provide lang and specific feedback on that
AuthActivity.kt._Hehe, I'm no Kotliner, but I know a forming god object when I see it. hehe _
I have zero idea either, but it is kind of like skatin' I think.
I have zero idea about what hardships you are going through, but if you do a 80-20 rule, it might be cool?! I guess?!?!
80% thinking about that current reality is bad
20% why did that line cause a segfault?!??!?!?!
This was kind of my split after I saw a masslayoff:
Not much later I started noob coding in Agda, because I wanted to show how nooby Uncle Bob is in Clojure. Agda is a language where you write formal proofs.
Am I now happier? No.
Do I have a formal proof that Uncle Bob writes noob code? Yes XD
Whatever you do, good luck!
Thank you so much for this. As I said in my previous comment, I was not expecting any interactions on my post let alone getting useful advice so thank you so much.
As for some of your questions,
Yes, I am in a complete vacuum. Largely because I am scared stiff of social interactions. I didn't make friends in uni since it was online and the most interaction I have with the tech community is watching YouTube videos and arguing in the comments. I'm also not very good at showing off. I don't think I've built anything I'm really proud of and I know everyone can see how blatantly bad my projects are. Which makes me scared of asking for feedback, you know? I know it's bad already. Or at least I think it is.
I'm not exactly sure what direction I'm taking right now. Working in Kotlin wasn't really because I wanted to, it was because I wanted to build something for Android and I'd previously tried using Kivy and realized that it is barely supported. I mostly vibecoded the Kotlin bit of that project honestly. I barely know what
AuthActivity.ktis for so I wouldn't even know how to ask for feedback on it 🥲. I do like Python and I'd say working with Python backend (or Express) is what I am most comfortable with.Yes I am the true definition of a doomer but I am not entirely distrustful of "BIG ENGINEERS". I'd say I'm more so disillusioned by them. I know they have good advice but at the same time I feel like they are still living in the utopia that was being a developer back when knowing how to use HTML, CSS and JS could get you a six-figure income. But I definitely don't distrust them.
First off, you don't seem that dumb to me.
I have no friends.
And, yes I was posting here out of boredom. Mostly because I didn't expect anyone to read my post. As you mentioned, I thought my posts would be fully buried by both AI slop content and actual content from more experienced devs who are giving proper advice. Also, I'm from the third world and we typically don't get that many interactions online, guess most people assume we're all scammers or something. I'd never even thought of using this platform to get feedback but now I just might. I'll try to get the balls to message the people you've recommended because I know I can't keep hiding behind fear forever. I'll be sure to mention that you sent me though, just in case.
I'd never heard of Agda but now my curiosity is peaked. I might look into it. I'll probably quit three days in but I'm curious still.
Thanks for the wishes, the star and the advice. I genuinely appreciate it.
Don't look into Agda, don't get derailed, it was just an example from my life.
(If you want to get derailed by nonsense, try Microsoft's Z3 it has Python API.)
YOUR LEARNING GOALs matter, you are the hero.
Imo the hardest part of learning: Keeping focus.
If you lose focus, you lose small goals.
If you don't have small goals, you lose the feeling of progress.
If you lose the feeling of progress, you'll get saddie.
If you get saddie, you turn corpo.
If you turn corpo, you'll forget how to laugh.
You choice, Python, is a versatile and good choice.
You can do a lot of things.
Just to weird you out about how many niche - meaning not so many competition - fishing spots are there, 2 examples:
Example 1 - 3D Art
Search Github user tothr94.
He is working at uni, did C, competitive programming -> no money.
So... he switched to Python, because...
There's a 3D free modeling software called Blender.
This guy can do image processing research there in Python.
Huge Money? No. Nobel Prize? No.
Fun? Yes. Huge Competitors like Google? No.
So, he found a small part of the pond which isn't overpopulated, and lives in that niche.
No lambo, no champagne, no stock options, but he's happy.
Example 2 - Backend for grown up men's imaginary space plushy toys
Search EVE Online, a strange and old MMO.
It is essentially a doink it toy for grown men.
It used Stackless Python, because stackless has some weird advantages.
Ofc it has huge disadvantages too, but financially it worked out for them for years.
Other thing:
Imo, what you started months ago, to set goals for yourself is good.
BUT... you missed the crucial point: Brain cannot be trained with whip, you need to give it cookies.
Set small goals too, so you get endorphin when you reach them.
Maybe if you tie rewards to them, it might even work better.
You have your own personality so I cannot give you advice.
For me, since I am dumb, I sometimes use "gifts" to game the unconscious.
If I do X, I can eat unhealthy food (don't think chocolate, think like weird local cuisine barely edible, dangerous, but tasty).
Or I earn the right to visit the local park's big old oak tree, sitting on top of a small hill, looking down a nice little pond, full of fishies.
Or I sometimes make myself uncomfortable by not allowing listening to music, but if I don't fall asleep learning about a hard problem, I earn the right to listen to music while doing the exercises for it.
This feels like childish, but if you think about it, for millions of years our species had direct feedback loop.
Brain self-whipped itself to force progress, but direct gains gave us rewards asap.
You wake up early so you can hunt -> You get yummy thing
Nowadays, especially with learning:
You study partial differential equations -> You get a B
Brain is like: ok, what to do with a letter?!?!?
The brain's self-torturing mechanism is still active, but the reward system is non-existent.
So we end up being subconsciously jaded and grumpy, because baby brain expected lollipop at the end.
Option A) is to do the rewards for yourself.
Option B) is to turn off the self-torturing/self-critique mechanism, but that removes our drive to strive for better.
Choosing Option B) is the Devil's Bargain. Do not take it.
My country took Option B).
This is how dogs look like in my country (this is not genai, this is my country's version of a dog, photographed mid-air, during jump):
Here's a hypothetical challenge for you:
Say I clone you, and put your clone in a room you cannot visit.
You can send inside only ONE package. Be it physical or digital.
You get 1 billion USD, if and only if you can make your clone smile (yumyum/aha/hihi would do it too).
If your clone does not smile, an asteroid will hit Earth which will cover the sky in ash, making the planet inhospitable to higher forms of life such as flowers, gazelles or Greg from Finance Department.
How confident are you that you can save Greg from Finance Department in this scenario?
Are you a good pal of yourself, or are you only pm-ing yourself, when you need a favor from yourself? (For me this is not a True/False, but fuzzy logic.)
All that you're saying makes sense. I just have no clue what I'm focusing on. I feel directionless honestly, like I'm stumbling in the dark. How did you find direction in your life? I'm assuming you have one, you seem very focused and passionate and smart. I'm none of those.
I do not like that comment of yours.
I'm an internet stranger, you should not trust me.
Also, thanks for the kind words, but we both know that the only difference between us is that my cards were better.
Also, we are not focused, passionate, smart in a binary True/False way.
We are on the spectrum of these and it varies even during the day.
People can be all smarty-pants in their own topic, but be bad in other topics.
If I'm sad or freez-y or angry I act differently than when I'm happy for example.
Here's a challange for you.
Open this article of mine.
Scroll down to the second picture.
Put it out big screen.
In the sunset frame's dark, where the two Twitch brainrot bunny slippers are talking... There's a text in true black barely visible.
Zoom in, because it is hard to see.
It is a link to a clip from a not well known movie, which might be interesting to you.
It summarizes two wildly different ways through life.
First, let's get that challenge you posed out of the way:
When I was 1 year old, I already had 5 mouths to feed and a job at a presitigous joblery.
I wasn't recruited: I built that joblery with my own bare baby hands.
And I was... not even in university like kids these days... it was pentaversity.
Try doing that: 1 year old. In pentaversity. Having 5 mouths. Working at joblery.
You challenged me. I delivered. You lost, I won. What did I win, what is my reward?
Now, with that settled, Louise Belcher, let's proceed to the actually important core of this comment:
Goldsmiths, University of London.
Goldsmiths, University of London, and I should just like...
leave it at that... or something?
This is the beginning of the UK-ification of Dev.to.
It happens to all platforms.
Eventually all platforms turn into tophats and tea.
(around jan-feb when I was picking on Uncle Bob's cargo cult, and I tried britishification, but got banned and my posh article vanished 😢 if you type into the search curtsey (reversed), it still comes up, just goes to 404)
I'll read some of your other british articles, Louise, see if you have a story to tell or just here to hunt boomers:
Regard, if you will, Londonian, that should it be your earnest intention to track or otherwise pursue in arms those esteemed gentlefolk of a more advanced maturity, the fashionable assemblies of LinkedIn or the public gazettes of Facebook would offer vastly superior hunting grounds for your sport.
Hey,
Didn't really expect this article to have readers let alone comments. I was mostly just venting my frustrations at a time when I wasn't doing very well mentally. That's what this blog is for me, I'm not very good at tech and I don't have much insight to offer plus I'm not desperate enough to use AI to try and get views or followers on here. I don't care about social media like that. I just write what I feel or projects I'm proud of. I noticed most people's blogs here are ghost towns, probably coz of how saturated this platform has become. There's so much content so it's hard for anyone's articles to be found to begin with. So I decided to scream my frustrations into what I thought was going to be a void. I have no one in real life I can tell them to.
Also, I'm not a "Londonian". I'm Kenyan lol. I just took the UoL degree because it was the first program that I saw offering an online course. I'm not a fan of the UK anyway, I don't even want to travel there for graduation. I just needed a degree. So, I'm very not British. And I have nothing against old people. Again, I was just frustrated writing this, and I had a lot of my, typically older, career advisors telling me how I just need to make a good resume highlighting my skills and I'll get a job. Advice which seems to not work these days. So I was frustrated but I have no need to "hunt" older folk lol.
Thanks for reading my shitpost/rant though. It feels nice to not scream into a void.
Sorry, I have to do this full answer, because of Parks and Recreation. I'm really sorry.
Oh my!
You might not even know then, that there's a very British, completely normal, programming language?
Hmh hmh, so for you this
-------->is the right direction? I guess?Because this
<--------is the right direction in Glasgowian etiquette.Now that is just syntax level difference, aka 99% of what a code review is about for Seniors.
But, I like Haskell, because of a semantical reason.
As you can see up there
[-42...]is an infinite list.If you filter, leaving only even numbers, that is still an infinite list, just only of even numbers.
So the question arises: How on Earth does this program ever terminate?
I mean C, Python, JS, Rust, LISP, OCaml, and everyone would go into generating an infinite list (more complex, but I don't want to infodump).
These languages have eager evaluation.
They always evaluate the arguments fully, before evaluating the function call.
For example: Given
foo(x) { return 'XD' }, thenf(∞-loop)will not terminate because infinite loop will be first evaluated, despite the fact that it is not needed for the result.Haskell on the other hand evaluates an 'argument' [0, 1] times.
It is non-eager evaluation plus a little bit of graph rewriting magic which is another rabbit hole.
What matters is:
The 'language' has a choice to evaluate some of your code or not.
If some part of the code is essentially pointless, then it can ignore it.
It is not AI, it is deterministic, it is Math, but once again: no deep infodump.
What really matters is:
If you are an Engineer...
...and you write a well-crafted code...
...based on Engineering Excellence...
...and according to the high standards of S&P 500 companies...
Kotlin/Python language is a trusty subordinate, executing your order like:
"Yes, Sir! I'll execute the code that was given to me!"
Haskell's like:
""
it is a really deep topic, but in situations where it knows what you are doing, it does not even create lists, it just turns your list into a for-loop or other non-boomer things. They call it deforestation, but in laymen's terms it is like Haskell had a 'mute dev's noise' button.
How Haskell works together with other programming languages
If you work around JavaScript, there's a JS linter/formatter called prettier.
If you visit their docs: prettier.io/docs/technical-details
They are referencing a paper by Philip Wadler.
It's title: A prettier printer
Yes it is a Haskell implementation as a white paper, and it was ported to JS (not fully, since JS is dumber).
Yes Haskell is making JS look more pretty and fabulous everyday.
So now JS is pretty, and prettier runs on millions of machines.
Haskell now travels the world with Javas... I mean TypeScript.
I had never heard of Haskell ever. It seems so cool
Don't get too thrilled though :(
1) Research language -> corps don't use it -> no jobs
2) Here's a non-bro dev's opinion of the culture there. I guess it is not the best. Title is "A break from programming languages".
Python = good choice
I mentioned Haskell to cheer you up, because maybe you'll understand that there are some commonalities between your stories+attitude and Haskell's.
I'll stop after this, just simply I want to flesh out, why I thought that mentioning Haskell is appropriate...
(most of the time, I translate Haskell into Rust/Python etc. to make people comfortable)
So, consider the below function in JS:
It takes a function f, a function g and a list xs.
It maps first g, then maps f.
So, for example you call it this way:
So it'll double the elements then change their signs, resulting in:
All in all, JavaScript has good Developer Experience.
We were able to effortlessly and seamlessly write a higher order function:
Now please remember what you have written in your article:
Below I tried to illustrate...
... via the language server's hints, and VSCode ...
... that you are not alone with this feeling.
Please do not focus on deeper technical things like eta-reduction or functor laws...
...just simply think about...
...philosophically speaking of course...
Would you testify at court that your article's mood has nothing in common with Haskell coding sessions?
Would you bet one million dollars on that all the Professors who made Haskell had Ph.D.s?
Would you bet your life on that there wasn't a single Professor, who simply forgot it, because it is useless office stamp?
Would you bet your career on that googling/prompting "Does Simon Peyton Jones have a Ph.D.?" will yield true?
You wrote:
I think you and Haskell have more things in common than you think:
Last thing to point out:
JavaScript, Python, Rust and other languages are really extremely unique and self-made big success stories and they had no Momma.
In an article, you pointed out that you help your Mom, and love her...
Well Haskell is not a Big Boy Language, so it is quite upfront about the fact that it is based on the programming language Miranda.
Miranda is quite upfront about this fact too.
They both mention eachother in their docs.
I hope I gave enough reasons why I thought mentioning Haskell would be appropriate.